Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Another victory over right wing activists

Advocates of land use mayhem lost again today as the Supreme Court announced its decision in 1000 Friends of Washington, et al. v. McFarland (Rodney).

The case concerned whether Rodney McFarland and his right wing citizens group had the right to file a local (not statewide) referendum to overturn anti-sprawl and critical areas ordinances passed by King County under the auspices and requirements of the Growth Management Act (GMA).

The court ruled that the ordinances McFarland & Co. sought to overturn are not subject to county referendum because the GMA is a statewide law.

Justice Tom Chambers authored the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Susan Owens and Bobbe Bridge, as well as Chief Justice Gerry Alexander. Concurring in separate opinions were Justices Charles Johnson, Barbara Madsen, and Mary Fairhurst. Predictably, Justices Richard Sanders and Jim Johnson, who rarely stray from their facts-don't-matter ideological perch, dissented.
We accordingly hold that King County has established sufficiently that KCO 15052 and 15053 were passed pursuant to the GMA's requirement that critical areas be designated and protected. RCW 36.70A.040(2); .170 (requiring counties to designate and protect critical areas); .050 (requiring consultation); .060 (establishing procedures); .172 (requiring use of the best available science). Thus, these ordinances implement state policy and are not subject to local referenda.

[...]

The people of this state, through their legislators, recognized that each local area is unique and placed considerable power and responsibility onto counties to develop comprehensive land use plans according to procedures that required an enormous amount of deliberative public participation. Local exercises of power are often subject to rejection by local referenda. But while the GMA places considerable power and responsibility in local hands, it is still a state power that is being exercised to further state mandates.

The legislature certainly could decide that local ordinances implementing the GMA should be subject to local referendum. But it is for the legislature, not the courts, to amend GMA procedures.
Rather than participate in the process and seek mitigation for his concerns, McFarland and his fellow zealots tried to force a repeal of all the rules by asking the voters of King County to nullify the ordinances.

Their attempt to take deregulation to the extreme has failed and the state Supreme Court has once again ruled in favor of common sense and representative democracy as we would expect it to.

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