Seattle: King County Washington Executive and Democratic candidate for governor, Ron Sims, has given the King County Council a set of recommended changes to King County’s land use regulations that will easily move him ahead of Robert Mugabe as king of private land redistribution. Mr. Mugabe simply transferred ownership of 1600 farms in Zimbabwe from their original owners to his political supporters. Once the election was over he then transferred ownership to his government.
Mr. Sims is much more efficient than Mr. Mugabe is. Mr. Sims’ new regulations will redistribute the use of 65% of the property of the 130,000 residents of rural King County directly to his government. The stated goal is to protect and promote the lifestyle of his urban constituents and their descendants as envisioned by his favorite collectivist organization, the Livable Communities Coalition (http://www.livablecoalition.org/). Any uses, by the original property owner, of the remaining 35% will be strictly controlled with all uses requiring permits often costing tens of thousands of dollars. Those permit fees go to fund the Department of Development and Environmental Services and the Prosecutor’s Office who are charged with preventing expanded use of the rural area of King County so that urban Seattle residents will have easy access to “open space.” The fact that the “open space” is currently owned by Seattle’s rural neighbors is beside the point.
Mr. Sims’ bureaucracy loves Soviet-style central planning and has come through with flying colors in creating hundreds of pages of new regulations under the pretense of meeting a new Washington state administrative rule to consider “best available science” when devising new regulatory schemes to prevent property use under the state’s Growth Management Act (GMA). Whether the King County Council can find the reins for Mr. Sims’ runaway regulators remains to be seen, but the hot potato generally referred to as the CAO (Critical Areas Ordinance) is now in their hands. If the CAO is enacted without substantial change property owners in rural unincorporated King County can look forward to:
In order to make the claim that they are being flexible, the bureaucrats amended their first draft to allow some reduction in buffer sizes in exchange for extensive “farm plans” or “stewardship plans” that would delineate what other steps you will perform to make up for the reduced buffers. That is the same concept as giving capital felons in Washington the choice of hanging or lethal injection.
The CAO elevates environmental protection via “best available science” to the primary goal of the Growth Management Act. The Washington Court of Appeals in HEAL v. Seattle clearly ruled that “the GMA requires balancing more than a dozen goals and several specific directives in implementing those goals.” Protecting private property rights is one of the GMA stated goals, as is encouraging affordable housing and encouraging economic development. The original intent of the GMA has been bastardized beyond recognition. The CAO changes were developed with no economic analysis of potential impacts. Economic impacts will bear disproportionately on rural landowners who have taken care of their land. Urban property owners, who have destroyed their ecosystems, will get a pass because the damage has already been done!
Mr. Sims proposals will easily get King County in the record book for the most draconian and restrictive land use regulations this side of Zimbabwe.