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Planning is not supposed to be about personalities. It’s supposed to be the somewhat methodical study of land uses and structures – and that is what it is most of the time.

On occasion, however, individuals come forward and leave their own imprints on our lives and times. Their impacts on Oregon’s statewide planning system affect the lives of those in communities throughout this state.

Such an individual is Ron Eber, the farm and forest specialist for the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, who will leave public service this spring after 32 years of defining and protecting the resource lands of the state. Over the years, both his job and the public’s perception of it have changed markedly. 

When Eber first joined the DLCD, the state had just passed Senate Bill 100, establishing an active state presence in land-use planning and providing for state standards, in the form of land-use planning “goals,” that offered direction to cities and counties that did Oregon’s “on the ground” daily planning and land-use regulatory activities. The notion that the state could, and should, undertake such regulatory oversight was, and generally still is, a departure from the typically laissez-faire approach of most states, which delegate land-use planning and regulation to local governments without any further policy review. 

Once the state determined it should be involved in land-use planning and regulation, it charged the DLCD with presenting policy to the Land Conservation and Development Commission to choose both the areas where the state would become involved and the precise policies it would adopt. One of the primary justifications for state participation in land-use planning was the preservation of farm and forest lands in those areas where the high-value farm and forest lands were susceptible to loss from suburbanization and sprawl. The difficulty of implementing such a policy was that it interfered with the economic expectations of rural landowners and Realtors who profited under the existing land-use scheme.

It was Eber and his colleagues at the department who had to implement restrictions on urban expansion that some legislators were not enthusiastic to support. Eber and his colleagues had to designate which soils would be protected for agricultural use. They had to deal with landowners and local governments that were less than candid about their actions. The masks of “local control,” five-acre “intensive farms” and “property rights” were rearguard actions to delay or halt what the Legislature and voters had directed. Eber and his colleagues had to deal with continuous additions to the list of nonfarm uses allowed in “exclusive” farm use zones. Dealing with resistance to the law and prevarication was the order of the day, but Eber and his colleagues did it with tact and honor.

When some landowners attempted to evade state regulations on housing in farm zones (and get an unlawful property tax break), Eber noted that dwellings in farm zones must be “customarily provided in conjunction with farm use” so that “martini farms” were not permitted.

When some counties attempted to evade preservation of farmlands by approving “farm management plans” that showed cultivation of blueberries (which would be planted when the house was built, but never cultivated thereafter), it was Eber and his colleagues at the department who worked to develop more exacting requirements for the state’s policy of farmland preservation, including a statewide minimum lot size for farmland and a minimum gross income from farmland before a new house could be built.  These measures weren’t popular.

But Eber did his work with a sense of fairness and equanimity. It was not uncommon for him to work with property owners and those who were not friends of the state’s land-use program to discover and exercise rights and opportunities that were available to them under the law, some of which they may not have been aware of. He did not use his expert knowledge of the land-use program to play “hide the ball” but rather to make the system work.

We don’t give gold watches or retirement bonuses to faithful public servants who carry out what we say is our policy, even if we don’t always believe it. But there is a little bit of heaven reserved for those who are faithful to their charge. Ron Eber will inhabit that place.

Edward J. Sullivan has specialized in land-use law for more than 35 years. He is an owner in the Portland office of Garvey Schubert Barer and is the immediate past chairman of the State and Local Government Law Section of the American Bar Association. Contact him at [email protected] or 503-228-3939.