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<\/a>Private property rights are fundamental to freedom. Without\u00a0property rights freedom doesn’t exist.\u00a0 I have been a property rights advocate since 1995 when I wrote Oregon House Bill 3453.\u00a0That was\u00a0the year\u00a0that the City of Eugene foreclosed on\u00a0a\u00a0home\u00a0belonging to\u00a0Jack and Betty Neely who lived in the unincorporated area\u00a0just northwest of\u00a0the city. This event made a lasting impression on my life and\u00a0launched me on my personal path as a writer and\u00a0\u00a0property rights\u00a0advocate.<\/p>\nAs a private citizen I wrote Oregon House Bill 3453 which fundamentally altered the way that\u00a0government foreclosure laws\u00a0work in Oregon. During the 1995\u00a0session of the Oregon\u00a0Legislature\u00a0my Bill failed to\u00a0make it out of a Senate sub-committee.\u00a0Fifteen years later in 2010\u00a0the same\u00a0Bill\u00a0failed to\u00a0receive a hearing thanks to Democrat\u00a0Senator Floyd Prozanski. In 2011\u00a0thanks to Senator\u00a0Prozanski again\u00a0my Bill\u00a0which had been renamed Senate Bill 929 was\u00a0pulled from the Senate agenda, but I\u00a0didn’t give up.<\/p>\n
The legislation\u00a0I wrote in 1995 brought the Oregon\u00a0Constitution into\u00a0compliance with the United\u00a0States\u00a0Constitution with regard to private property rights. It\u00a0prevents a government entity from selling\u00a0private property\u00a0for\u00a0just the amount of\u00a0an unpaid lien (L.I.D. lien). In the case of Jack and Betty Neely the City of Eugene\u00a0foreclosed on their home and sold it for\u00a0just $7,411 dollars (the amount of a sewer line\u00a0and $2,411 dollars in interest). Then one fine day the sheriff\u00a0showed up\u00a0at their front door and notified them that they had\u00a0forty five minutes to collect all of their earthly belongings and\u00a0vacate the premises.<\/p>\n
Jack Neely died one month later of a heart attack. He was homeless\u00a0and living with friends\u00a0at the time\u00a0he died. The cause of\u00a0his death\u00a0was listed as a heart attack, but he actually died of\u00a0a broken heart after a\u00a0five year long legal battle with the city of Eugene which\u00a0turned out to be\u00a0unsuccessful. He couldn’t believe that his country could do this to him and neither\u00a0could I. That’s why I wrote Oregon House Bill 3453.\u00a0Jack’s\u00a0sister Betty\u00a0not only lost her brother but she\u00a0also\u00a0lost all of her equity that\u00a0she had built up in that house during the\u00a0sixty years that she had been living\u00a0there. It was\u00a0all lost through\u00a0a completely unconstitutional foreclosure. Eventually the issue which had precipitated the\u00a0foreclosure\u00a0of the Neely’s house made its way up to the Oregon Appeals Court and in a landmark decision\u00a0City of Eugene<\/em> v. Kashin\/Nalven<\/em> it was\u00a0ruled that the City of Eugene had acted illegally and unconstitutuionally in requiring residents outside of the city limits to pay for city services. There is\u00a0a little principle in America that our country was founded on called “No taxation without representation.”\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n The Neely House at 1600 Horn Lane was worth about $70,000 dollars at the time it went into foreclosure. It was sold for\u00a0just\u00a0over\u00a0$7,000 dollars. The Neely’s were penalized\u00a0$63,000 for\u00a0refusing to pay\u00a0five thousand dollars to hook up to the Eugene Municipal Wastewater Treatment System. That\u00a0violated the 4th, 5th, and 8th Amendments\u00a0of the United States Constitution.<\/p>\n In March 2012\u00a0the Bill that I wrote\u00a0in 1995 became House Bill 4111 and\u00a0it finally did receive a hearing in the Committee on General Government and Consumer Protection<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 That was seventeen years after I wrote it, and two years after I\u00a0asked\u00a0Floyd Prozanski to do something\u00a0about it. In 2010 Senator Prozanski\u00a0failed to get a hearing for the Bill. In 2011 year he personally killed the Bill, but in 2012\u00a0the results were\u00a0very different. It\u00a0passed the Oregon Legislature unanimously proving that\u00a0determination does indeed pay off. My\u00a0thanks go out to State Representative Jim Weidner\u00a0who sponsored the Bill in 2012, and\u00a0to fellow property rights activist and lawyer Dave Hunicutt from the advocacy group Oregonians in Action who worked\u00a0very hard on behalf of\u00a0my Bill. That made\u00a0all the difference in the world and my gratitude goes out to both of them.<\/p>\n In 2008\u00a0I exposed and\u00a0successfully opposed the Oregon D.M.V.’s practice of allowing\u00a0law enforcement\u00a0officers to anonymously report Oregon drivers to the Department of Motor Vehicles for retesting. At the time\u00a0the State of Oregon had\u00a0over 30,000 secret\u00a0files on\u00a0Oregon drivers.<\/p>\n I\u00a0am\u00a0also the author and publisher of www.lessgovisthebestgov.com<\/a>\u00a0a website advocating for return to the principles of limited Constitutional government.\u00a0My articles have been republished\u00a0on many other sites across America.<\/p>\n In 2006\u00a0I published\u00a0a poem about\u00a0America’s open border called\u00a0 An Open Border – America’s\u00a0Achilles-Heel.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>It was\u00a0later published on the conservative website WeNeedaFence.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n About Scott Rohter\u00a0 Private property rights are fundamental to freedom. Without\u00a0property rights freedom doesn’t exist.\u00a0 I have been a property rights advocate since 1995 when I wrote Oregon House Bill 3453.\u00a0That was\u00a0the year\u00a0that the City of Eugene foreclosed on\u00a0a\u00a0home\u00a0belonging to\u00a0Jack and Betty Neely who lived in the unincorporated area\u00a0just northwest of\u00a0the city. This event made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2754"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10542,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2754\/revisions\/10542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}