Fire Safety or Government Overreach?
Oregon State Senator Dennis Linthicum has summed up recent legislation as a socialist agenda that could result in “you will own nothing, and be happy.” This bill was touted as the way to prevent disastrous fires like the Paradise, California fire of 2018 by regulating power companies that neglect power infrastructure. Instead, the 22 page bill focuses on the utilities for less than 3 pages. The bills’ primarily focus is on privately owned rural and suburban lands referred to as the “wildland-urban” interface.
The bill was sponsored by Governor Kate Brown and the Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire Recovery, which was made up of 5 State Senators including Senator Dallas Heard of Douglas County.
The primary partners in implementing the bill are; the State Fire Marshal, the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), the Department of Consumer and Business Services, and local governments.
The bill requires ODF to develop a statewide map classifying property in a Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) with wildfire risk levels. These risk classifications will be used to restrict land use and designate building codes, zoning and defensible space codes for existing properties.
The first map ODF introduced was withdrawn after the Wallowa County Board of Commissioners decided that any properties designated as having high or extreme fire risk in their county would be automatically appealed in hopes the ODF would reconsider. The map is mandated by the bill, so it must be redrawn and reintroduced.
SB 762 directs the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) to determine updates needed to statewide land use planning programs and zoning codes, limiting development in the wildland-urban interface and most properties bordering Oregon wildlands. Although the Dept. of Consumer and Business Services is in charge of creating new building codes, these codes are largely predetermined by adoption of the “International Codes” as developed by the International Code Council (ICC). The Oregon Revised Statutes adopted these codes as Section R327 of the 2021 Oregon Residential Specialty Code.
The ICC website states that these building code standards are developed through a “WTO-compliant consensus-based process that is supported and embraced by the U.S. Government.” … “The International Code Council’s family of solutions support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”
New construction and replacement of existing exterior elements such as roofs, windows and decks will be required to follow the new standards. Home insurance premiums will increase due to cost replacement values as these codes utilize very expensive and hard to find materials. Most of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Wyoming, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico have already adopted these building codes through state legislation or local codes.
The State Fire Marshal will require property owners to adhere to new “Defensible Space” standards by December 2022. Fines will be used to enforce compliance. Prior to passage of SB 762, ORS 477.060 limited costs that could be assessed to landowners as not to exceed $25 annually for each real property lot. That limit was struck out by SB 762. Now there is no limit on assessments.
Senator Linthicum states; “However, this limitation has been struck with laser-like precision and ODF is not bound by any form of cost constraint. This means that the costs, regardless of how atrocious, will get passed onto property owners because ORS 477.270 stays in place and the cost for “providing protection for privately owned forestland shall be a lien upon such property.” This means ODF now has enormous financial incentive to exert its power as a proportional claim on your property.
Additionally, ORS 477.270 specifies, these fees “shall be levied and collected by the governing body with the next taxes on the land in the same manner and with the same interest, penalty and cost charges as apply to ad valorem property taxes in this state. The governing body shall instruct the proper officer to extend the amounts on the assessment roll in a separate account, and the procedure provided by law for the collection of taxes and delinquent taxes shall apply.”
Senator Linthicum explains that “Shall” clauses in the bill are demands “which gets tagged onto each citizen’s share of the social contract, meaning you and I will fund them, regardless.” SB 762 distributes more than $220 million of Oregon tax dollars to nine different agencies that are involved in the creation and implementation of new codes, regulations and zoning restrictions.
“In essence, what started as periodic workshops for utility grid providers ends up allowing ODF to place annual liens on every property in Oregon based upon some arbitrary risk-assessment and the supposed costs associated with providing fire protection. Landowners will also bear increased costs as private insurance providers get pulled into the one-size-fits-all maze of capricious rules and assessments.”
Rural land owners are concerned that they could lose their homes to a wildfire and lose the property to taxes due to the unlimited amount that can be assessed for fire fighting.
The bill passed in legislature with the attached clause: “This 2021 Act being necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is declared to exist, and this 2021 Act takes effect on its passage. ”
432 Douglas County residents signed a petition demanding “Douglas County Commissioners Reject SB 762’s Local Regulations.” The petition has been sent to the Dept. of Consumer and Business Services as a public comment on their involvement and has been delivered to the Douglas County Commissioners legal counsel.
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