Growth Hearings Board Lambasted

Kittitas County commissioners say the board that oversees implementation of the state’s Growth Management Act in Eastern Washington has violated the act in its decisions against the county’s land-use planning.

“Our concern over your decisions is the fact that you are substituting your judgment for that of the duly elected Board of County Commissioners for this county and that you have usurped the authority of the Legislature and the governor by ignoring the GMA and substituting your own policy choices for those of the GMA laws,” the commissioners said in a letter dated June 23 to the Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board.

The letter was in response to a June 10 letter from the hearings board ordering the commissioners to submit a schedule of how the county will comply with the GMA in regard to designating certain natural resource lands - forest and agricultural lands - for special protection from developers.