Measure 37 was not a watershed moment. It did not indicate that citizens are “sick and tired” of all the regulatory hassles of our land use system. To see that M37 passed largely due to issue framing (and faulty opposition), just look at what happened yesterday in rural Livermore, California.

There, Weyerhaeuser’s Pardee Homes pushed a local ballot measure to remove land-use restrictions on sensitive open space. What for? To build 1000s of McMansions, of course! Oh, and in a cynical ploy, they proposed that this McCommunity would be powered exclusively by solar.

Pardee spent $3,250,000 in a well-oiled campaign; the ragtag opposition spent only $220,000.

The result?

Voters soundly rejected a developer’s attempt to build what it claimed would be the country’s largest solar-powered community on currently protected land. With 100 percent of precincts reporting Wednesday, Measure D lost 72 percent to 28 percent.

The lessons we Oregonians should learn from this:

• Rural voters support land use protections and will fight for them.
• The issue must be FRAMED to highlight the possible damage — the argument should not be about “rights”, but about the end result (more sprawl, less open space).
• Money and media make little difference (local media seemed to push this measure as a great way to become a global “solar leader”); the vital chord is a grassroots buzz about the damage.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 at 10:35 am and is filed under Environment, Livability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.