Taking All My Time - #27 — Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool)

Taking All My Time - #27

Posted by Eric de Place

09/28/2006 12:50 PM

All the latest news in property rights.

[This is part of a series.]

New items are coming in faster than I can keep pace with. But here are a few gems...

In Washington, a group of developers and affordable housing advocates released a report arguing that I-933 would severely impair efforts to supply decent affordable housing.

In a similar vein, David Horsey, at the Seattle P-I, has a clever cartoon in today's paper.

Researchers at the University of Washington released a new study estimating the costs of I-933. The price tag for compensation, around $8 billion, is very similar to the estimate from the state's Office of Financial Management. Advocates for I-933 claim the study was biased, but a good article in the Seattle Times questions that claim's veracity--two of the lawyers working on the UW study are also legal advisers to the Building Industry Association of Washington, which is supporting I-933.

(Ever-astute commenter Dan has argued that the compensation price doesn't matter because communities will waive laws, rather than pay compensation. That's what's happened in Oregon. It's a fair point. But it's also worth noting, as the UW study's authors did, that there's actually no authority, in I-933 or elsewhere, to waive the laws. So Washington communities would be in a bit of a legal pickle. And the high price tag does matter in at least one way: it essentially forces the legislature to overturn important laws or face financial disaster.)

Lastly, the California Farm Bureau, which is opposing Proposition 90, released a short but scorching critique of that state's ballot measure. The reasoning applies well to the measures in other states too.

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Comments

Posted by Arie v. 09/28/2006 07:44 PM

There are many reasons to oppose I933, but the affordable housing argument is double edged. Some conversely are concerned 933 will hurt home values, thus increasing affordability. That's a more digestible argument than this from Val Thomas, "By diverting investment away from affordable housing development and by destroying policy tools like local incentives and requirements, we would be eradicating progress made on affordable housing in the last five years,"

We've made progress in the last five years???

BTW, Last night there was a report on NPR about how companies with troubling prospects tend to have verbose and complex quarterly reports.

Posted by Dan 09/28/2006 09:01 PM

Dan has argued that the compensation price doesn't matter because communities will waive laws, rather than pay compensation.

First, good post Eric.

I happen to know all the good folk at the NWCLC, who requested/originated the report. BTW - I owe Fritz some work, so I hope he doesn't read this and wonder why I'm typing here instead of for him. :o)

Anyway, Eric, your point about no authority to waive the laws is a good one. It's an interesting result that was looked at in the Dept Ecology analyis but no conclusions were drawn. In the NWCLC analysis, they concluded that the locals couldn't supercede state/Fed laws [e.g. SEPA, NEPA, ESA].

Interestingly, the Yes933 folk have an implicit argument that SEPA is a restriction on willy-nilly development, thus the fears of the No933 folks are unfounded, and a question I asked one Yes933 folk was answered as if SEPA will prohibit such willy-nilly development that's alleged if 933 passes.

It's vapor-thin arguments like these from the Yes933 camp that should arouse our ire.

Next. One other important finding highlighted from the NWCLC is that I-933 likely will result in increased reliance on nuisance law. This means yet more hidden costs to the public, as lawyers aren't going to go pro bono to work these cases, as each likely will run hundreds of hours to figure out. This money will have to be paid up front by homeowners (I'd guess $30-40 K to bring to court).

Lastly, what I pointed out in #25 (clarifying what I italicized at the beginning) was there are two separable costs - the costs to the cites and counties themselves, alone, just to administer are substantial and will cut programs and services. And the costs to the taxpayers are double, as they have to pay for 1) reduced services and 2) extra taxation to pay claims (and if they can afford it, legal fees for remedy, so that's three for some). So not only will taxpayers directly lose, they will indirectly lose by reduced services from the locals.

Best regards Eric,

.

Posted by suzannenott 09/29/2006 08:21 PM

Additionally, the NWCLC report also indicates that while i-933 promises to alleviate the complaints of a segment of the population, a larger segment of the population will be agrieved because they will be carrying the tax burden for democratically chosen regulations that have been in place for years. They will receive absolutely NO benefit from I-933 and, as a matter of fact, if it passes, it is estimated that it would end up costing every resident of Washington $1,000 a year.

