Spokane7
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March 8, 2011 in City
Bill lets 4 counties drop growth act
Opponent overstates Ferry County acreage impact
OLYMPIA – The state’s environmental community is fighting a plan to allow four lightly populated Eastern Washington counties to opt out of the Growth Management Act.
But in trying to generate opposition to the proposed change, the group Futurewise seriously overstated the impact that law has on Ferry County, one of four that would be allowed to drop the law under HB 1094.
The growth act is protecting nearly three-quarters of a million acres of farmland in Ferry County, keeping it from being “paved over,” the Seattle-based organization claimed in a recent website posting and a separate appeal for funds.
“In Washington, it’s far too easy to pave over farmland if it’s not designated as such,” the group said on its website. “That’s why we were fighting so hard to get the county to properly designate and protect the best of the county’s 749,452 acres of land in farms and ranching.”
Wait a minute, said state Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda, sponsor of the bill. There aren’t 750,000 acres of farmland subject to growth restrictions in Ferry County.
Ferry County officials say Kretz is right: Of the county’s 1.4 million acres, just under 300,000 are in private hands, and about 160,000 acres are farmland. Most land inside the county belongs to the federal or state governments or the Colville Confederated Tribes, which are exempt from state Growth Management Act rules.
Three counties covered by the bill – Ferry, Pend Oreille and Columbia – grew very slowly in the past 10 years, and the fourth, Garfield, lost population. All of them opted in to the growth act years ago and received state money for things like the development of a Comprehensive Plan. The bill would allow the four to opt out by the end of the year if they choose to do so.
Pend Oreille County might not, said Diane Wear, a commissioner in that northeast county who has concerns about the process and loss of tax revenue if the county does drop the law. “We have not had that discussion as a board. But we are in compliance (with the law). We do have an adopted Comp Plan.”
Garfield County likely would opt out, said Dean Burton, a commissioner in the southeast county for the last 18 years. Garfield opted in years ago to be eligible for state grants, but the only grants they got were for complying with the law.
Even if Ferry County opts out, there are other laws that protect agricultural and other “critical resource” lands, said Planning Director Irene Whipple. “Cities and counties still have protection.”
Kretz’s bill passed the House of Representatives with a healthy margin over the weekend and is headed for more action, and possibly changes, in the Senate. It’s opposed by the state’s association of cities as well as Futurewise and the Sierra Club; it’s supported by the state’s association of county officials.
Members of Futurewise conceded Monday their facts were off. They took the figure from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ag census for Ferry County, which contains a caveat that apparently went unnoticed: All tribal land is listed as agricultural in the USDA report.
“We forgot to take out the Colville Indian Reservation,” said April Putney, co-director for statewide policy and advocacy. The group sent out a correction but stands by its opposition to the bill: “GMA is a state policy, it should be followed across the state.”
Kitty Klitzke of the group’s Spokane office said she probably would have caught the mistake had she seen the original website posting or the funding request before it was sent out. It was put together by co-workers in Seattle who aren’t from Eastern Washington, she said: “It was not a willful deception. Everybody makes mistakes.”
As for the suggestion that farmland was being paved over, Klitzke said the term wasn’t meant to be taken literally and would be understood by members as meaning the land could be subject to adverse development. But this is a more complex issue than was mentioned in the e-mail, she acknowledged.
Supermajority for taxes unconstitutional, judge rules 
hawken on March 08 at 6:29 a.m.
Environmentalists “seriously overstating” the facts. Isn’t that standard procedure?
Liberty_Bell on March 08 at 7:00 a.m.
The Seattle Based Futurwise? The former 1000 Friends of Washington without a clue whatsoever.
Yea sure thing, George Washington would have hanged em on the spot.
Farmalnd Preservation? Aand the relationship with the drop in housing, and rise in commodities?
Futurewise, with no future whatsoever, when they starve in Seattle eating seagulls.
berrybestfarm on March 08 at 7:16 a.m.
My 20 acres in Stevens County has been directly affected by a suit Futurewise brought against the county. The result is that 90% of my land is now restricted from use without any compensation for the loss of the use rather than just its 10 acres of wetlands, including a reasonable buffer zone. I have standing to speak about Futurewise’s impact. Here’s the conundrum. I bought this land specificaly to be the steward of its wetlands. In the 11 years I’ve owned it I’ve returned the wetlands to its natural condition but technically could be fined for doing so without permission from the government as a result of Futurewise’s action. The groups mission and goals are laudable while their methods and over reaching to achieve them hurt real people. Futurewise has a long way to go to catch up to me in actively saving our environment for our children.
Dennis Patterson—Deer Park
Ninch on March 08 at 7:23 a.m.
Hilariously funny about Futurewise “facts.” And the idea that “paving over” would be an issue in Ferry County is so irrelevant. Washington Association of Cities is against this legislation to drop growth act and is again… irrelevant. There are NO cities and barely any incorporated towns. (Is Republic the only one?) Note that the population of Ferry County is also only about 7500 overall.
Liberty_Bell on March 08 at 7:31 a.m.
Of course when Tim Trimovitch, the Futurewise Lawyer gets a clue, he could get a job in the real world, where you actually produce somthing?
Barnum Timber v EPA
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/02/03/08-17715.pdf
The beginning of the end of “invalidity” from Futurewise and the freaks at the EPA.
Orphan on March 08 at 7:34 a.m.
