Landfill measure faces court challenge

By DAVID BATES

Of the News-Register

While Ramsey McPhillips and his allies campaign for a measure aimed at thwarting Riverbend Landfill's proposed expansion, the landfill is renewing its campaign to thwart the measure.

On Thursday, Riverbend filed for an injunction in Yamhill County Circuit Court, with Manager George Duvendack listed as the plaintiff, in an effort to keep the measure off the county's Nov. 4 ballot. It represents the company's third attempt to use the courts to keep McPhillips and his initiative at bay.

Before the petitioners began collecting signatures, Riverbend attorneys twice went to court over the wording of the ballot title. That left McPhillips and his team of volunteer and paid petitioners with just one week to collect the nearly 2,000 signatures they needed to qualify for a ballot spot.

Now the company, owned by Houston-based Waste Management Inc., one of the nation's largest waste disposal firms, is arguing the measure represents an unlawful attempt at an end-run around state and local land-use laws.

The suit alleges that County Clerk Jan Coleman erred in determining the initiative qualified for the ballot. It alleges she lacked the authority because the measure is not "purely legislative in nature," as required under the Oregon Constitution.

Duvendack could not be reached for comment. But McPhillips characterized the lawsuit as nothing more than an attempt at corporate bullying.

"It's Waste Management doing everything it can, after we've worked so hard to collect signatures in record time, after it tried to stop us from doing that," he said. "It's ridiculous."

McPhillips' initiative would bar the siting of new landfills or expansion of existing ones without 2,000 feet or of a flood plain. Whether that's a legitimate topic for ballot box politics first surfaced, albeit somewhat indirectly, in legal briefs Riverbend filed earlier over the measure's wording.

Riverbend argued then, among other things, that the ballot title should identify the decision voters were being asked to make as a land-use decision.

"Oregon and county laws require the enactment of land-use ordinances to follow very specific processes, processes that must be adhered to even when an ordinance is enacted through the initiative process," according to a company brief filed in the ballot title case.

Riverbend went further in the 12-page suit filed this week. Citing a case out of Washington County, it argued, "Local governing bodies have the authority to act legislatively, quasi-judicially or administratively. A ballot measure, however, must be purely legislative; a local governing body's quasi-judicial or administrative acts are not lawful subjects of ballot measures."

And it sought an injunction to keep the measure off the ballot while its suit is being litigated.

Regardless of the fate of its court action, Riverbend's expansion plans are due a quasi-judicial airing in the coming weeks. However, that airing won't come until after the Nov. 4 election.

The company's expansion plan was originally placed on the Yamhill County Planning Commission's October docket.

However, additional applications submitted by the company forced the commission to reschedule the hearing for Nov. 6 - two days after the election.

Riverbend's lawsuit and petition for an injunction is scheduled to get its initial hearing in September. Meanwhile, McPhillips said his group plans to continue its campaign on the assumption voters will be getting a shot at the issue in November.