Opinion ID: 1427665
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the statutory right to judicial review of the siting authority decision

Text: Section 10(2) of the Act provides for judicial review of any of the decisions involved in the supersiting process if any person or local government adversely affected by the decision files a timely petition. Or. Laws 1989, ch. 789, § 10(2). The statute further provides that in the case of the decision by the Siting Authority, persons are adversely affected  and thus may seek judicial review  only when petitioners can establish by clear and convincing evidence that (1) they participated before the Siting Authority; (2) they will be within sight or sound of the facility or are affected economically in excess of $5,000 in value; and (3) they proposed conditions as required by subsection (2) of section 7 of this Act, which were rejected by the authority. Id. at § 10(2)(b)(A-C). Petitioners challenge the decision of the Siting Authority in this appeal. Most petitioners satisfy the first two requirements in the statute for challenging the decision. None of the petitioners, however, submitted written conditions to the Siting Authority. Petitioners claim that they had no knowledge that they were supposed to submit written conditions. Petitioners assert that they are and always have been unconditionally opposed to the use of the site for the prison and that they have no interest in any approval under any conditions. Petitioners acknowledge that Oregon Laws 1989, chapter 789 (the Act) requires that any person desiring Supreme Court review of the Siting Authority's prison siting decision must have submitted conditions to the Siting Authority for the siting of a prison and had those conditions rejected. Petitioners further admit that they did not comply with this requirement, but argue that they are not bound by it. First, they argue that the state is estopped to raise the conditions requirement because petitioners had no knowledge of it and the state failed to provide adequate notice of the requirement and the consequences of failing to meet it. Second, petitioners argue that the conditions requirement cannot be enforced against them because it would force them to abandon their unconditional opposition to selection of the Ontario site, in violation of their right to free expression under Article I, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution. Third, petitioners argue that the conditions requirement cannot be enforced because it impermissibly discriminates in favor of those who are willing to accept the project with conditions, to the detriment of persons who, like petitioners, oppose a project under any conditions, in violation of Article I, section 20, of the Oregon Constitution, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Fourth, petitioners allege that due process required timely and proper notice of Siting Authority hearings, deadlines, conditions standards, and appeal conditions. We address these contentions in turn.
The only potentially pertinent notice provision in the Act is section 4(5), which requires the Department to [p]rovide media notice regarding the process and the sites nominated   . It seems clear that this provision relates only to the Department's decision-making process, culminating in notice of the sites nominated to the Siting Authority by the Department. Section 4 generally deals only with the Department's report and selection process. The statute's structure is temporal and iterates the siting process step by step. It is not until section 7 that the Siting Authority's decision-making process comes into play, limited to considering the prior site nominations of the Department made under section 4. Section 7 contains no notice provision for the Siting Authority process. Assuming, however, for the sake of argument only, that the notice provision of section 4(5) applies to the Siting Authority in its decision-making process, we hold that estoppel principles do not excuse petitioners' failure to submit conditions. Section 4(5) of the Act did not require that respondents include in the media notice a statement that interested persons must submit conditions to the Siting Authority in order to preserve appeal rights. Section 4(5) requires the Department to [p]rovide media notice regarding the process and the sites nominated   . The Department published notice on August 16, 1989, informing the public that (1) it was considering Site 69, located six miles northwest of Ontario, as a site for a medium security prison; (2) [a]ccording to House Bill 2713, Section 7, Subsection 2, `any affected local government or any person may submit proposed conditions to the [Siting] [A]uthority,'    and specified the format of the conditions; (3) a deadline of August 31, 1989, was imposed for submitting the conditions and identified the person to whom they were to be sent; and (4) there was a specific person to contact at the Siting Authority for further information. The Department nominated four sites on September 8. On September 13, it issued a Media Advisory announcing its hearing schedule for the nominated sites. September 25 was chosen as the date for hearing on Site 69. This notice did not re-state that persons could submit conditions. See footnote 1, ante. Petitioners argue that the notice was defective because it did not advise the public that submitting written conditions was a pre-requisite to judicial review of the Siting Authority's decision. The legislature generally does not require state agencies to notify interested persons of appeal conditions as part of the notification of the decision-making process before the agencies. The laws generally require only that final agency orders advise the parties of their right to appeal. See, e.g., ORS 183.470(4) (orders in a contested case). Petitioners cite nothing in the legislative history of chapter 789 to suggest that the legislature intended to impose this extraordinary requirement in section 4(5) merely by stating that the Department is to give media notice of the process. We conclude that no such statutory requirement existed. [2] The legislature clearly conditioned both a party's right to participate in a judicial review proceeding of the Siting Authority decision and this court's authority to allow such party to participate on a demonstration that the party, in fact, submitted conditions for a particular site to the Siting Authority. The legislature made it clear that satisfying these requirements was as mandatory as timely filing the petition seeking judicial review. See Or. Laws 1989, ch. 789, § 10(2)(a), (b). [3] Estoppel, if ever applicable against the government, certainly does not apply here. Respondents are not, by virtue of their behavior, in a position to confer on or withhold from petitioners the right to petition this court for review of the Siting Authority's decision. The parties cannot create standing under this statute, much less create it by estoppel, when it does not exist as a factual matter. The statute provides that a petitioner only is adversely affected, and thus has standing, if the petitioner can establish that the petitioner proposed conditions as required   . Petitioners cannot establish that. Moreover, given both the existence of a law published in the public domain and the fact that that law does not require the notice that petitioners assert, any reliance by petitioners on the media notice to inform them of the statutory appeal conditions was patently unreasonable, precluding estoppel. In sum, petitioners admit that they did not fulfill one of the statutory requirements to enable them to contest the Siting Authority's decision in this court. Estoppel does not apply. Petitioners lack standing by statute to petition for judicial review of that decision. We now turn to petitioners' constitutional claims that enforcement of the statutory standing requirement violates petitioners' rights to free speech, equal privileges and immunities and equal protection, and due process.
