more from landusewatch.com

Rural planning director debunks “property rights” movement

So what are the real issues here? We need to talk much more about why rural landowners can’t make money living on their land. But we won’t do that during the I-933 debates. We’ll only talk about a tiny fraction of the land-value problem that is embedded in larger systemic issues of trade policies, farm subsidies, industrial agriculture, and population growth. The underlying problem for rural landowners is not their lack of property rights. The solutions for the underlying, systemic issues that have marginalized rural landowners for decades in this country will be ignored while we are distracted by the special-interest sidebar that is I-933.

On the surface, I-933 pretends it solves a problem. But it will create chaos and insecurity for everybody in order to pander to a special interest group–and that isn’t good for anybody. We need to address rural landowners’ plight. But we need to first discuss the real issues–not the sidebars–that created this plight.

This is an excerpt from an excellent piece written by Dan Staley, the Planning Director for the City of Buckley, a small town in rural Pierce County, Washington. It was published by the Sightline Institute, a not-for-profit research and communication center based in Seattle, as part of a series on the Northwest property rights movement.

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Letter to the editor, Bainbridge Island Review

Baubrick printed on July 22, “From gardener to property rights activist”, Bainbridge Island resident Jean-Paul Gagnon explains how city officials closed down the garden that had been his personal labor of love for twelve years. He claims that it was unfair for the City to shut down his garden simply because it lay within a protected wetland buffer, and among other reactions he’s become a land rights activist who’s helped gather signatures to put (Washington state’s Measure 37 “property rights” clone) I-933 on the ballot.

The article tugs on heartstrings and prominently describes Gagnon as a die-hard environmentalist, someone who cares enough about the land that he volunteers his time to assist with all aspects of wetlands stewardship. His beloved garden is 100% organic and the produce he grows is often given away at no cost to friends and neighbors out of the kindness of his ecologically perfect heart.

While explaining to your reporter the effects of the City’s decision to close down the garden, he begins to sob and gets choked up for a moment, seeming to cement the idea in the reader’s mind that he is the true victim of the City’s attempts to protect the wetlands on Bainbridge Island.

The problem is that it was not the City that suddenly appeared out of nowhere to ruin Gagnon’s life, city code enforcement official Meghan McKnight was responding to a complaint lodged by Gagnon’s neighbor when she went to inspect the property. Giving as much freedom to property owners as possible, the City does not inspect these properties as a routine for enforcing municipal codes, the inspections happen on a complaint basis only.

So who lodged the complaint? What was it all about? What had Gagnon done that warranted complaining to the City? Was it a personal grudge or was it the result of a legitimate problem that Gagnon had created for his neighbors?

And if his intentions about land activism were so pure, why would he fight for a ballot measure that would allow a Rite Aid or a McDonald’s or a condominium to be built on the site of his garden?

Furthermore, why would he work to permanently change the landscape of Bainbridge Island and the entire State of Washington when he says quite clearly that he’s leaving anyway, with an eye towards moving to southern Oregon?

Uninformed emotional outpourings such as Gagnon’s were used in advertising for Measure 37 in Oregon, a nearly identical land rights measure which is roundly thought to be a disaster, and also to hide the nature of the real suffering that development in sensitive areas can cause.

If Gagnon’s garden was not affecting the wetland then there should be a way to prove it that doesn’t open up the entire state to development by every kind of uncaring business in existence.

If Meghan McKnight was in error when citing violations of City Code then she should be held accountable for her actions as a City employee, and if the real problem is that Gagnon cannot get along with his neighbors then why isn’t he collecting petitions to have his neighbors deemed idiots by the Washington State Legislature? Why is it that we all have to pay for someone’s lack of social skills and risk bankrupting cities all over the State just to keep one Quebecois organic berry grower from crying in front of reporters?

Why does Baurick’s article fail to mention the nature of the complaint about Gagnon? Why does it romanticize one man’s plight while failing to explain that story completely, and purposely try to sway readers toward favoring a ballot measure which could devastate the wetlands for generations to come?

July 30, 2006

from Landusewatch.com

Who’s who in land use attacks

Though he is from Idaho, Laird Maxwell works in Montana, and is campaigning in Nebraska, while in Idaho collecting signatures for a ballot measure passed in Oregon, over land use regulation that will be on the ballot in all those States plus California and Washington this November.

Using tactics such as dumping $380,000 on a campaign for a spending cap Measure in Nebraska (which has received less than $2,000 from all other sources), Laird Maxwell has assisted in bringing in large sums of money from distant real estate interests to severely tilt how property is developed in delicate areas around the country.

Meanwhile, he’s been accused by the Boise City Attorney of having organized illegal campaign phone calls on the eve of the recent Boise mayoral election as part of an illegal smear campaign against Boise Mayoral Candidate Chuck Winder. The phone calls themselves inaccurately tried to blame Winder for a land-use scandal involving ex-Boise Mayor Brent Coles and Chief of Staff Gary Lyman, when that administration allowed a Seattle company to use public space for an extended period without having to pay rent to the City. Winder has often been a target of Maxwell in the past, largely for not being conservative enough, even earning Maxwell’s “RINO” award (”Republican In Name Only”) in 2001 for presenting President Bill Clinton with an award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, of which he is President. The illegality of the phone calls aside, they are only one part of a pattern on Maxwell’s part of misrepresenting how local government uses public space, though the City Attorney’s investigation into his group’s campaign activities continues.

Operating under the pretense of “tax activism”, his clear interest in money alone is obvious, and it should come as no surprise that Maxwell assisted in the passing of Measure 37 in Oregon in 2004, the land use ballot measure which has gutted one of the best working land use policies in the country.

Mike Groene of North Platte, Nebraska, the leader of the spending cap initiative Laird Maxwell has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars toward, has never spoken with or met Laird Maxwell personally, according to the Associated Press, and would conceivably have no idea why someone from another state would donate so much money.

Meanwhile, opposition to the spending cap Measure has raised only $66,400 so far, despite support from such informed entities as the League of Nebraska Municipalities and the Nebraska State Education Association.

So the people who run the cities involved, and the people who run the schools in the affected areas, seem to be in the process of getting squashed by suspected criminals, all so that local landowners can have more “freedom” to do what they’re already doing.

One logo Maxwell likes to use in online writings about his personal economic principles happens to be an image of a pig, which is fitting due to his long struggle to guarantee the right of rogue landowners to build actual pig farms amid some of the most scenic and environmentally sensitive areas in the western United States. Perhaps pig farms are more sightly and appropriate than a gravel pit or trailer park and we should be thankful for his suggestion.

- July 29, 2006