Controlling Growth Benefits Everyone

This week, Puget Sound voters trounced a proposal for an expensive mass transit system. The area’s traffic jams, the result of unmanaged growth, will just keep getting worse. Meanwhile, Republicans in the Legislature are attacking laws designed to prevent such headaches.

Don’t yawn. Puget Sound’s problems are not as far away as the people of Spokane may think.

Spokane also has been experiencing rapid growth. Our county and city governments also have been reluctant to use zoning and planning laws to keep growth desirable. North of Spokane, to the south on Moran Prairie and out in portions of the Valley, housing has been constructed without adequate provision for traffic flow, sewage disposal, fire protection and more. Our quality of life has suffered as a result. And more growth lies on our horizon.

But Washington’s Growth Management Act, drafted with Puget Sound’s mistakes in mind, applies to Spokane now. Local officials have begun giving more thought to where growth should and shouldn’t go and to the need for adequate infrastructure.

However, that progress might be in jeopardy if the Legislature approves a Republican plan to cut key requirements from the growth management law.

There is a worse threat, this year, to our quality of life. Initiative 164 could make planning, zoning and growth laws untenable.

Approved by the House, the initiative arises from a valid gripe that some government rules have gone too far in preventing private property owners from using their land. Its solution: Require government to reimburse a property owner for earnings lost as a result of regulatory restraints. This sounds good on the surface, which is why it has won a place on the fall ballot.

However, the initiative’s vague wording and simplistic remedy would create a problem. For example, would a farmer be compensated if he is not allowed to convert his land to a housing tract or a discount store? Maybe. Lawsuits would decide. That’s not progress - that’s a windfall for lawyers and a deterrent to zoning.

Sure, some regulations, such as those concerning wetlands, have been excessive. But planning and growth laws protect the value and quality of entire communities as well as offer developers public support and predictable growth plans.

If Washington does give free rein to the bulldozer boys, last fall’s Republican revolt could be sowing the seeds of its own destruction. The people of Puget Sound may have grown numb to their gridlock, but over here, folks still have higher aspirations.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board