Thank you to the Capital Press Editorial Board for calling attention to the governor’s proposal to needlessly bring 373 acres of excellent farmland into Hillsboro’s urban growth boundary (UGB), in the name of the semiconductor industry.

Senate Bill 4 in 2023 gave Oregon’s governor the power to override transparent and thoughtful land-use planning to bring greenfields into UGBs for CHIPS Act applications for the semiconductor industry. In particular, the legislation had an eye on 1,700 acres northwest of Hillsboro for this purpose.

In 2014 under the “Grand Bargain,” the city of Hillsboro, Metro and Washington County zoned these 1,700 acres as Rural Reserve. These governments vowed not to attempt to change that zoning designation until 50 years had passed. Only 10 years have passed since that promise was made, yet during SB 4 hearings Hillsboro very publicly advocated for the legislature to bring this land into its UGB.

In justifying this request, Hillsboro points to a Semiconductor Task Force Report that it helped create, and which recommended this land for a semiconductor factory. That report relied on an incomplete land inventory that failed to consider 10,000 acres of industrial land already inside Oregon UGBs.

While industry and housing require space, the land-use program has made sure that an ample supply is available inside our current UGBs. In addition to well over 10,000 acres of unbuilt industrial land inside our UGBs, Oregon has over 10,000 acres of unbuilt land for housing, to say nothing of single level parking lots, vacant commercial buildings, and underdeveloped lands inside our UGBs that can be used for housing or industry. Portland Metro alone has a 20-year surplus of 750 to 7,450 acres of industrial land.

The governor is only allowed to circumvent the land-use program under SB 4 if she determines that there is no land inside current UGBs to satisfy the CHIPS grant. Yet Hillsboro’s UGB in particular has at least 1,475 buildable acres that the city could urbanize for industrial uses like a National Semiconductor Technology Center. There would have been more land inside Hillsboro’s UGB had the city not recently squandered hundreds of acres of industrial land on data centers, warehouses and commercial uses.

There is no reason for Hillsboro to add farmland to the land that the city currently has available for industry or housing. Hillsboro has plenty of land in its UGB and any land shortage is of the city’s own making. Cities should not be rewarded with additional land when they’ve wasted land that could have been reserved for major economic opportunities.

This proposed expansion has not been vetted with the public, nor even discussed in Hillsboro City Council meetings; any plans for expansion must have been made in executive session instead of in the open. Even the governor’s SB 4 powers are not subject to appeal and only receives one public meeting (6 p.m. on Oct. 10 at the Hillsboro Civic Center).

Yet despite the current subsidies that the semiconductor industry enjoys, the residents of Hillsboro will likely foot the long-term bills for infrastructure maintenance, tolerate the pollution from these facilities, and lose forever some of the best farmland in the world.

The primary beneficiaries seem to be landowners who will make hundreds of millions instead of just millions from the sale of their land and developers who increase their profit margin when building on greenfields.

The semiconductor and agriculture industries do not need to compete with each other for space.

We have urban land for one, and we should protect our irreplaceable soils for the other.

Those who agree with these statements should sign Friends of Smart Growth’s petition to the governor, give comment at the hearing in Hillsboro at 6 p.m. on Oct. 10 at the Hillsboro Civic Center, and sign up for Friends of Smart Growth’s email list at www.friendsofsmartgrowth.org.