Salem, USA - Religious organizations would be exempt from land-use regulations that restrict property uses under a bill passed yesterday by the Oregon House, though even the sponsor said the measure probably is too sweeping.
Republican Rep. Mac Sumner of Molalla introduced the bill to give greater flexibility to churches that want to build houses of worship for expanding congregations. Sumner is an elder at the Molalla Christian Church, which wants to build a church on 10 acres zoned exclusively for farm use near Molalla.
Critics said the bill goes too far and would allow religious groups to put various facilities on property they own, without any regard for land-use rules.
"This would trump all land-use laws," said Rep. Robert Ackerman, D-Eugene.
The measure was sent to the Senate on a 33-24 vote.
Sumner said he wanted the bill to advance in the House and that he would seek changes in the Senate to narrow its scope. He said he intended that the bill deal just with houses of worship.
Uses of land couldn't be restricted under the measure. It would permit "reasonable regulations concerning the physical characteristics" of a development.
Sumner said that while the church eventually might get permission from planning authorities to build, resistance often develops to putting developments on land zoned for agriculture.
Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, said there would be nothing to stop a religious group from putting a halfway house or an amphitheater in a residential neighborhood. Church expansion plans have triggered lawsuits in recent years in Oregon. And controversies around the country led to a federal law, passed in 2000, that prohibits land-use rules, which unduly hinder a church's right to free exercise of religion.
The Oregon Supreme Court last month ruled that the city of West Linn's rejection of a church's plan to build a new meeting place in a residential area didn't violate the federal law.