Another point the report makes is that, today, some landowners are angry because utilizing their land in the way they wish to entails a great deal of time and bureaucratic wrangling (and sometimes monetary expenditures). The report is definitely sympathetic with this grievance and has recommendations for how to make that situation better other than throwing everything out. They point out, for example, that I-933 will totally inundate the civic bodies with "cases" - which, intially, would have to be adjudicated by the courts as there is no structure in place for collecting revenues to "pay" perceived "value loss" by virtue of regulation. Meanwhile, if they think there's a quagmire NOW, it will be far worse if I-933 passes because this invents a whole new arena of government that is not budgeted for nor staffed.

Please folks, educate yourselves on this and get out there and join phone banks, etc. to defeat I-933.

Posted by Arie v. 10/01/2006 02:26 AM

Suzanne,

I believe that the genesis of I-933 was the CAO ordinance in King County, and the early public drafts from Sims office had a RIDICULOUS impact on rural landowners. Thanks to Dow Constantine and others for helping make significant late changes, but the political harm was already done.

What we finally got was much better, but it was still imposed without democratic process. The rules only impact 10% of landowners, but are voted on by the council as a whole and unfortunately no vote crossed the rural/urban divide. DDES is uniquely funded entirely by fees so we get the rules as well as any costs associated.

933 should be opposed. It won't help. It creates a quagmire. It's frightening. However the idea that these were *democratically* chosen regulations will cause even the most progressive of us in rural King County to writhe and froth at the mouth.

We need a middle way as the report implies. However, nothing has come to the table yet. Will it?

Posted by eldan 10/03/2006 02:17 PM

Arie,

This is somewhat speculative, but my guess would be that the value of already-expensive homes that are out of town and in a large plot of land would be reduced, while the value of urban homes wouldn't really be affected, but meanwhile local govts would have one less tool to use to make new developments include some affordable housing component.

Posted by Arie v. 10/03/2006 04:19 PM

Agreed and I see your point. I assume that there was some regulation passed in the past 10 years to require a % of affordable housing. Unless it is incentives based this may just transfer the costs to the developers and in turn to the middle class buyers who pay more for remaining units. (I know it's more complex than that, the calculus of housing markets hurts my head.)

Don't get me wrong, I like progressive policies like this, but I'd rather see the burden passed higher up the food chain.

Posted by Dan 10/05/2006 01:52 PM

I believe that the genesis of I-933 was the CAO ordinance in King County, and the early public drafts from Sims office had a RIDICULOUS impact on rural landowners.

Certainly the genesis of the acceptance of a ballot measure 933 (Ref. 48) in WA may be the telephone game that arose from the KingCo CAO, but the genesis of I-933 is the Private Property Rights (PPR) movement, which started gathering steam in the early '90s. Eric and I attended a very informative seminar recently that outlined the history of this phenomenon.

As to your 'middle way', until you can empower some DOE folk to do a full planning process (taking years), you are going to get regulations like this (us being in a representative and not direct democracy).

What the public will find is that protection of the remaining fragmented ecosystems to preserve ecosystem services (public goods) will require that much of their land be retired. That is: doing the full process with modeling and scientific input in the decisioning process (science having equal weight with economics), will result in implementing adaptive management to preserve ecosystem functions; this will very likely be more restrictive than what you have now.

Planning and regulation always creates winners and losers, and perhaps the decisioning process can figure out a way to compensate the losers (uh-oh: sounds like taxes).

Posted by Arie v. 10/05/2006 05:05 PM

Dan,

I understand and these are admirable goals, but the Realpolitik is that once you are successful, can "retire" private lands thus creating winners and losers, a popular backlash occurs such as 933. No good deed goes unpunished.

Personally I'd much ratehr focus our energies on fighting global warming. I worry that as a movement we often prioritize poorly and end up in vicious cycles of regulation and backlash. I sense a religous vigor with little willingess for compromise on *both* sides of the land use debate.

--Arie

Posted by Dan 10/05/2006 08:08 PM

Arie,

the Realpolitik is that once you are successful, can "retire" private lands thus creating winners and losers, a popular backlash occurs such as 933. No good deed goes unpunished.

I agree. The difference between the Realpolitik and how to go about solving the issue was what I was highlighting (maybe not so well). The democratic process must figure out how to rectify the issue.

I worry that as a movement we often prioritize poorly and end up in vicious cycles of regulation and backlash.

Yes. I agree here too. S's Death of Environmentalism outlines this issue and offers solutions.

I think the application of this land use/CAO thing on the ground isn't consistent and never will be, as the bargaining on the ground for short-term gain negates any attempt at uniformity - the Realpolitik.