Opinion ID: 1188002
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The 1979 statutes.

Text: Unlike prior land use cases initiated in circuit courts by writ of review, the present case involves two distinct provisions for review, the first governing review by the Land Use Board of Appeals and the second judicial review by the Court of Appeals. Oregon Law 1979, ch. 772, prescribed procedure before the board in section 4 and judicial review in section 6a. Section 4, provided: (2) Except as provided in subsection (3) of this section, any person whose interests are adversely affected or who is aggrieved by a land use decision and who has filed a notice of intent to appeal as provided in subsection (4) of this section may petition the board for review of that decision.... (3) Any person who has filed a notice of intent to appeal as provided in subsection (4) of this section may petition the board for review of a quasi-judicial land use decision if the person: (a) Appeared before the city, county or special district governing body or state agency orally or in writing; and (b) Was a person entitled as of right to notice and hearing prior to the decision to be reviewed or was a person whose interests are adversely affected or who was aggrieved by the decision. A further relevant provision states that the petition for review shall state [t]he facts that establish that the petitioner has standing. Or. Laws 1979, ch. 772, § 4(6)(a). Review by LUBA thus is not limited to persons who can show injury of some substantial right, as it was under the writ of review, or whose interests are substantially affected, as ORS 197.300 prescribed at the time of 1000 Friends of Oregon v. Multnomah County, supra n. 3. Instead, the 1979 statute allowed a petition to the board by any person who fits within the foregoing provisions. [4] The provisions differ depending on whether the land use decision qualifies as quasi-judicial. Subsection (2) allows a petition to LUBA, after a notice of intent to appeal, by any person whose interests are adversely affected or, in the alternative, who is aggrieved by the decision, except when the decision is quasijudicial. In such a case, the petitioner must have appeared orally or in writing before the body making the decision to be reviewed but need not be either affected or aggrieved if the petitioner was entitled to notice and to be heard before the decision was made. An examination of the legislative history of the 1979 law, helpfully collected in the county's supplemental brief, does not disclose any extensive explanation of the two phrases whose interests are adversely affected and who is aggrieved. They do, however, represent a deliberate change from the prior formula for review of land use decisions and from the bill as originally introduced, which proposed to allow review to persons who appeared in the land use proceeding and either were entitled to notice and hearing or had a substantial interest in the decision. [5] The different phrasing for petitions to the new Land Use Board of Appeals was proposed by the governor's executive assistant, Lee Johnson. A staff memorandum to the Senate committee studying SB 435 set out the difference between the provisions drawn from the statutory writ of review and from the administrative procedure act and presented the choice as the first major policy issue to be decided by the committee. Eventually the substitute was chosen. Also the committee deleted a proposed amendment that a substantial interest be required for petitions by persons whose standing to seek review rested on their entitlement to notice and hearing before the decision. The requirement of a substantial interest survived in section 13 of the bill, which amended the law governing writs of review in the courts, ORS 34.040. On this record of deliberate change, we cannot accept the county's position that the phrases actually enacted meant only to retain the existing interpretation of the rejected term substantial interest under the prior writ of review procedure. The phrases proposed by Mr. Johnson and adopted by the legislature differ slightly from those of Oregon's administrative procedure act. [6] There, in turn, they have antecedents in the federal administrative procedure act and prior statutes at least as far back as the federal Communications Act. [7] It does not follow from this characteristic resort to familiar legal phraseology that they import into Oregon law all the preexisting federal case law. [8] Nor should these phrases be ascribed simply to the legal penchant for saying the same thing in two different ways. In a case under the Oregon APA before 1979, this court distinguished between adversely affected and aggrieved, stating that `aggrieved' means something more than being dissatisfied with the agency's order, yet distinct from being `adversely affected' by it. Marbet v. Portland General Electric, supra n. 1, 277 Or. at 457, 561 P.2d 154. This interpretation of aggrieved in ORS 183.480 was known before Mr. Johnson and the legislature drew upon that source to define standing before LUBA under section 4(3)(b). Two illustrations show how the test of being aggrieved can avoid argument over the meaning of adversely affected. A person who wishes to appeal a ruling in his favor, but one less favorable than requested, is aggrieved without having to argue whether his interests are adversely affected by the partial victory. Such an argument otherwise might have at least surface plausibility where the statutory test had been changed from substantially affected to adversely affected, but the separate term aggrieved makes this immaterial. Also, the persons who may seek review of land use decisions include governmental subdivisions or agencies and other public organizations. Or. Laws 1979, ch. 772, § 3(2), supra n. 4. It might plausibly be argued that public agencies are assigned responsibility for various aspects of public policy but have no interests of their own to be adversely affected by an adverse decision. Again, however, a public agency may claim to be aggrieved by a decision against