Earlier this year, residents of an suburban Portland neighborhood known as Cedar Mill managed to persuade the Beaverton City Council to overturn a decision to permit the sale of a parcel of in the midst of a residential area to Wal-Mart (Some of the stories available here). It was one of the most magnificent grass-roots battles I've ever witnessed. Now, the landowner, not content with the profits made on the hundreds of acres of new, high-density housing built on his land over the past few years, has struck back by submitting a Measure 37 claim for a multi-use retail/commercial/residential high-rise on the same plot of land. The potential bill for the city? $51 million.

For developers and land-owners, Oregon's Measure 37 has become a license to print money. For everyone else, it is spelling an end to some of the best land-use planning policies in the U.S. Never in the state's history has a law benefitted so few at such a high cost to so many.