Measure 63: Building Permits

Property owners are frustrated that they need permits before fixing up their homes and barns.

What's the fix? Allow up to $35,000 a year in property improvements, sans paperwork.

Here's the deal: So Bill Sizemore walks into Home Depot. He meets a guy who bitches about what a hassle it is to get permits for his home renovation, so he just won't bother. Sizemore meets some more guys who tell him the same thing. He thinks that ain't right.

So he writes an initiative and starts gathering signatures with financial backing from Jeld-Wen, which sells doors and windows. The result? Measure 63, which would exempt "minor improvements" valued at $35,000 or less a year from permit requirements.

Why $35,000? Well, Sizemore says it sounded like a good number. How is "value" measured? By the cost of the materials, or by the assessed value of the finished product? Who knows?

This would be kinda funny if it weren't, in Sizemore's own telling, the true tale behind Measure 63. In an endorsement interview, Sizemore said this is a "philosophical" battle over an overly intrusive government. After all, noted home re-designer Thomas Jefferson would've broken out the muskets if some government stooge came around Monticello, asking about permits.

To which retired firefighter Tim Birr replies: "The Founding Fathers didn't have electricity, they didn't have potable water, they didn't have the density we have now." In short, Sizemore's argument only makes sense if you live on a plantation; the rest of us have neighbors.

Who would oppose Sizemore's latest crusade? Not just firefighters, but licensed contractors (of course), real-estate agents and insurance carriers. Birr argues that the inevitable shoddy renovations done by homeowners who don't get their work inspected will kill people in electrical fires and from collapsing decks.

Sizemore's answer? "I don't believe that people are going to die as a result of [this measure]," he says. OK—what if one person did?

If getting a building permit is too much of a pain, then Sizemore should've done some better research and written an initiative that streamlined the process. We could consider an initiative like that. This one, however, is a bad joke with a potentially tragicomic punch line.

Video of WW endorsement interview(thanks to Portland Community Media)

WWeek 2015