Oregon Public Broadcasting

Four years after Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski and top legislative leaders launched a review of the state’s land-use system, the governor says he’ll sign into law the legislation that resulted. Rob Manning has more.

The so-called Big Look bill passed the Oregon House almost unanimously last month, and it passed the Senate by a narrower margin this week. The governor should sign it soon.

His signature will mark a compromise after years of debate over planning in Oregon.

At issue have been rules over large tracts of land designated as “farm and forest”. 

Those are difficult for Oregon property owners to build houses on. The stories of those land owners drove an initiative in 2004 that opened the door to property owners building more.

Voters have since scaled back what a landholder can do. But now, the new Big Look bill goes after the root cause of much of this strife. 

It gives counties a process for re-designating land, if doing so wouldn’t hurt the agriculture economy, or create other problems.

State planners still have to approve any county-level changes. But state officials need money to review requests, and the uncertain budget means there may not be a lot of these reviews coming soon.