SB 2 – Development in Eastern Oregon: This is OPOA’s Eastern Oregon land use bill. The bill allows 10 Eastern Oregon counties (Malheur, Baker, Harney, Lake, Union, Wallowa, Grant, Sherman, Gilliam, Wheeler) to adopt an Economic Opportunity Analysis (EOA) identifying non-farm/forest activities that they would like to pursue for rural areas within the county. Currently, the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) prohibits a county from adopting an EOA for areas outside of UGB’s.
Each county will choose how to identify non-farm uses and their locations. The choice will rest with each county, and the legislature further appropriated money to pay for each county’s study. Based on its EOA, each county can then apply to LCDC for acknowledgment of new zoning for their identified areas without the need for a goal exception, and can come back to the legislature with the completed EOA’s and ask for new legislation. In the meantime, each county is given 50 acres of rural land that they can use for any type of non-farm/forest use they choose.
SB 2 represents the first stage of a two-stage process. OPOA and the eastern Oregon counties have long been hampered by a lack of data showing how the land use system is preventing the counties from thriving. There is significant anecdotal evidence, but EOA’s have never been undertaken because LCDC rules prevent the counties from doing so. SB 2 will give each county the ability to complete an EOA to identify alternative uses outside their UGB’s, and will allow each county to decide whether they want to develop outside of their UGB’s or not. The counties have all indicated an eagerness to take on the project and start talking about alternative uses, and they’ll have a little bit of land to make a few changes immediately.