Voters in Clackamas County faced two competing urban renewal measures on today's ballot. Measure 3-386, proposed by citizen petitioners, would require a countywide vote before a new urban renewal area (URA) could be established or an existing URA significantly changed. Measure 3-388, proposed by the county commission, would also require a vote, but only from voters within the proposed URA. Both measures are passing; at this writing 3-386 is passing by a wider margin than 3-388 and will be the one to take effect.
The voters made the right decision. As I wrote on October 18, (and picked up by Professor Bogdanski the next day -- thank you, Jack) because a URA has the effect of transferring future property tax dollars from entire taxing districts to construct improvements in only a portion of those districts, it's fair to allow everyone who's being asked to subsidize the proposed URA to vote on it, as Measure 3-386 does. Allowing URAs to be formed with the approval of only the recipients(as Measure 3-388 would have allowed) without concern for the opinions of those who would have to bear the cost is, in a modest way, rather like allowing the price of military equipment to be set by a panel composed entirely of defense contractors.