Petitioners argue that requiring them to submit conditions as a prerequisite for judicial review of the Siting Authority's decision requires them to forego their right to express themselves in a public forum on a public issue in order to secure the right to judicial review. They assert that the conditions requirement restrains the speech of persons who oppose a site by requiring them to modify the content of their expression in order to seek judicial review. Petitioners claim that the requirement places content restrictions on their speech, restrictions which they allege violate both Article I, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The free speech guarantees of the Oregon and federal constitutions clearly were not intended to foreclose government's ability to impose reasonable requirements on the statutory right to seek judicial review of governmental decisions, even if those requirements necessitate that speech concern a specific subject to achieve review. Indeed, this standing requirement (like others in the administrative law area) merely recognizes that absolute undifferentiated opposition to the site will not be a basis for judicial review or modification of the siting decision. [4] Which is not to say that such opposition is irrelevant to the authority's decision-making process (section 4(1)(a) of the Act makes community interest a criterion), it is only to say that such opposition is not, by itself, a basis for standing. The legislature's imposition of the conditions requirement encourages interested persons to do more than simply stand back and say We object. If community interest were the only or dominant criterion in the process, the age-old problem of Sure, we need more prisons, but not here, might never be solved. The legislature determined that responsible problem-solving in the prison-siting context involves not only ensuring that a particular site meets applicable specified criteria, but that interested and affected persons recommend conditions under which the selection of a site should be approved before gaining the right potentially to delay the process and subject the decision to judicial review. Imposing this requirement does not force objectors to abandon their general objections, nor did petitioners do so at the hearings. Their state and federal free speech rights are not violated by the statutory standing requirement.
Petitioners' equal privileges and immunities and equal protection arguments also lack merit. The short answer to petitioners' Article I, section 20, argument is that the alleged classification is not based on personal or social characteristics of the asserted class. See Hale v. Port of Portland, 308 Or. 508, 783 P.2d 506 (1989). The legislature determined that the public interest in a responsible and expeditious prison siting process demands that persons who want to challenge the ultimate selection of a prison site have participated in that process by submitting site conditions. This requirement is rationally connected to a legitimate governmental interest and as such does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. See Hale v. Portland, supra, 308 Or. at 526, 783 P.2d 506.
Petitioners further contend that both the content of the notice, as well as the manner in which it was given, failed to meet due process requirements. Petitioners argue that they were entitled, at a minimum, to timely and proper notice of the Siting Authority hearings, deadlines, conditions standards, and appeal conditions. Petitioners assert that due process at bottom means timely and proper notice of the proposed deprivation and a meaningful opportunity to be heard to present objections. Assuming for the sake of argument only that petitioners are affected by a constitutionally cognizable deprivation by the siting of the prison in Malheur County, the fact is that petitioners appeared at the Siting Authority's hearing and voiced their objections. The statutory appeal conditions were a matter of public record, readily accessible to all. Petitioners fail to allege how their manner of participation was in any way affected by the method or content of the notice furnished. Assuming some right to notice, petitioners have not alleged a cognizable constitutional violation. In sum, then, petitioners lack standing to petition for judicial review from the Siting Authority decision. Their assertions of estoppel, unconstitutionality of the standing requirement, and lack of constitutionally adequate notice are not well taken. [5]