Will property-rights revolt reverberate beyond Oregon?

In November Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved Measure 37, the nation's most sweeping property-rights law. Since then, hundreds of eager landowners such as Kempema have flooded city halls and county courthouses with claims demanding that government drop restrictions and let them develop their property, or pay them not to. "I never in my life thought I'd see something like this," Kempema marvels. Before Measure 37, their development plans would have been fantasies. They violate Oregon's pioneering land-use laws, often hailed as a national model for curbing sprawl and protecting farms and forests. Measure 37 trumps those laws. No statute in the country more drastically limits government's power to regulate what people can do with their property. Property-rights advocates in Washington, bristling at rules adopted under the state's Growth Management Act, hope to put a similar proposal on the ballot in 2006. Dave Hunnicutt of Oregonians in Action, Measure 37's sponsor, says he's also working with activists in Florida, Wisconsin and South Carolina. "If it can happen in Oregon... it can happen anywhere," writes Portland attorney Edward Sullivan, a leading opponent of Measure 37....

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