House Guts Growth Limits Approves Bill Letting Counties Opt Out Of Management Law

A proposal to greatly restrict state control over county land-use planning decisions won House passage Monday in the first real assault on the state’s 5-year-old Growth Management Act.

The bill, HB1274, would permit any county to opt out, making the law essentially voluntary. It also would expand the amount of rural land available for development and weaken the boards that enforce the law.

“You have gutted the Growth Management Act and more urban and suburban sprawl will result” if the bill gets out of the Senate, Rep. Ruth Fisher, D-Tacoma, and one of the 1990 law’s main backers, told the chamber.

But Rep. Bill Reams, R-Bellevue, the bill’s sponsor, defended the measure as necessary to return planning control to local governments that can do a better job than the state.

“It takes away the state opportunity to be super-planners, to reinvent the wheel, to second-guess the city or the county. I think it’s a wellconstructed bill, and I think it’s supported across many segments of our society,” he said.

The 1990 law, passed over the bitter opposition of developers and the real estate industry, is intended to slow urban sprawl and protect forest and farmland from development, among other things.

It has drawn lawsuits and debate in several counties, where foes contend it amounts to state confiscation of private property.

All Spokane-area Democrats opposed the bill and all Spokane-area Republicans voted for it.

Under the Growth Management Act, a county must plan within the law’s restraints if it has a population of 50,000 and growth of 10 percent or more over the past decade, or has fewer than 50,000 but growth of 20 percent or more over the decade. Counties also can choose to sign up for the law.

The proposed measure, HB1274, would:

Permit any county at any time to opt out of the law. “This alone guts it,” contended Rep. Nancy Rust, D-Seattle.

Curtail the state law’s power to override local zoning and building regulations now in place.

Allow counties to establish big industrial areas outside of urban growth areas if the county can show that there is not enough suitable space in the urban area or can show a commercial need to put the development in the countryside.

Curtail the power of the three regional planning boards to make judgments on whether a county has met the requirements of the law.