Property Rights Under Attack in Oregon
Property rights are under attack again in Oregon this year by the State Constitution and by the Oregon Legislature! State Legislators refused again to give my Foreclosure Reform Bill (Senate Bill 929) a hearing for the second straight year! This fifteen year old Bill, first written and drafted as Oregon House Bill 3453, in the 1995 Legislative Session, was allowed to die in committee again, in Salem this year! There was just not a lot of support for the Bill. Apparently there are a lot more important things for our State Legislators to do in Salem, than to make sure that our Oregon State Constitution conforms to the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights! For the benefit of all of our Oregon legislators, who have never read it, the ‘Takings Clause’ of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which is a part of the Bill of Rights, reads as follows, “Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” For the rest of this story read on. Once upon a time there was a little boy and girl, who lived happily together with their parents, in a little house in Oregon, out in the country. Time passed, and as the years went by, the children grew up, their parents died, the house grew old, and so did the little boy and girl. A little community sprang up all around them, but the two siblings, who never married, never left home either. Then one day, along came a big bad wolf in disguise, actually it was two big bad wolves, Lane County and the City of Eugene, and together they huffed and they puffed, and while they didn’t actually blow the house down, it’s still there today with some alterations, they did blow Jack and Betty Neely right out of their home, the only home they’d ever known! Homelessness, followed by a heart attack and the untimely death of her brother, broke Betty Neely’s heart and she quietly left Oregon several years later! What we have here is a deplorable situation and a very horrible law, ORS 223.525, that violates the US Constitution and needs to be changed in this year’s session of the Oregon Legislature! Read on: