Childers Meat Co. v. City of Eugene

439 P.3d 1000, 296 Or. App. 668
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedMarch 20, 2019
DocketA163402
StatusPublished

This text of 439 P.3d 1000 (Childers Meat Co. v. City of Eugene) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Childers Meat Co. v. City of Eugene, 439 P.3d 1000, 296 Or. App. 668 (Or. Ct. App. 2019).

Opinion

SHORR, J.

*1002*670Plaintiffs, a group of businesses located within the City of Eugene (city), appeal a judgment of the trial court declaring that Eugene's "hazardous substance user fee," which was enacted by the city council in 2001 as part of the Eugene City Code (Eugene Code), is valid. Plaintiffs also challenge the validity of hazardous substance reporting requirements-part of a Toxics Right-to-Know program-enacted as an amendment to the city charter by the city's voters. We conclude that the trial court did not err when it entered a judgment declaring that the city's imposition of the hazardous substance user fee on plaintiffs does not violate ORS 453.402(6), section 2.1 and section 3.F of Amendment IV of the Eugene City Charter (Eugene Charter), or ORS 453.370(9). We also conclude that plaintiffs lack standing to challenge various exemptions to the reporting program found in Amendment IV of the Eugene Charter. Accordingly, we affirm.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

This case has a long and complex procedural background that involves amendments to the Eugene Charter, the city's constitutional document, by initiative and subsequent amendments to the Eugene Code. In 1996, the city's voters enacted Amendment IV (the initiative) to the Eugene Charter. The initiative created a "Toxics Right-to-Know" program, formed a City Toxics Board, and mandated that all "hazardous substance users" comply with annual reporting requirements. Under the initiative, a "hazardous substance user" is defined as an owner or operator of a commercial or public facility in the city with 10 or more full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) and an annual input of more than 2,640 pounds of hazardous substance. Eugene Charter § 54(3)(F). Under article VII of the initiative, those users were required to pay an annual fee to fund the reporting program, which was to be "self-supporting" and "funded wholly by hazardous substance user fees." Id. § 54(7)(B), (D). The initiative also contains a broadly worded severability clause, which provides:

"If any section, subsection, paragraph, phrase, or word (hereafter the parts) of this Section shall be held *671unconstitutional, void, or illegal, either on its face or as applied, this shall not affect the applicability, constitutionality, or legality of any other parts hereof; and to that end, the parts of the Section are intended to be severable. It is hereby declared to be the intent of this Section that the same would have been adopted had such unlawful or unconstitutional provisions, if any, not been included herein."

Id. § 54(11).

In 1999, a group of businesses in the city challenged the validity of the initiative. Those entities argued, in part, that section VII(A) of the fee provision-which only imposed fees on "hazardous substance users" as defined by the initiative-was barred by ORS 453.402(6), under which

"[l]ocal government assessments of hazardous substance fees based on quantity * * * shall be used solely to supplement and not to duplicate the State Fire Marshal's programs under ORS 453.307 and 453.414 and shall be billed and collected only through contract with the State Fire Marshal."

Ultimately, we agreed with the businesses and held that the fee provision was invalid because it imposed a quantity-based fee-in that the fee was only imposed on entities that used more than 2,640 pounds of hazardous substance and met other criteria-and was not used solely to supplement the State Fire Marshal's programs. Advocates for Effective Regulation v. City of Eugene , 160 Or. App. 292, 303-05, 981 P.2d 368 (1999) ( Advocates I ).

On remand, the trial court severed section VII(A) of the fee provision from the initiative pursuant to the initiative's severability clause. The court held that the initiative was invalid "insofar as it requires fees to be paid only by businesses that have inputs of more than a specified quantity of hazardous substances." As a result of the court's ruling, the *1003reporting program remained part of the initiative and all "hazardous substance users" as defined therein were still subject to the reporting requirements, but the reporting program lacked a specific funding mechanism.

Plaintiffs appealed once more, arguing that the trial court erred in severing the fee provision rather than invalidating the initiative in its entirety. Plaintiffs argued *672that "the voters clearly intended the Initiative to be funded by means of a quantity-based fee," which meant that the right-to-know program could not survive without such a funding mechanism. Advocates for Effective Regulation v. City of Eugene , 176 Or. App. 370, 376, 32 P.3d 228 (2001) ( Advocates II ). We affirmed the court's decision after concluding that the invalid quantity-based fee provision was severable from the initiative. Id. at 377, 32 P.3d 228. We first acknowledged that the voters adopted the initiative with the understanding that the reporting program would be funded by a quantity-based fee. But, we explained, "the raison d'etre of the initiative is the establishment of a local system of public reporting of the use of hazardous substances because exposure to those substances poses a threat to human health and the environment." Id. at 377-78,

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Bluebook (online)
439 P.3d 1000, 296 Or. App. 668, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/childers-meat-co-v-city-of-eugene-orctapp-2019.