Sunday’s Oregonian had a terrific editorial, calling on state leaders to fixMeasure 37. It really nailed the fact that the measure is less about land use than it is about fracturing communities:

…Oregonians wonder what their state will become. Meanwhile, they hate the way the law has twisted neighbors and friends against each other. “On the way home from the last (legislative) hearing I felt very sad, like shedding tears for Oregon,” farmer Jim Gilbert said Friday in an e-mail. “Here we are in this big mess, with neighbor attacking neighbor, and the social contract we all lived by for the past 35 years, broken.”

The editorial also gave props to Sightline:

…it’s impossible to say for certain that Oregonians have changed their minds about Measure 37. The only way to find out for sure is to put a new version of the law on the ballot. And, this time, call it by the nickname Sightline Institute used recently: The Bad Neighbor Law.

Last fall, Oregon’s Measure 37 became the horror story that helped defeat similar ballot proposals in Washington, Idaho and California. Thankfully, those states learned from our misery. With any luck, there’s still time for us to learn from it, too.