HILLSBORO, Ore. — Harvey Kempema is giving Washington County's commissioners a choice.

Option A: Waive county zoning rules and let him split his old dairy farm into five- or 10-acre lots, as he says he could have done when he bought the land in 1973.

Option B: Write him a check for $2 million.

This sounds like an angry property-owner's pipe dream. It's not.

In November Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved Measure 37, the nation's most sweeping property-rights law. Since then, hundreds of eager landowners such as Kempema have flooded city halls and county courthouses with claims demanding that government drop restrictions and let them develop their property, or pay them not to.

"I never in my life thought I'd see something like this," Kempema marvels.

Before Measure 37, their development plans would have been fantasies. They violate Oregon's pioneering land-use laws, often hailed as a national model for curbing sprawl and protecting farms and forests.

Measure 37 trumps those laws. No statute in the country more drastically limits government's power to regulate what people can do with their property.

Planners and lawyers still are sorting out just how the new law will work and how far it reaches. No earth has been turned yet because of Measure 37. But its landslide, 61 percent victory in a state as green — and as blue — as Oregon has sent ripples across the Columbia, and across the country.

Property-rights advocates in Washington, bristling at rules adopted under the state's Growth Management Act, hope to put a similar proposal on the ballot in 2006. Dave Hunnicutt of Oregonians in Action, Measure 37's sponsor, says he's also working with activists in Florida, Wisconsin and South Carolina.

"If it can happen in Oregon... it can happen anywhere," writes Portland attorney Edward Sullivan, a leading opponent of Measure 37.

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Real-estate broker Harvey Kempema has filed a claim under Measure 37, Oregon's sweeping new property-rights law, to waive zoning restrictions and subdivide the 56-acre farm near Cornelius, Ore., where he once kept 80 dairy cows.

Many Oregon landowners have been seething for decades at restrictions the state imposed on their property in the name of managed growth. For them, Measure 37 is a dream come true.

It lets property owners file claims against governments whenever a land-use or zoning regulation restricts how they can use their land and reduces its value. State and local officials can either compensate them for that reduction in value, or waive the regulation and let the owners do what they want.

Compensation isn't a likely option for cash-starved governments. Measure 37's backers knew that. "People don't want money," Hunnicutt says. "They want to be able to use their land."

Measure 37 doesn't apply only to new regulations. It's retroactive: Landowners such as Kempema can file claims for rules imposed any time after they acquired their property.

Much of Oregon's political establishment — business, labor, environmentalists, the governor — fought Measure 37. They warned it would shred policies that have helped keep Oregon livable for more than 30 years. They outspent the initiative's supporters by better than 2-to-1.

But on Election Day, Measure 37 won in 35 of the state's 36 counties — including Washington County, just outside Portland, the kind of place where the new law's impact is likely to be felt most.

The county stretches west from the subdivisions and semiconductor plants of Beaverton and Hillsboro to the farms of the Tualatin Valley and forests of the Coast Range. Oregon's land-use laws have maintained a bright line between city and country here, despite years of rapid growth.

So far, 115 Measure 37 claims have been filed at the county planning office. Almost all would put more homes, or create more lots, on the rural side of the line.

Pacific University political-science professor Russ Dondero predicts that, under Measure 37, that line will eventually be obliterated, "like Chinese water torture, one drop at a time."

But for some landowners who consider themselves long-suffering victims of Oregon's land-use laws, Measure 37 represents justice, even payback. "This is our one big opportunity," says Steve Mead.

4th-generation anger

Mead's great-grandfather homesteaded on Green Mountain, in northwestern Washington County, in 1886. His grandfather and father were born and died there. Mead has a house on the mountain. So does his mother.

Altogether, the family owns and manages about 300 acres, almost all of it in timber and Christmas trees. "I'm the fourth generation on this mountain," says Mead, 58, "and they're pretty much saying that's the end of it."

Oregon and Washington County adopted new rules in the early 1990s to protect forests from incompatible development. Those rules prevent the Meads from dividing their big blocks of land into smaller pieces. They allow just one additional house — and that's only because it would replace another dwelling, an aging mobile home.

Mead, a real-estate broker, has that site reserved for a home for his daughter, but she's not his only child. "My son grew up on this mountain," he says, "and I can't give him two acres to build a house. That's not right."

In February, Mead filed Measure 37 claims seeking either $10.8 million or waivers to create 29 two-acre lots on his family's land — mostly in clusters of three or four, many with dramatic mountain views. He says he intends to keep them all in the family, to provide homes or weekend retreats for his and his brother's children, grandchildren and future great-grandchildren.

He's considering writing language into the deeds to discourage sales outside the family. He says he'd sign covenants to keep the rest of the property in timber permanently. "I want it to do what it does best," Mead says of the land, "which is grow timber and grow kids."

Measure 37 hasn't abated his anger at Oregon's land-use laws and the planners and environmentalists behind them. They hurt his family, he says, and they got what they deserved on Election Day:

"They say pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered. They were hogs. They got greedy."

Housing pressure

More Measure 37 claims have been filed in Washington County than anywhere else. Mark Brown, the county's land-development manager, isn't surprised.

Many Portland-area buyers want a home in the country on an acre or two, he says, but until now they have been largely shut out by state and county laws that channel development onto smaller, urban lots.