Its all about how much money can we get, this is part of what needs to stop so that we can get our state budget under control.
nitro71 on March 08 at 11:49 a.m.
Environmentalist can go pound sand. It’s absurd that the govt can tell a property owner that he can’t develop his land.
SpokaneLiberal on March 08 at 2:56 p.m.
I hate zoning on an philosophical level. But very few people want a property owner to do whatever on their land. Your neighbor just decided to “develop” the land as a nuclear waste dump site. Too bad his land his choice even if your heath is effected.
The GMA overreaches, but some restrictions on land use is appropriate. What? I know I don’t want my daughter walking out of her elementary school to see a strip club across the street. And none of the rest of you want that for your kids either.
Liberty_Bell on March 08 at 3:17 p.m.
Like those Hanford Neighbors, or your neighbors daughter working in an Olympia stripclub?
And the most arbitrary and capricious law on the books?
The GMA, and its liberal California Connection where law means whatever one thinks the GMA definition says.
The defenitions are astounding, as some of the most confused in the nation, however the lawyers love it, a make work legislative theory, bankrupting local governments across the wide spectrum of funding lawyers retirement plans, on the back of a local taxpayer.
“Invalidity” in the English Language, shown best throughout the GMA,, but thats what happens when the lawyers in Olympia promote this theory, the make work program for Futurewise Lawyers, and the State Future of a Bankrupt Budget.
SpokaneLiberal on March 08 at 3:40 p.m.
So liberty are you offering to allow a nuclear waste site right next to your home?
Is the GMA unwieldy? yes. Is it a lawyers wet dream? Quite likely for a few. BUT is it completely wrong? No. People should not be allowed to do absolutely whatever they feel like on their land. There are some appropriate and some inappropriate places for almost everything. Including my neighbor’s daughter stripping for money if she so chooses.
I hate the GMAs heavy reliance on exclusionary zoning. Worst practice in land use in the country.
k2kelley on March 08 at 3:49 p.m.
After just completing 9-years on the Spokane County Planning Commission, I have found many errors on both sides of the arguement. Futurewise is nothing more than the complete opposite of the “I can do anything I want with my property” people. Both extremists.
In general, GMA has a lot of merit. It is a process that has been tweked many times and will continue to be modified as times/process changes.
riverlaw on March 08 at 5:19 p.m.
Doug, I completely disagree. Futurewise is one of the few voices in this community, as you very well know, who actually stand up to the “yes on anything” County Commissioners and the well-funded band of developers. Futurewise stands up for our farming community on Green Bluff, for transportation options for all, and for development that is consistent with the surrounding community, instead of simply destroying it.
How many times did you vote against a project, Doug, because it was inconsistent with the law, only to have the County Commissioners override the thoughtful efforts of the Planning Commission. How many times has the County been held out of compliance with the law by the Growth Board when the Commissioners ignored the Planning Commission?
I can point to a dozen examples and I am sure you can too — these poorly conceived and implemented projects impact property values and quality of life for those who already live in the community. (Go talk to folks near Cheney about a new airport that the County just approved in their literal backyards!)
I think we need more folks, not less, in our community who are willing to stand up and say that we need a well thought out and well designed community that allows for local farms and transportation options. We also need to make sure that our framework of laws supports this, not a system that forecloses good planning and create a wild west patchwork of land use and transportation.
Raising_Hell on March 08 at 8:41 p.m.
I live in the 7th LD, I’m a small farmer. Kretz never misses an opportunity to stir up the locals about those dastardly environmentalists and westsiders. But what has he and the last thirty years of GOP representation done for us? We’re still the poorest corner of the state.
Kretz’s plan is to return to unplanned and environmentally destructive development. As if that will do anything but increase the revenue shortfall of rural counties. There has been virtually no enforcement of GMA, SEPA, the Shoreline Act and other sensible environmental protections within the 7th LD outside of it’s Spokane County portion. Small landowners here face fewer restrictions on what they can do than virtually anywhere else in the nation. Yet we remain poor, getting poorer all the time.
In his statement on the email, Kretz complains that “If they want to take up an environmental cause, perhaps they should start with King County.” King county has taken advantage of GMA planning and protected many small farms and farmers. When they got a bill through the legislature last year to protect Puget Sound, you’d expect that Kretz would have supported it. But no, he (along with 7 other anti-environmentalist Republicans from the eastside) voted against it.
He’d like everyone to believe that opposition to GMA is universal out here, but that’s another lie. Many folks who say they hate the GMA, will in the next breath decry all the new folks moving in and dropping the water table. Many more folks understand that to revive our rural and local economies will require planning and policy changes, not more of the business as usual that has left most of us poor.
Cutting expanses of farm, forest, and range land into subdivisions or ex-urban parcels may not result in all of it being paved, but the rural economy, the environment, and opportunity for future prosperity will all be compromised nevertheless.
If Kretz wants to go to bat for small producers against overzealous regulators, he might start with the WSDA. Their regulations on milk, and poultry producers who want to sell direct to their neighbors are simply barriers to market entry that protect corporate domination of the ag market. The GOP likes to claim they are for the little guy, but they always come down on the corporate side.
We are not poor in rural northeast Washington because we protect the environment too much, or we are too regulated. We are poor because the agricultural system we have is designed for the corporations to prosper and the producers to suffer. As a small farmer, my biggest threats are growth related, not the wolves and cougars and big government bogeymen the right always complains about.