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2005-06-16 Alert
URGENT! Voter Annexation Threat
Dear OCVA Members, Friends & Supporters:
OCVA's prime directive is protecting the "Voter Annexation" charter amendments in our member communities. THOSE AMENDMENTS ARE IN DANGER OF BEING TEMPORARILY NULLIFIED - IN SOME CASES - BY SENATE BILL 887B.
The bill came up for a House vote today, but the vote was delayed (don't know why). It may be rescheduled at any time (it has already cleared the Senate). Everyone needs to contact their representatives NOW and ask that this flawed legislation not be enacted until its flaws are addressed. Following is a more detailed explanation from which you can draw talking points:
SB 887 started out as a good island annexation reform measure which we supported. But subsequent amendments have rendered it untenable. One of those - Section 3 of the bill - grants voting rights ONLY TO THOSE IN THE TARGETED AREA for ORS-195 annexations until January, 2008.
You may ask, "how can that be - the Legislature just passed HB 2484 which retains the right of city voters to participate in ORS-195 annexations?" As it's been explained to us, SB 887B basically suspends the voting provision of ORS 195 - regardless of how that changes if the Governor signs HB 2484 as we hope he will - and replaces it with the language in SB 887B for 2+ years. In light of HB 2484's passage, that makes absolutely no sense at all, but that is what apparently would happen.
This amendment sneaked in under our radar. During the past few days, there have been intense discussions among the officers, our Board, our Legislative contacts and our new allies on how to deal with this development. It is not as simple as it looks. SB 887 was written to provide badly-needed relief for Washington County against Beaverton's overly-aggressive island annexation policy for 2 years. If we oppose the bill, we risk alienating some of the folks who helped so tremendously to get HB 2484 through the Legislature.
But Beaverton has announced that it is basically done with island annexations...remarkably enough, for about 2 years! So the temporary moratorium is basically worthless.
The bill has other major problems:
- It grants long-term immunity against forced annexation to a few big companies, but to nobody else;
- The "work group" it proposes had its teeth pulled: there is no longer a "hammer" that kicks in if the group can't arrive at any consensus for reform of the state's annexation laws. What incentive do our opponents have under that scenario to bargain in good faith?
We raised the issue of the discrepancy between SB 887 and HB 2484 ORS-195 reform in our testimony before the House Land Use Committee on the bill. We urged that committee to use the same language in 887 as is in 2484 (double majority). But when the B-engrossed bill emerged recently from HLU, it became clear that our request hadn't been incorporated. And - mea culpa - the potential threat to our charter amendments didn't dawn on me until several days later.
The foregoing provision applies only to ORS-195 "service provider" annexations, which have been used extremely rarely. When they have been used, it's been to grab most or all of a city's UGB. It sunsets in January 2008. But the obvious danger is that for the next 2+ years in our member communities, ALL annexations - large and small - would be pursued via 195 to keep from having to take them to the city voters. Our friendlies in the Legislature think cities would still honor their charter amendments, even though they wouldn't be required to. Having dealt with so many city governments, as you have, I do not share that optimism!
Our Board of Directors has decided, correctly, I believe, that we need to oppose SB 887B. Last night, I launched that effort with a memo to the HLU members and followed it up tonight with a memo to the full House.
I sincerely apologize to all of you for letting this one get by. I don't know who drafted the amendment...and it may have even been purposely put in by our enemies. While I have no proof of that, what better way to nullify voter annexation AND put OCVA in the position of angering supporters no matter what action we take? I've been accused in the past of seeing a conspiracy behind every corner - but there are LOTS of corners at 900 Court St. NE...and how long have we been dealing with this bunch? Long enough to know how they operate!
We've been down this road a number of times in the past. If the bill passes in the House, it goes back to the Senate for concurrence with the House amendments. Senator Ringo has already verbally thrashed the business protections. So we will have a couple chances, plus the Governor, to try to stop this thing. Time to go to battle - again.
Jerry Ritter
Secretary, OCVA
This page last modified on 2005-11-16 08:29.
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