Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 06-18-25_WEDNESDAY_8AM

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

06-18-25_WEDNESDAY_8AM

The Bill Myer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Or A.S. Ashland. 17 After 8. Jim Manley joins me from Pacific Legal Foundation, pacificlegal.org. Hey Jim, what do you do there at Pacific? Give us your, talk about your, I guess your LinkedIn profile. Sure, well thanks for having me on this morning. I, so I'm the state policy chief for Pacific Legal Foundation. We're a law firm. We represent clients free of charge against the government when the government is violating the Constitution. We work on property rights issues, separation of powers, and equality and opportunity.

Boy, you must have no work to do. I mean, the federal government and the state governments too, they respect constitutions. I can't tell you. I'm surprised we even need lawyers. Right. You put the laws in place and then the government follows them. That's how it works, right? Uh-huh. Yeah, not really. So my job is to pass good laws that protect those rights in state legislatures across the country.

Now, in the state legislature of Oregon, it has been a very difficult session because it's a Democrat supermajority, and the Democrat supermajority tends to take a very fast and loose interpretation of what constitutions mean. It means constitutions are for other people to follow and we tend to do what we want. It's a matter of power, just my opinion, but you're saying though that Senate Bill 974 might actually help the housing crisis here. I've heard nothing but housing crisis forever and ever and you're saying that this is actually good news that this passed is being signed by the governor. It is, yeah. We introduced a suite of pro-housing model legislation earlier this year, and one of

our recommendations was to put a shot clock on building permit approvals. And 974 does that for some approvals in Oregon. It's a long shot clock. This isn't a grand slam by any means, but it's definitely a base hit. This is going to make it easier, faster, more predictable to develop housing in Oregon. And that's a good thing from a property rights perspective, in our view. So, Jim, what kind of a shot clock do we have and what kind of buildings have the shot clock attached to them? Maybe you could take us through it. Yeah. So, what it says is that once an application for a zoning change or a plan unit development or a variance from

a residential approval standard is complete, once that application is finalized, the government has 120 days to make a yes-no decision. And that's important for a couple of reasons. Not just the fact that it puts a limit on how long they can hold your application and time is money, but it also requires them to give a yes-no answer. So often the government just holds an application, asks for more and more details, and you really never get a yes-no answer, and you're just stuck in approval purgatory forever. And everything is just slow-walked, in other words.

You feel like you're being dragged through the mud to get through this. Alright, so 120 days now, is this for residential, is this for business, are there exceptions that maybe with the heavy industrial that there are different rules, what classes of property are now going to be falling under SB 974? So this is just residential development. And I think you're getting this because there's finally a consensus that we have a housing crisis in this country. And everyone on both sides of the aisle

recognizes that the reason for that crisis is we are just not building enough houses. And so yeah, this is focused on residential development. OK, residential development, businesses can still have their permitting process just held back forever, right? Unfortunately, there's no hope for businesses in this bill. Now, Jim, you would have hoped that the state of Oregon would realize that it also has a business crisis too, not just a homelessness crisis.

Because I don't know if you're familiar with what happened, Dutch Bros, multi-billion dollar company ended up taking off and leaving. Nike is squeaking about leaving. Various other businesses are talking about, you know, big companies talking about leaving too. It would be great if we could get the state legislature to look at that as a problem too. But, oh well, I guess we'll take our wins where we can find them, huh? Yeah, I mean, economic development goes hand-in-hand with housing affordability. You can make houses more affordable by lowering the price or by getting people better paying jobs. So we'll get more people in housing thanks to Senate Bill 974, but after the companies leave, then

there won't be a job for them. Good. Being a little sarcastic, all right? One step at a time, maybe. All right. Now, does this also count for residential property when it is being pushed by a developer for, let's say, you wanted to build 300 multifamily homes or let's say, big condos or something like that Does this apply to that or is that then considered a commercial development and you can't get approval right away? No, this will apply to to large, you know planned unit developments. You're building a big subdivision

It actually doesn't apply if if you're planning to lower the the density that's already approved in the area. So if you want to take an area that's set aside for high density use and only build a couple of houses on it, this is not going to help you. This is designed to allow for building more housing. So it doesn't allow you to down zone property. It allows you to use the property to its highest and best use. That is... I find that interesting that the highest and best use in Oregon is always defined as lots of habit trail housing. Don't you? Yeah. Well, I mean, this bill doesn't really change the underlying, you know, land use landscape. And that's part of the reason that we recommended this sort of reform because for communities

that are nervous about development coming in, this bill doesn't say anything about what kind of development a community can approve. It just says, if you have said, this is the development we want, approve it in a timely manner. And so that's sort of easy for folks to get behind. Jim Manley, once again, from the Pacific Legal Foundation, we appreciate the work that you're doing over there. Has Pacific Legal ever gotten involved in any kind of fights that wanted to strike at the root of the property rights issue here in the state of Oregon, and that is state land use planning. We're the only state that has this monstrosity, the LCDC,

Luba, all the rest of it. Other states don't really have this kind of, even California, I think in many ways, that takes a lighter tread on property rights. Would you agree with me on that or not? Maybe I'm not as nuanced as I should be. No, I mean, I think it's fair to say Oregon's land use approval process is very difficult to navigate. And one of the things that we've encountered as we've brought lawsuits to defend Oregon property owners against these sorts of government overreach in the land use approval process, is we can't get a straight answer from the government. Yes, no, you can build your house. And without that straight answer, we can't go to court and vindicate their rights. We need to get

a clear answer from the government. And so that's one thing I'm hopeful that we'll get out of this Bill 974 is a clear answer. Even if it's a no, at least then we get an opportunity to go into court and vindicate our rights. But you can't go to court unless, if they haven't even told you yet, you have no actionable... Exactly. Oh, right.

Okay, so that's a win then. I see the win here on something like this. Now, with Senate Bill 974, you have to get a yes or no within 120 days after the finalization of the permit process. this. Now with Senate Bill 974, you have this, you have to get a yes or no within 120 days after the finalization of the permit process. What happens if you don't get an answer? Is there a penalty for this or something which kicks the the government agencies in the butt for it? What happens? Yeah, you, well you have to go to court and you know that's, fortunately there are groups like

Civic Legal Foundation that can sometimes represent property owners free of charge when the government doesn't comply with the law. So that's that you'd have to go into court and the court is then authorized, in fact required by the statute, to issue an order telling the government to process the application. All right. So you still have to go to court. Oregon courts are perfectly fine. All right. All right, so you still have to go to court. Oregon courts are perfectly fine. All right, so it's kind of like a half a loaf, right? We get a half a loaf, we get some certainty, some transparency on this one,

but you would still then have to then go through the expense and the time then and getting a court date to make this happen. That's the only downside of it. But it's probably the best you could have gotten in the light of the light this time around. Is that pretty much what we're looking at? Well, sure. I mean, you're not going to get penalties or anything against the government.

There is a penalty involved here though. If you go into court with this very clear question of whether or not the government has acted within this clear time frame, if the government loses they have to pay your attorney fees. So there is an incentive there for the government to do the right thing. Yeah, but if the government has to pay the attorney's fees, who pays the government? We do. Yes, of course. Yeah, no one wins when the government violates the law. That's for sure. No, I get that. But still, I think this is good. This is progress. This is progress compared to where it was before. Some certainty on residential development. What do you think is going to be the next battleground

when it comes to property rights in the United States, and maybe even specifically Oregon, given what you do over at Pacific Legal. Well, okay, so an interesting question that's new in the courts right now is whether the government can charge you to pay for more subsidized housing when you want to build a house. So basically, charge you a fee if you want to build more housing to pay for other housing. These are called affordable housing exactions. They've never been subject to challenging court before, and the Supreme Court has just opened that door in a case we won last term. So that's where I think the new battle is going to be, is whether the government can

force you to subsidize someone else's house when you want to build a house for yourself. Yeah, I need a house and so I have to pay for someone else's house in order to get the house I need. Yeah. There is something vaguely communistic about that, wouldn't you say? I mean, it's certainly not consistent with any concept of capitalism or free markets or private property rights that I'm familiar with. Jim Manley is the State Policy Chief at Pacific Legal Foundation, Pacificlegal.org.

Appreciate your work and thanks for explaining the ins and outs of Senate Bill 974. And it'll be interesting to see how this works out in practice and if it helps us be able to build housing a little more affordably and a little more easily and with a little more transparency. I think we're all for that. Jim, thanks so much. Be well. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Day 29 at KMED, KBXG, 770-5633. KMED. Welcome to the Bill Meyers Show on 1063 KMED. Give Bill a call at 541-770-5633. That's 770-KMED. Good news out of the U.S. Supreme Court today.

This broke a little while ago, just wanted to make sure you knew. They have ruled that a Tennessee law that banned gender transition treatments for the kids is not discriminatory. At issue in this case, United States v. Scrimetti, was whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which stopped all medical treatment intended to allow a minor to identify with or live as a purported identity inconsistent with the minor sex or to treat purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor sex and asserted identity, violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. So that kind of challenge, that kind of nonsense

from the transgender industrial complex, the transgender medical, well so-called medical industrial complex, that is down in flames. We have Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority saying the law in question is not subject to heightened scrutiny because it doesn't classify on any basis that warrant heightened review. Naturally all three liberal justices dissented in that case but yeah the transgender lawsuit shot down in Tennessee. Supreme Court said nope it's perfectly okay for the state to say no to the nonsense. It's 832, let me grab a call here. It's open phones the rest of the show here on Wheels Up Wednesday and we can talk about

anything that's on your mind. Hi, who's this? Welcome. Bill, it's Brad. Good morning to you. Morning, Brad. You want to talk about Senate Bill 974? You've been involved in the Builders, maybe you get it.

I don't know. Yeah, we could really get out in the don't know. I yeah yeah we could we could we could really get out in the weeds on that. What I would like to talk about if it's okay with you is car stuff. You did your Eric Peters. Can we talk about car stuff instead? Sure go ahead. Okay so I love your segments with Eric Peters. You talked about all these bespoke parts that cost you a bloody fortune. You know back in the days you could go down to Bi-Mart, you could buy either a rectangular headlight or a round headlight for five bucks and go put it in yourself in five minutes, right? Pretty easy peasy. Yeah, really was. So there's this guy named Casey Putch,

his background, his family comes from managing a family golf course, but he's like you. He's a car guy. He loves cars. Oh, is this the guy Casey that built the 110 mile an hour or mile per gallon diesel car? Yes. Yes. I've read about him.

Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah. So, you know, what he looks at, he looks at this increasing barrage of government regulatory overburden on our car companies making automobiles more and more expensive. So what does he do? He reaches back into the past and he grabs 20 year old technology that you'll love and he makes the centerpiece for his power plant and powertrain for this car what? He makes it a Volkswagen turbo diesel, right? Yeah. Because that

four-cylinder Volkswagen turbo diesel is one of the most bulletproof powertrains that was ever invented in the history of automotive engineering. So he makes that the centerpiece and he literally just takes all these parts and systems from existing Auto mania, you might say, and puts them together and comes up with a car that he has documented gets more than 100 miles per gallon, but the mainstream media won't cover it. And it's like, no, you can't do that. You're not part of our club.

We're not going to report on it. What he was proving is that somebody like you or like Eric, somebody who just has a general knowledge and awareness of how automobile systems work, he says at scale, if you wanted to build these at scale, they'd probably come in somewhere around $25,000 a copy. But here's the crazy part. The crazy part is not only does it get over 100 miles per gallon, in a drag race it will keep up with a Tesla. This thing does zero to 60 in the blink of an eye. And you know one of the reasons for this is what Eric has talked about before. It's light.

It's very light, isn't it? It's light and it's aerodynamic. It's got plenty of room for two people and oddly enough golf clubs. So, you know, again, you think about what a game changer an automobile would be using mostly existing technology that gets you reliably over 100 miles per gallon. Yeah, but you understand why we don't have that though, because the goal from those in charge that are a part of the regulatory, the regulatory apparatchiks type, the goal is to not have us with individual transportation. And this is the tension that we have right now. Ultimately, everything they can put under the guise of safety for crash, or the climate,

or you know we have to have the Internet of Things and your car has to be connected, whatever it is, it's always about keeping people from being able to affordably transport themselves because they they hate that. Well except for themselves. If you're part of the elite, what's the point of being elite if everybody else can get the same kind of transportation you have? I guess. And you know, Bill, you have the best guest on your show. I bet if you got a hold of Casey Butch, I bet he would be happy to come on your show and you would have so much fun talking to him. I will reach out and get Casey on because, yeah, I have watched the video on Casey and he's a fascinating guy and I will do so. Thank you for the call. You would have so much fun. All right brother Brad, appreciate the suggestion and I'll get to work on it.

I'll get my staff to work on it. Staff, go get Casey. All right, let me just see if I can find Casey. Scuba Steve's laughing next door, he knows he has a staff of one. Hi, good morning, Who's this? Welcome. Hello? Hello, is it me? Oh, Cherry, do you have your movies now? You're the palette cleanser now, this time of the morning. Yeah, I can't make it all of them. I have nine. I'm not going to talk about nine. But if you want a political movie that is really good, Ben Hur, 2016. I know they have an old, like two older ones. So Ben Hur is a political movie for 2016. All right. I feel like we're living a political movie, but I digress. But you liked it though. And we have to defend Israel, of

course. It's God's country. You know, that's been forever. So, you know, I'm all for that. Okay, so you think we should be all you know, I'm all for that. And I'm not gonna waste any- Okay, so you think we should be all in on that. All right, fine. Now, give me your other eight, your other eight movies. Oh my God, okay. The Brutalist, please miss. It is with Brody.

You know, he's an Academy Award-winning actor, but The Brutalist is not about brutality. It's about architecture. Oh, oh yeah, brutalism. Well, look at your typical government building within the last 40 or 50 years, right? Well, it was a three-hour slog. I mean, my husband was asleep, I was almost asleep, it went on and on and it was it was it was amazing but please it's not it's so boy. All right three hours of your life you'll never get back okay so no on the brutalist all right what do you what do

you got next? Now if you want a sexy weird eclectic... I watched the legislature for that but go ahead and... Nicole Kidman in Baby Girl. Wow that was a... oh boy. Yeah it was it was weird. Okay then Selma 2014 was excellent. Really good. And I will I will I will. He's in love total. So anyway The Nanny Diaries was really good with Paul Giamatti, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, et cetera. It was very cute. It was very good.

And Goodrich, oh my God, with Michael Keaton, excellent movie. I mean, it's a feel-good chick flick, kind of. So you said Goodrich, you said? Goodrich with Michael Keaton. It's kind of like... Yeah, I will... Is it Goodrich like the tire manufacturer? Yes. Okay. It's a movie. It's almost like he has to take care of kids because his wife is in rehab, etc. And it goes on. And it's a very good movie, but the last castle 2001 with James Gandolfini and Robert Redford you can't miss it. It is so

good about a prison movie, of course naturally and how he survived that the under the terrible tyranny of James Gandolfini, which loved in the sopranos that really and Dear David was a horror computer movie kind of like paranormal stuff based on a true story that haunted I had nightmares I are you recommending it though even though it gave you nightmares? Very much. And the last one, if you want an exciting, bloody, amazing, working man, Jason Statham. Oh my God. The guy who is just a driver in other movies?

The transporter? No, no, no. Well, he's the new Bruce Willis. Well, no, but Jason Statham isn't he the guy that was playing the transporter? I'm just a driver. That kind of thing? I don't, yeah, maybe, but I don't know if I saw that. But the working man.

Oh my. I don't know if I saw that, but the working man, oh my, and it starts off that he's in this working environment and his bosses are really good. They're a family business. And I thought, oh no, this isn't going to be good. But it was so, it was a little complex with a very twisty plot. So, it was a little complex with a very twisty plot and I just, it was very, very intense and bloody. All right. Bloody and intense. I love it.

The Jason Statham movie, Working Man. Got it. Yes. All right. Hey. Wow. Now, you being our resident critic, I appreciate your latest on it and you'll give people some food for thought. Okay? Good job, Cherry Cherry. Thank you. Thank you.

All righty, 19 before 9. 770-5633. So we have the pallet cleanser there. There are movie reviews and anything else on your mind too. A lot of emails too. I want to do some emails of the day and much more and also happy to take your call if you have something you want to weigh in on. Stephen Westfall Roofing is growing, now proudly serving Brookings, Gold Beach and the entire southern Oregon coast. They specialize in metal roofing. That's I-Z-E-R-V-A-Y dot com paid for by Estellas Pharma. This hour of the Bill Meyer Show is sponsored by Fontana Roofing. For roofing gutters and sheet metal services,

visit FontanaRoofingServices.com. 847 at 770-5633, your opinions, welcome. We go to, oh, Rob hung up. Okay, we'll go to Gregory first. Oh, Gregory, what's on your mind today? Oh, wonderful, thank, hung up. Okay, we'll go to Gregory first. Hello, Gregory, what's on your mind today? Oh, wonderful, thank you, Bill. Of the Iran situation, and I was going to think of about back in 1980 when they had that song, Bomb Iran,

and then trying to leave that in Rush Limbaugh. What did Rush Limbaugh think of all this bombing Iran? I forgot, you know, I can't really pull that back. What did Rush Limbaugh think of all this bombing Iran? I can't really pull that back. I think he was pretty much in favor of it. I think everybody else was kind of in favor of it too at that point. I guess the question now is, do we... I would dare say that 45 years later, probably a little...

It's a little more complex world that I think we're dealing with at the moment. Here's a little quick last question. If they did nuke Iran, what is the effect on it, kind of like when they bombed Japan? Is it going to just really mushroom a cloud out through whatever areas? Well, depends on how big of the detonation we're talking about. I guess the point is though, is that do you think that is wise for us to do that? If that were to happen or if Israel were to do this

because you know once you pop the top on that there's no going back, is there? No, that's the thing that the earlier caller said that that's why going back is there? No that's the thing is that earlier caller said that that's why that I forget how he phrased it but the people are still alive because he still had anger against them but he didn't kill him that other caller said that earlier. Yeah. I'll let it all go right there with another question in the air. Thank you much. Alright thank you Gregory. 770 KMED Steve's here Steve, how you holding up with the passing of your wife the other day? You getting better? Yeah, I have got to a

point where I don't feel like it is appropriate for me to live in the past and I have to move on because that's who we were. And so it's not easy but that's what you have to do. And in my participation in my wife's passing from this world to the next, I've done a lot of soul-searching and reading. I strongly recommend a book by Jordan Peterson called We Who Wrestle with God. It's about the Old Testament. And I would tell you that the common perception of the Old Testament is completely wrong. Why is that?

Why do you say that? Well, because the Old Testament is about lots of different things, there are some very circuitous things that are hard to even make sense of, but there are also wonderful stories and terrible stories of the past, how people become powerful and are corrupted and what God has done to them. And in Ecclesiastes, it basically says that everything that is, has been, will be again, you know? So it also talks about the beauty of the relationship between people and our Creator. So I don't want to go into a place that drags me down.

I have to work upwards and I've kind of gotten to that point. But read the Bible itself because it's different than you think. And actually reading Jordan Peterson first is a good thing because he talks about the characters of the Bible and kind of separates out what they did. And it's just a, it's like a 450 page book, but it's very readable and very interesting. The one thing I would mention here is that as you mourn and you were talking about how you can't live in the past about this was what was and now it's what is. The thing to keep in mind though is that this has been a long-term project for you, Steve. I mean, you've been talking... Oh, yeah. Yeah. And this is... And to a certain extent, there may be, you know, once you lose your

spouse in what, 55 years, you were telling me that you were married to her? Yes. Yeah. And that's a huge hole. And now, is it one of those things where it's like, now what? What's next? Is that where you are? Well, it is a hole in a way, but I feel her presence. That's good. You know, you, you, you can dwell on your loss, but you can also dwell on the past in that produce something for you.

Ecclesiastes 4 talks about God's designing us and how we're better as a pair, basically, is what it says. And that is so true. I mean, you've been with Linda for a long time. Yes, I will miss Wynn, but I actually feel her with me. And you think about all that was created and you know you have those memories and there's nothing wrong with those memories as long as you have those memories that you know our loved one's still alive. You know in us. I found out something interesting. She plotted against me when we met. I didn't even know it. I just figured it out. Oh yeah. how's that? Yeah, well we were going to college and she had seen me in the student union. And for some reason she decided that I was gonna be hers.

Well she plotted with some girlfriends to have a party at her house and everybody left and Lynn and I were there together. And it wasn't an accident. Oh, it wasn't like she was plotting to take you down. She was plotting to take you in is what she was doing. Yes, yes. And we had that conversation last week and she laughed.

She says, well, yeah. And I was talking to her roommate here and she said, yeah, we did that. Yeah. All's fair in love and war, right? Yeah. And women have so much more power and us men are like, we just, we go from point A to point B. Oh, come on. Steve, we're just along for the ride in a woman's world. Yeah, absolutely. All right. All right. Thanks for sharing that. And I appreciate the reading suggestion there too. This is the Bill Meyers show. Take care, Steve. sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson at Central Point Family Dentistry, next to the Mazelon Mexican Restaurant in Central Point. They accept most dental insurance plans, whether in or out

of network. They also offer their own dental plan you ought to check out. It works similar to dental insurance, better benefits, fewer limitations. There was a dad story that we didn't get to on Friday leading into, and I just enjoyed this so much, and this came from SKC. It says, Bill, we lived up in the mountains on my dad's mining claim. I was about 10 years old. A few days prior, my father had killed a huge rattlesnake and he gave me the rattles.

So I took them and I hid them next to the trail. As my little sister walked by, I shook them and she took off screaming. She was terrified back to the mining camp and I thought I was just hilarious. I was laughing. So next I thought, well now I'll get dead. Well he was walking to the creek to fill the water jugs. He walked by me with a jug in each hand and I started rattling and in a blink he dropped those jugs, he pulled out his 357 revolver, and he leveled it at the bush that I was hiding behind. I yelled out, Dad, it's me! And I ran to him almost in tears. I tried to scare him and it turned to him scaring me to death.

I always thought twice about trying to pull the prank and pull something on Dad after that. I'm glad you ended up surviving that SKC, but yeah, that's the innocence of children who are thinking, oh, I'm going to get my dad, right? Good story. Doobie writes to me this morning, Bill, Governor hair gel, you talked about that the other day, I've nicknamed Newsom Governor hair gel. He says, you know, they really should run the palisades fires against old hair gel as well in the next election cycle doobie you're right about that we got a bunch more we'll touch on

some of these tomorrow if you wanted to weigh in anything we were talking about including Iran and Israel email bill at Bill Myers show calm bill at Bill Myers show calm Mark Lee van Camp and Robbins Up, and on 99.3, the Jukebox. We've heard it all. Apparently those larger tires don't provide more clearance.