By Cassie Wilson | 2-minute read
Several bills threatened to harm our state’s quality of life in the 2026 legislative session, but thousands of Oregonians showed up to protect livability. With your help, we defeated seven bills that would have opened up farm and forest lands for development. This includes the successful grassroots effort to defeat SB 1586—the proposal to bring 1,700 acres of world class soil into Hillsboro’s urban growth boundary (UGB) for industrial development, including data centers.
1000 Friends also supported the passage of many bills (see below) that seek to increase housing affordability and accessibility, eradicate pests that are harming Oregon nurseries, disconnect state tax code from duplicating federal tax cuts, and support development of industrial lands within UGBs.
Despite strong organizing in partnership with Friends of Family Farmers, Central Oregon LandWatch, Ag for Oregon, and our affiliates, HB 4153 (the “farm stores” bill) passed without essential guardrails to mitigate harm caused by commercial development and events on farmland. We will be closely tracking the impacts of this bill to build our case to fix it in a future session.
The legislature faced the transportation funding gap again, this time making significant cuts to critical programs like Safe Routes to School as a short-term fix to a much larger operations and maintenance funding issue. Due to the continued transportation budget shortfall, the legislature will have to take this issue up again in the 2027 session.
Bill summary
For a more detailed analysis of each bill, please see our 2026 legislative overview.
Bills that passed that we SUPPORTED
- SB 1576: Accessible housing
- SB 1567: Revolving loan fund for mixed-income residential projects
- HB 4036: Affordable housing preservation
- HB 4108A: Annexation in UGBs
- HB 4128A: Buyers Before Billionaires Act
- SB 1561: Replacement dwellings on farm and forest land
- SB 1551: Fire Hardened Homes Act
Budget items that passed that we SUPPORTED
- 1.25% for wildlife
- Affordable housing preservation
- Continued funding for FFA/4H
- Federal tax code disconnect
- Industrial land readiness funding
- Maintain Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program funding
- Reinstate funding for Japanese Beetle eradication: Passed
Bills that passed that we were NEUTRAL on
- HB 4082: One-time UGB expansion for senior housing or manufactured home parks
- HB 4035A: Expands eligibility criteria so more cities may use one-time UGB expansion path provided in 2024
Bills that passed that we OPPOSED
- HB 4153: Allows farm stores as a nonfarm use on EFU land
Bills that died that we OPPOSED
- SB 1586: Hillsboro supersiting of industrial land
- SB 1564: Woodburn UGB expansion
- SB 1578: Rural residential development on resource lands
- HB 4113: Metolius TDO
- SB 1522-1: Removes protection for farm and forest lands in designating urban reserves
- HB 4023: Increased barriers to local transit funding
- HB 4085: Autonomous Vehicles
Bills that died that we SUPPORTED
- HB 4008: Transit funding task force
- SB 1543: Guardrails for good governance
- SB 1542: Measure what we drive
- HB 4063: Legalizing Kei trucks