Oregon alters half-century-old land use regulation for chipmakers

In an try to draw semiconductor corporations to Oregon, the state Legislature approved the governor on Thursday to increase city development boundaries to provide land for chipmakers to build factories.

Lawmakers backing the invoice, which additionally supplies some $200 million in grants to chipmakers, mentioned it is wanted to make Oregon extra aggressive amongst different states in luring extra of the multibillion-dollar semiconductor business to the state. Other lawmakers argued that the measure is an assault on the nation’s first statewide policy—created a half-century in the past—that limits city sprawl and protects farmland and forests.

“These regulations have resulted in 50 years of success protecting our farm and forest lands, containing urban sprawl and protecting natural resources,” mentioned Rep. Anna Scharf, a Republican. “Senate Bill 4 throws that out the window.”

The invoice, permitted by the state Senate final week and handed by the House on a 44-10 vote Thursday, permits Gov. Tina Kotek to designate as much as a most of eight websites for city development boundary growth—two that exceed 500 acres (202 hectares) and 6 smaller websites.

“There is some extremely valuable farmland in the area that produces Oregonians’ food and provides those families and those employees jobs,” Scharf mentioned. “Farmland, once it is paved over, can never be reclaimed.”

Rep. Kim Wallan, a Republican and co-sponsor of the invoice {that a} joint committee spent greater than a month engaged on, mentioned it provides Kotek solely slender authority and is geared toward expediting the method for setting apart land for semiconductor factories, known as fabs, and associated companies.

State officers and lawmakers had been stung by chipmaker Intel’s choice final yr to construct an enormous $20 billion chipmaking advanced in Ohio, and never in Oregon the place appropriate zoned land is scarce. Intel is the state’s largest company employer.

In Oregon, as soon as land is included in an city development boundary, it’s eligible for annexation to a metropolis. Those boundary strains are often expanded. But the method can take months and even years. Under the invoice, any appeals to the governor’s city development boundary expansions are expedited by going straight to the state Supreme Court.

The invoice goes to Kotek for signing into regulation and takes impact instantly. In an announcement Thursday, Kotek mentioned the invoice makes Oregon “poised to lay the foundation for the next generation of innovation and production of semiconductors.”

“Oregon has been at the center of the semiconductor industry in the United States for decades,” the Democrat mentioned. “This bill is an absolutely essential tool for leading a coordinated effort with the private sector to ensure we can compete for federal funds to expand advanced manufacturing in Oregon.”

The CHIPS and Science Act, handed by Congress in 2022, supplies $39 billion for corporations developing or increasing amenities that can manufacture semiconductors and people that can assemble, take a look at and bundle the chips.

It was Republican Gov. Tom McCall, who served from 1967 to 1975, who had urged lawmakers to push for a troublesome new land-use regulation. In a 1973 speech on the Legislature, he denounced “sagebrush subdivisions, coastal ‘condomania’ and the ravenous rampage of suburbia.” Lawmakers responded by passing the regulation that positioned development boundaries on Oregon’s cities.

Some opponents of the Oregon CHIPS invoice objected on Thursday to altering a system that is been in place for 50 years.

“I cannot in good conscience give the governor what is essentially a super-siting authority to take lands and bring them into the urban growth boundary,” mentioned Rep. Ed Diehl, a Republican. “That is not the Oregon way.”

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