Right now, what makes Oregon special is very much at risk because of the flaws and loopholes of Measure 37. Passed in 2004, Measure 37 was advertised as a way that small individual landowners could build a few houses on their property, if that was allowed at the time they bought that property.

Oregonians voted to help those people. But what Measure 37 delivered was quite different: huge, sprawling development that threatens to eat up much of what we treasure most about Oregon.

Measure 49 does not repeal Measure 37. But it does fix the flaws of 37: delivering on the promises made to small individual property owners while preventing the most egregious abuses of huge housing subdivisions, commercial and industrial development, destruction of prime farmland and forests, and threats to water supplies that families depend on.