Court Opinion

ID: 9790968
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:02:13.926426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:32.923602
License: Public Domain

RICHARDSON, J.,
dissenting.
It remains my view that the analysis and disposition in our former opinion were correct, and I would adhere to that opinion. Because our former opinion is published and available to the Supreme Court, the preceding sentence may be sufficient unto the day. However, I think that today’s majority opinion and LCDC’s petition for reconsideration — which the majority essentially duplicates — call for comment.
The crux of the majority’s disagreement with our former opinion is its understanding that we there
“ that Goal 14 controls the conversion of rural land to urban uses only through the specific process of establishing an urban growth boundary. * * * Our conclusion was based on the fundamental assumption that ‘urbanization of rural land is [not] the inevitable consequence of incorporation,’ because Goal 14’s requirements for a UGB control such conversion. * * * Without this assumption, it would have been impossible for us to conclude, as we did, that incorporation does not violate the urbanization and conversion provisions of the goal. * * *” 68 Or App at 770. (Citations omitted.)
The majority stands the reasoning of our former opinion on its head. The basis for our conclusion was the language of Goal 14, not any assumptions about the abstract *780relationship between incorporation and urbanization. What we are called upon to do in this case is to interpret Goal 14. The goal says nothing about incorporation, and the only mechanism it creates to regulate the urbanization of rural land — the urban growth boundary (UGB) process — was not designed to apply and is mechanically incapable of application to a decision to incorporate a city.
LCDC and the majority appear to agree that the goal’s UGB process is irrelevant to incorporation, but they nevertheless consider the goal to be applicable. They begin with the assumption that incorporation can have urbanizing effects that the UGB process is inadequate to prevent. They then postulate that it necessarily follows from that assumption that Goal 14 does regulate incorporation independently of its UGB mechanism, and they launch into a labored analysis of why that independent regulatory effect should be ascribed to the goal. However, they do not identify where in Goal 14 that effect is to be found. What the majority and LCDC never do is look at the goal’s language and recognize the simple fact that the goal contains nothing except the UGB process to govern the urbanization of rural land.
That failure of recognition infects all of LCDC’s arguments and all of the majority’s reasoning. The majority states, for example, that our former opinion exceeded our scope of review and failed to accord appropriate deference to LCDC’s interpretation of the goal it promulgated. However, as the majority notes, “before a court of review will grant deference to an agency interpretation, the regulation itself must be ambiguous.” 68 Or App at 775, n 7. There is no ambiguity in Goal 14 that can support LCDC’s interpretation that the goal regulates or applies to incorporation. None of the cases the majority cites in its discussion of judicial deference and related concepts suggest that a court must or may sanction what LCDC is effectively doing here, i.e., amending its goal in the guise of interpreting it.
For similar reasons, no responsible credence can be given the majority’s statements to the effect that our former opinion’s conclusion that Goal 14 does not apply to incorporation was an absurd or illogical construction of the goal and was not a “sensible and workable conclusion.” 68 Or App at 773. It is of course correct that, to the extent consistent with the *781language of statutes and rules, courts should construe them sensibly and consonantly with their objectives. However, it is even more axiomatic that courts cannot insert provisions into statutes or rules that have no predicate in their language. It may be that the regulatory scheme LCDC articulates in its petition for reconsideration is better than the one it promulgated through its goals, but that is an idle inquiry. Oregon’s statutes provide a clear procedure for the amendment of the goals and of other agency rules. That procedure notwithstanding, LCDC’s petition in effect invites us to adopt an interpretation of Goal 14 that is totally at odds with its language, and the majority obliges LCDC.
I note finally that I do not share the majority’s and LCDC’s assumption that the UGB mechanism of Goal 14 is inadequate to guard against the inappropriate conversion of rural land to urban uses. Our opinion in Perkins v. City of Rajneeshpuram, 68 Or App 726, 686 P2d 369 (1984), read together with our former opinion and Roth v. LCDC, 57 Or App 611, 646 P2d 85 (1982), demonstrates that the goal’s UGB provisions can be construed and applied to prevent post-incorporation urbanizing events of the kind the majority and LCDC assume inevitably follow from incorporation. Perkins therefore also demonstrates that the majority and not our previous opinion has failed to interpret the goal logically and in a way that makes it workable: The majority finds it necessary to add something to the goal that has no foundation in its language only because the majority fails to recognize that the language the goal does contain is quite susceptible to an interpretation that achieves the goal’s purpose.
I dissent. Joseph, C. J., and Warren and Rossman, JJ., join in this dissent.