OPOA Legal Center To Assist Josephine County In Land Use Review

We’re excited to announce that the OPOA Legal Center will be working with Josephine County in a review of the County’s current comprehensive plan and rural land use regulations. 

We’ll review the comprehensive plan and rural land use development code and inform the County staff, Planning Commission, and Board of Commissioners of opportunities to improve the local land use regulations to make them less restrictive to the rights of the private property owners in the County.

All counties in Oregon are required by state law to adopt both a comprehensive plan and local land use regulations to implement the plan.  Both the plan and local land use regulations must comply with Oregon state statues and the statewide planning goals and rules of the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC). 

In rural areas, both the legislature and LCDC tightly control private property uses, meaning counties lack flexibility to adopt rules that best fit their county.  In fact, LCDC’s rules create a one-way regulatory system, where counties cannot adopt local regulations that “go below” the state requirements but are free to create additional local regulations beyond the state minimums to decrease opportunities for rural property owners.

As part of our work with the County, we’ll identify areas where the County has gone beyond the state minimum requirements, so that County officials can decide whether they want to keep those additional requirements or change them.  In some areas, the County may want to keep the additional requirements, while in others, the County may decide to bring the requirements back to state minimums.

This is a great opportunity for the County to review its land use regulations and see where it can make changes to help rural property owners.  We’re thrilled to help the County with that review.

The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not represent the opinions or positions of any party represented by the OPOA Legal Center on any particular matter.