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES The forest land of Steve Mead's family in Washington County, Ore., has views of the Pacific Ocean and Mount Hood. Mead, a fourth-generation landowner, says Measure 37 means he can give some of the property to his children and grandchildren, something current zoning doesn't allow.

"There's this market that's kind of had a padlock on it," Brown says.

Louise Bernards' claim is Washington County's most ambitious. She wants either $9.5 million, or permission to subdivide the grass-seed field that's been in her family for more than a century into 98 half-acre home sites.

Her son and representative, Portland commercial real-estate developer Dale Bernards, says the lots will sell fast to families seeking more space. "People are getting forced onto these small, compact lots," he says. "When you yawn, you're in your neighbor's yard."

Farms surround Bernards' property on Martin Road, even though it's less than a mile from the college town of Forest Grove. Washington County ranks third in Oregon in agricultural sales, despite its proximity to Portland. Farming still is big business here.

That's partly because Oregon's land-use laws have protected it, says farmer Dave Vanasche. If Measure 37 claims such as Bernards' succeed, he says, "I'm doomed."

Vanasche grows grass seed, grain and other crops on more than 2,000 acres in Washington County. Some of his neighbors have filed Measure 37 claims. Vanasche says he could file one, too, but Washington County has some of the best farmland in the world, and God isn't making any more.

Houses and farming just don't mix, he says.

At first, newcomers like their pastoral surroundings, but then they start to complain: the spraying, the dust, the smell. "Essentially," he says, "an agricultural zone is an industrial zone."

At some point, Vanasche says, farmers grow weary of the conflict and sell. Eventually, there won't be enough farmers left to support the infrastructure, the feed stores and equipment dealers, that agriculture needs.

Under Measure 37, he says, that day will come sooner.

Sorting it out

The first Measure 37 claims were filed Dec. 2, the day the new law took effect. It gives governments 180 days to act on them. At least eight counties have approved waivers so far. None has paid compensation.

Brown says Washington County probably won't decide any of its claims until later this month. "We're kind of playing it by ear," he says.

So is much of the rest of Oregon. Most large property owners, including the timber companies that provided the bulk of Measure 37's campaign treasury, haven't filed claims yet. Some observers wonder if they're waiting for the dust to settle.

Measure 37's future is playing out on three fronts:

• Opponents have filed a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. Dave Vanasche and the Washington County Farm Bureau are among the plaintiffs. It charges, among other things, that the law should be struck down because it discriminates: Longtime landowners can seek waivers from rules that more recent buyers must follow.

• The Oregon Legislature is considering dozens of bills to clarify or alter Measure 37. Unlike Washington's Legislature, it can modify — even repeal — a voter-approved initiative by simple majority vote.

• While they wait for the Legislature or the courts to act, city halls and county courthouses have become Measure 37's test labs. The new law doesn't spell out a process for handling claims. It allows governments to adopt procedures but says property owners still can seek compensation in court after 180 days even if they don't follow the procedures.

Washington County's commissioners adopted rules for handling Measure 37 claims last month. They call for public notice and hearings, steps not all counties require. They give neighbors of developments approved under Measure 37 an explicit right to sue developers if they think they've been harmed.

Washington County's rules are silent on several of the biggest questions about the new law's scope. Brown says the county chose to let judges or legislators answer them.

For instance: While Measure 37 says landowners can't seek compensation or waivers from land-use rules designed to prevent "public nuisances" or protect "public health and safety," it doesn't say exactly which regulations fit those categories.

Washington County's rules don't attempt a definition. Under the health-and-safety exemption, Brown says, regulations that restrict building in floodplains probably still could be enforced. But he's not sure.

Another big uncertainty: A month ago the Oregon Attorney General's Office concluded that waivers from land-use rules under Measure 37 apply only to the owner, not the land. Once ownership changes, it said, the waivers expire.

That means a farmer could subdivide his land and sell the lots — but the new owners might not be allowed to build anything. Hunnicutt of Oregonians in Action says that interpretation will be challenged soon.

"We knew that passing the measure was just the start," he says.

Some Washington County property owners who have filed Measure 37 claims seem resigned to living with the confusion for now. Some admit they aren't sure just how much relief they can wring from the new law.

"Still studying and reviewing all rules," was all one scribbled on his claim application when asked to describe his development plans.

"As many building sites as possible," another wrote.

Eager to divide

Harvey Kempema says he filed his claim early — before Christmas — in part because he's not certain Measure 37 will survive intact.

Kempema was a dairy farmer when he bought his 56 acres between Hillsboro and Cornelius more than 30 years ago, but he stopped milking cows and started selling real estate a few years later.

The property wasn't a viable farm, he says. Today he leases it to a tenant who grows curly willow, used in floral arrangements.

For decades Kempema chafed at the land-use laws that kept him from developing his property. When Measure 37 was filed, he put up signs in support of it. When it passed, he rejoiced. His claim proposes to carve his land into five-acre lots, with maybe some commercial development on a corner.

Kempema says he'd probably settle for 10-acre lots: one for him, one for each of his daughters, maybe a couple to sell to help finance his retirement. "I'm not looking to put up a high-rise or anything," he says.

But he can't hide his glee at the opportunities Measure 37 at long last presents him. "When will check be ready?" Kempema wrote the county when he filed his claim. "Or — when can I start dividing? (Time is money.)"

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com