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Three southern Oregon counties are hoping to change the way their forest and agricultural lands are classified.

On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee heard testimonies from public and private officials concerning , which would allow Jackson, Josephine and Douglas counties to form an intergovernmental agreement and petition for certain farm and forest lands to be rezoned.

One of the bill鈥檚 sponsors, Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford, said the legislation is an attempt to correct land-use classification mistakes in the wake of Senate Bill 100, which passed in 1973, and coordinated land zoning throughout the state.

鈥淚 think local people should have more of a handle on how they want to grow their municipalities as long as they remain under the 19 (statewide planning) goals,鈥� Esquivel said. 鈥淥ther than that, it鈥檚 up to the local people to figure out how they want to grow 鈥� not Salem.鈥�

One of those local people is Brian Hines, who lives in Marion County. He testified at the hearing that he is worried that if HB 4095 were to pass, its impacts would trickle down into his neighborhood as well.

Hines lives on 10 acres and said he has been fighting a landowner鈥檚 plan to develop a 43-lot subdivision on 217 acres adjacent to his home. He said the well water system cannot support the proposed subdivision and that he and his wife raised up to $35,000 for a hydrogeologist to research the matter. Then when voters passed Measure 37, which essentially allows landowners to appeal for grandfathered zoning rights that predate regulations, he said the landowner applied for the subdivision again and was denied.

All of that would be undermined, Hines said, if the landowner could someday just change the zoning.

鈥淚nstead of trying to do away with the land-use system entirely, they鈥檒l tink away at it until it just falls and hope people don鈥檛 pay attention,鈥� Hines said. 鈥淏ut people like us do.鈥�

Hines said he also is worried that if the bill were to pass, it would shut local residents out of the discussion process.

Josephine County Commissioner Harold Haugen said that fear is unwarranted because any petitions for land-use changes would have to go through a public hearing process. Haugen also said he believes the bill is necessary to correct improper zoning classifications that the state made decades ago.

鈥�(Zoning) was based on a belief that if it was big and green it should be placed in a resource category, so it got placed in either agriculture or forest,鈥� he said.

Haugen said one example of this is a mobile home park west of Grants Pass that has existed since the 1960s.

鈥淚f you look on a map, it says that鈥檚 exclusive farm, but it鈥檚 a mobile park,鈥� Haugen said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 unfair to the people who own the land because the real zoning designation should be rural residential.鈥�

Haugen said he and the other commissioners in the three-county area support the bill so that those kinds of improprieties can be addressed. He added that he does not believe it would open the floodgates for future development.

Esquivel said legislation like this is necessary in order to simplify an overly complicated process.

鈥淲e鈥檝e layered it and layered it and layered it with all these administrative rules, to the point that I鈥檓 not sure that there鈥檚 one individual in the state of Oregon that understands all the rules,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd that鈥檚 unfortunate because we鈥檝e created something that is becoming almost nonfunctional.鈥�

But Jason Miner with 1,000 Friends of Oregon, a land conservation and sustainable planning nonprofit that opposes the bill, said counties already have the power to make those changes through . It became law in 2009 and allows local governments to petition forest and agricultural land designations to the Land Conservation and Development Commission.

鈥淔rankly, adding a new process that is duplicative of an existing process is the kind of thing that makes it complex,鈥� Miner said.

That situation is made more contentious, perhaps, by the fact that the bill would allocate at least $350,000 from the general fund to the three counties for their rezoning efforts, according to a legislative summary of the bill.

Miner said his group is not opposed to improperly zoned agricultural and forest lands being rezoned, but he added that HB 4095 also raises concerns because of the way it classifies those spaces. For instance, he said, farmland is defined by the quality of its soil content. HB 4095, he said, would define land based on its proximity to other zoning boundaries like urban growth boundaries.

鈥淚f you go defining farmland by its proximity to nonfarm uses, suddenly the boundary is not really a boundary,鈥� Miner said.

But for Esquivel, it鈥檚 an issue of statewide rules micromanaging local jurisdictions.

鈥淲hat鈥檚 good for Portland isn鈥檛 good for Lakeview, what鈥檚 good for Lakeview isn鈥檛 good for Ontario, and what isn鈥檛 good for Ontario isn鈥檛 good for Medford, and that鈥檚 a fact,鈥� Esquivel said. 鈥淥ne size does not fit all.鈥�

The second public hearing on HB 4095 was scheduled for today, in Salem.