What Clackamas County commissioners saw as a partial solution to their unemployment problem died in the Senate Environment and Natural Resources committee.
SB 716 would have authorized Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties each to designate one large-lot industrial reserve of 150 to 500 acres for future inclusion in the Urban Growth Boundary. An amendment would have replaced Washington and Multnomah with Columbia County.
But committee senators voted 3-2 not to pass the bill on to the senate floor.
"You win some, you lose some," said committee chair Sen. Chris Edwards, D-Eugene, who supported the bill. "We'll move on."
Edwards and Sen. Chuck Thomsen, R-Hood River, voted to pass SB 716, while Senators Michael Dembrow, D-Portland; Alan Olsen, R-Canby; and Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, opposed it.
In a county short on jobs, industrial land is synonymous with what commissioners consider much-needed employment land.
Land defined as predominantly flat, with access to transportation or freight infrastructure and free from unresolved environmental concerns or development constraints, could house businesses that would employ some of the county's more than 21,000 jobless residents.
Olsen would like to see south Clackamas County grow, but doesn't think 716 fits the bill, he said.
Based on previous land-use work, Prozanski said he couldn't support setting aside more large industrial lots.
Oregon's land use system has a few blind spots, and one of them is in rural Oregon, Edwards said.
"In areas like the Metro area and other urban centers, nobody wants large lot industrial in their backyard," Edwards said. "At the local level, it's hugely politicized. I understand that but I think there is a state interest in having large lot industrial that can be one of those anchors or that next big thing."
Previously, some had called SB 716, and other bills affecting reserves designations in the metro area, "Grand betrayals" to last year's "Grand Bargain," which legislated Washington County's urban and rural reserves for the next 50 years.
Others worried the bill would enable the destruction of high-value farmland. In public hearings, many more people testified in opposition of the reserves bill than in support of it.
Suspicions surrounded SB 716's origin. Lobbyist Hasina Squires previously denied speculations that the Maletis brothers, who own the Langdon Farms Golf Club south of Wilsonville, were behind the bill.
-- Hannah Leone
503-294-4001; @HannahMLeone