Court Opinion

ID: 9558418
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:09:16.15902+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:13.025796
License: Public Domain

DEITS, C. J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority’s disposition and reasoning on the petition. On the cross-petition, however, I agree with LUBA that the developmental restrictions in riparian zones under CDC 422-3.3 are applicable here, and I dissent from the majority’s holding that LUBA erred in that respect.
*254The essence of the majority’s reasoning is that the regulations in CDC 422-3.3 are limited by and coextensive with the types of resources and resource areas that CDC 422-2 enumerates and describes as being identified in the county’s comprehensive plan. However, CDC 422-3.3 expressly includes “riparian zones” among the areas for which it establishes developmental criteria, notwithstanding the fact that riparian zones are not among the types of areas that are referred to in CDC 422-2 as being identified in the plan. Moreover, CDC 422-3.3 describes the “riparian zones” it contemplates as those “defined in [CDC] 106,” a section of the county land use regulations, while the other types of areas that are subject to CDC 422-3.3 are described in it as ones that are “identified in the applicable [comprehensive plan documents].” (Emphasis added.)
I therefore agree with LUBA that the county’s interpretation, and now the majority’s here, renders the term “riparian zones” in CDC 422-3.3 meaningless. That interpretation is not only contrary to the principle of statutory construction that legislative language should not be treated as superfluous and a nullity. It is also contrary to common sense. Why would the persons who enacted the ordinance have expressly included “riparian zones” in CDC 422-3.3 if not to regulate them in accordance with the express terms of that subsection? Indeed, that is precisely what CDC 422-3.3, by its own terms, clearly does.
If, as the majority believes, CDC 422-2 creates any ambiguity, then that ambiguity can as readily be resolved by giving effect to the clear terms of CDC 422-3.3 rather than by reading CDC 422-2 in a way that substantially eviscerates the other subsection. The majority acknowledges that CDC 422-3.3 can be interpreted in the way LUBA did and I would interpret it, and that the intended objective of the subsection is “to protect specified natural resources from development.” 165 Or App at 251. “Riparian Zones” are among the resource areas that the subsection expressly protects. I find nothing compelling in the reasons that the majority offers for selecting an interpretation of the ordinance that disregards that express language and undermines the legislative intent.
*255The majority seeks to bolster its conclusion by reliance on Urquhart v. Lane Council of Governments, 80 Or App 176, 721 P2d 870 (1986). That case holds that the omission of an area from a locality’s acknowledged comprehensive plan or Goal 5 inventory may not be successfully challenged in an appeal from a particular land use decision that allows a non-resource use in the area. That holding is simply an application of the general principle that, after acknowledgment, the land use decisions of a local government are measured for compliance with its plan and land use regulations rather than the statewide goals. Urquhart has no bearing on the issue here of whether the county’s own acknowledged land use regulation applies according to its terms to a kind of resource area that is specifically included in the regulation, albeit not in the plan. The only question here is what the county’s land use regulation means. More specifically, the question is whether the applicable provision, CDC 422, read as a whole, makes the protection that one of its subsections expressly confers on riparian zones illusory. For the reasons stated above, I agree with LUBA’s answer, and I respectfully dissent.