some public interest for which it has responsibility without debating whether the agency's own interest is adversely affected. Who is aggrieved also may vary with the land use goal or other governing criteria that is said to be violated by the challenged decision. [9] The statute does not limit either adverse effect or aggrievement to property interests which must be in physical proximity to the disputed land use. As in Marbet, therefore, we understand aggrieved to mean something distinct from an adverse effect on some personal self-interest. In this case, as in Marbet, the challenged action is a quasijudicial decision, that is to say, a decision limited in time and space to specific facts and named addressees rather than one promulgating a general rule addressed to an open class of persons and future events, and it has been adopted in a quasijudicial proceeding. In general rulemaking there ordinarily are no parties to the proceeding who can assert that they lost the decision, but persons who were not parties to the proceeding may be adversely affected by the rule and be allowed by an applicable law to challenge its legality. A quasijudicial proceeding, on the other hand, implies that the decision involves application of preexisting criteria or the determination of particular facts or both, and that some persons are entitled to be heard before a decision is reached. Cf. Neuberger v. City of Portland, 288 Or. 155, 603 P.2d 771 (1979), reh. den. 288 Or. 585, 607 P.2d 722 (1980); Strawberry Hill 4-Wheelers, supra . A person whose interest in the decision has been recognized by the body making a quasijudicial decision and who has appeared and asserted a position on the merits as an interested person, rather than only as a source of information or expertise, can be aggrieved by an adverse decision within the meaning of section 4(3). As in Marbet, to be aggrieved a person must be more than abstractly dissatisfied with the outcome after the fact. The decision must be contrary to the request or other position that the person espoused during the proceeding. Because interested participants in a local government land use proceeding may be aggrieved by an adverse decision while mere witnesses are not, the record of a local proceeding ought to identify in which capacity persons are heard if the local government wishes to challenge a later petition to LUBA. We have recognized before that this has not been customary in local proceedings. As we noted in Strawberry Hill 4-Wheelers: [L]ocal policymakers are likely to be more concerned with giving those who appear at hearings a chance to speak than about distinguishing witnesses from `parties' with an eye toward possible judicial review. That distinction is more familiar to judicial tribunals than to local governments when instructed to act `quasijudicially.' However, mere participation as a witness at the hearing alone does not entitle one to relief by writ of review. 287 Or. at 611, 601 P.2d 769. The same is true of the test of being aggrieved under the 1979 replacement of that writ by the petition for review to LUBA. The question who may be admitted, excluded, or limited to the status of a disinterested witness in the local proceeding will be governed by local as well as state procedural standards applicable to the particular proceeding. Even when the record is less than clear, we doubt that LUBA will find it a problem to distinguish whether a planner, engineer, lawyer, economist, or any other person appeared in the proceeding to assert a position on the merits in his or her own behalf or merely as a witness or as an advocate for a client. It should be remembered that section 4(3) states who may petition LUBA for review of a quasijudicial land use decision, not who may seek review of a decision by LUBA. Under section 6a of the 1979 act, any party to a proceeding before LUBA may seek judicial review simply by virtue of being a party; nothing is said of being affected or aggrieved. LUBA itself is an agency, not a court, and the question on judicial review is whether LUBA's order was unlawful in substance or procedure. [10] The quoted words provide less direction for judicial review than the amended version of the Oregon APA that was enacted at the same 1979 legislative session. Or. Laws 1979, ch. 593, now ORS 183.482(7), (8); cf. Megdal v. Board of Dental Examiners, 288 Or. 293, 317-320, 605 P.2d 273 (1980). Although Benton County did not refer to the judicial review section, we assume that it charges LUBA with an unlawful procedure and claims that its substantial rights were prejudiced, see note 10, by LUBA's acceptance of the petition. The interpretation to be given the statutory words adversely affected or aggrieved in section 4(3) doubtless is a question of law to be decided by the court. See McPherson v. Employment Division, 285 Or. 541, 545-550, 591 P.2d 1381 (1979). It appears from the foregoing that respondent may have had standing and that LUBA therefore reached the right conclusion on legal grounds other than those upon which it rested that conclusion. This is not meant to imply, however, that the grounds on which LUBA decided the issue were wrong. If an agency correctly understands the terms of the governing statute, the determination that a particular factual situation satisfies the criteria for invoking the agency's procedure is primarily for the agency to make. If LUBA applies the correct test, section 6a does not require a reviewing court to decide in each instance whether the person invoking LUBA's review did or did not have standing. Section 4(6)(a) requires the facts on which a petitioner claims standing to be stated in the petition. These include the facts concerning petitioner's appearance before the body that made the challenged decision and those that show whether the petitioner was entitled to prior notice and hearing as well as any facts claimed to show adverse effect. If any of these facts are disputed before LUBA, LUBA's decision will be upheld if it is supported by substantial evidence, even if the court would have reached the opposite decision.