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Blueprint for Oregon's Future

Moving Forward: Action Items

Many of the above strategies are moving forward thanks to the land use planning system Oregonians have crafted over the years. But to meet today’s most pressing challenges, we need the 2009 Oregon Legislature to further improve our land use and transportation planning laws.

We propose actions in three areas: protecting Oregon’s best farm land, forest land, and natural areas; ensuring transportation and development projects reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and building a healthy, climate-friendly transportation system.

1. Protect Our Best Farm Land, Forest Land, and Natural Areas

Oregon is blessed with some of the world’s best farmland. This farmland is the base of tens of thousands of jobs for Oregonians, as well as being a source of healthy food, a resource for our energy needs, and an alternative to fuel-intensive shipping of food from thousands of miles away.

Oregon is also known for our productive forests and woodlands that are the basis of thousands of jobs across the state. Wood products help us build our homes and businesses and meet everyday needs such as paper.

Natural landscapes and access to fish and wildlife habitats contribute significantly to our state’s economy as well through tourism, quality of life benefits, and ecosystem services like protecting water quality and clean air.

Yet development pressures -- from expanding cities, vacation-home destination resorts,  or conflicts with neighbors -- threaten these industries and places that define Oregon.

To protect our best farmland, forest land, and natural areas, the 2009 Legislature should:

1. Enact a land stewardship program to fund the purchase of easements on farm, forest, and range lands. This would complement our land use laws, and could be funded by a windfall tax on properties whose value dramatically increases by being brought into the urban growth boundary.


2. Create a rural reserves program requiring cities to work with the Oregon Departments of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fish and Wildlife to ensure our cities don’t expand onto our best farmland, forest land, and natural areas.


3. Strengthen state farmland laws to protect Oregon’s best farm land from developers of the long list of non-farm uses currently allowed in Exclusive Farm Use zones.

2. Ensure Transportation and Development Projects Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Global warming threatens Oregon’s economy, Oregonians’ health and safety, vulnerable fish and wildlife habitat, and our quality of life. Recognizing these threats, the 2007 Legislature committed to stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, to reducing them by 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, and to reduce them 75% below 1990 levels by 2050. Strong and decisive action is required.

A tax on carbon emissions is an efficient, powerful way to make those who are imposing the costs of climate change pay for their damage. Adopting a carbon tax at the federal level may be the fairest and most effective means of implementing this goal. In the meantime, there are important steps Oregon can take to reduce carbon emissions and to prepare Oregon communities for a carbon-limited future.

To reduce transportation-caused greenhouse gases, which are 38% of Oregon’s greenhouse gases, the Governor’s Advisory Group on Global Warming recommends Oregon improve vehicle fuel efficiency, increase the use of biofuels for transportation, and reduce the amount of driving Oregonians need to do, by improving land development patterns.

All three steps are needed to meet the state’s global warming goals; the legislature has taken action on the first two. If we are to reduce transportation greenhouse gases another 400,000 tons a year by 2025 through land use, as the state policy calls for, we need to do a much better job of planning. The extra driving caused by inefficient sprawling development results in the average household pumping four thousand pounds more greenhouse gases per year than an average household in a well-planned development.

To ensure transportation and development projects reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Governor and 2009 Legislature should:

1. Require transportation programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we can meet the emission reduction targets in Oregon law. We can’t meet our greenhouse gas reduction goals if we focus our spending on widening highways, or building new highways, to serve new low-density car-dependent development.


2. Hold inefficient development responsible for its climate impact. State law should require developers outside urban growth boundaries to offset the increase in greenhouse gases they produce, and should require similar greenhouse gas offset payments from large commercial big box developments and office parks located in car-dependent locations. An offset system is in use today by electric utilities and industries that burn coal or natural gas. Those companies compensate for the additional pollution they cause by paying others to reduce their carbon production. The same should happen in land use, by charging inefficient sprawling development a carbon impact fee adequate to pay for projects or incentives to reduce emissions in our existing communities.


3. Direct state agencies to better implement land use laws that require efficient development. Well-designed development results in 20% to 55% less driving than standard patterns, with concurrent savings in greenhouse gas emissions. Current state laws – statewide land use goals 10, 11, and 14 – are designed to ensure new development is efficient, but these laws have not been applied consistently, and must be better implemented. Special attention should be given to areas where urban growth boundaries are expanded.

3. Create a Healthy, Climate-Friendly Transportation System

Over the next 30 years, Oregon will grow to more than five million people. Our people and our economy will need a strong, balanced transportation system to serve us. Governor Kulongoski and the Legislature are taking this challenge seriously, and discussing a new transportation funding package to be acted on in 2009.

A well-designed transportation package will benefit Oregon. But a poorly-designed package will undermine Oregon’s communities and our commitment to take climate change seriously. To succeed in a time of limited transportation resources, we can’t rely upon isolated transportation projects, today’s traffic reports, or the belief that everyone can or wants to drive a car. Instead, we must focus on where we want our transportation system to be in 30 years, and start to build the system that will get us there.

Four principles should guide the Legislature’s design of a transportation funding package in 2009. The Legislature should:

1. Fix roads first before expanding them. The Legislature should change the formula for distributing existing highway dollars to local governments and the state so we have enough resources to maintain the existing transportation system. If more resources are needed for maintenance, we should raise those first before raising taxes for transportation system expansion. The Legislature should repeal the law that requires the Oregon Department of Transportation to spend money on road expansion regardless of maintenance needs. Both state and local governments should include the costs of mitigating stormwater runoff impacts in maintenance budgets.


2. Create real choices and true balance. One out of every four Oregonians – roughly a million people – are too young, old, sick, or poor to drive. This number will grow as our population ages. The Legislature should require that local or state proposals to increase transportation capital construction funding reduce the need to drive and reduce the number of miles Oregonians drive by expanding transit, pedestrian, and bicycle investments and improving the local street systems needed for short trips.


3. Make better use of existing systems before funding expansions. In congested areas, we should increase funding for programs such as access management (that increase road capacity by controlling where and when cars enter the road), crash response (because about one-quarter of congestion is crash-related), and transportation demand management (programs that reduce the peak demand on roads by shifting when and where people drive and the method of travel). These are low-cost alternatives to expensive, disruptive road expansion.


4. Put transportation expansion proposals through a “carbon filter.” As previously mentioned, any new transportation projects must be designed to reduce our need to drive and result in reduced carbon emissions.

Next page: Conclusion

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