Any comments on Measure 49?

If you want to get your viewpoint into Capital Press about Measure 49 in the upcoming fall election in Oregon, now's the time to send in your thoughts via e-mail.

Ballots are being sent out soon to voters, and we've been trying to publish as many letters to the editor and guest comments as we can on the subject. This week we added an extra opinion page to get some of these in before people vote.

Depending on how much more mail we get, we may expand our opinion section more in upcoming weeks.

One of the thing that becomes clear is how split Oregon is on the issue. Land use has always been one of the most heated, passionate discussions for people of this state, and especially among farmers. There are those who want to save as much farmland as possible for future generations, and those who argue that farmers should have the freedom to do what they want with their land — whether it's to build extra houses for additional family members, or sell off parts or all of their land to housing developments, strip malls, or others who may be interested in the precious land here on the West Coast.

Tomorrow a few of us are traveling to Portland to talk to some of the people quite involved in Measure 49, on both sides. We want to hear from those who introduced the measure, as well as those who are most against it. This will provide fodder for our editorial that will be published on Oct. 19 to let people know where we stand on the issue.

However, we encourage people to continue sending in their thoughts to us. If we can't get them all in the newspaper, we can publish them in our opinion section of our website.


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