Lawyers, rural landowners urge fix to land‑division remainder uncertainty in House Bill 3858 hearing

A public hearing on House Bill 3858 on March 26 focused on a narrow technical fix to Oregon land‑division law intended to resolve uncertainty created by a recent Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) decision.

Representative Vicki Breese‑Iverson introduced the bill as a remedy for property owners who lawfully sold a portion of their land before modern land‑division rules but did not, and customarily would not, record a second deed for the portion they retained. "Prior to our land use system and land division laws…the rancher would not think to prepare a second deed for the portion of the ranch he was keeping," Breese‑Iverson told the committee, summarizing the problem the bill is designed to fix.

Land‑use attorneys Garrett Stevenson, Wendy Kellington and Andrew Stamp testified in support, describing the bill as a narrow correction that restores the long‑standing expectation that when a parcel was lawfully divided before land‑division ordinances, both the conveyed portion and the retained remainder were lawful units of land. Kellington said the bill will prevent consequences she described as "generational," including inability to transfer or develop remainder parcels that families assumed were legal.

Opponents, including Rory Isbell of Central Oregon LandWatch, said the change would validate a new concept — a "remainder of a lawfully established unit of land" — that could open rural agricultural and forest lands to new development and undermine statewide goals to preserve large blocks of farmland. Isbell said the bill "would really upend this bedrock principle" of Oregon land‑use law.

Longstanding practitioners including Bill Cluse testified in support and urged the committee to pass the technical fix; he said the bill applies only to parcels created before modern land‑division laws. Other witnesses pointed out that the legislation is intended to be narrow, applying to historic conveyances and not to post‑statehood subdivisions.

The committee heard questions about the bill’s scope, and Representative Marsh asked whether the bill applied only to parcels created before land‑division laws; attorneys confirmed the bill’s limited focus and offered to provide additional drafting and case citations to the committee record. The committee took testimony and indicated it would accept written record material; no final action occurred at the hearing.