The Washington State Growth Management Act (GMA) is at times a legacy and at times a curse to Washington citizens. The balance to be struck in growth management is not an easy one. From its earliest glimmer, legislators and officials struggled to find symmetry among its several goals.

Its chapters are unrelenting in the race to preserve rural and natural areas. But now, economic development, affordable housing, property rights (also charter tenets of the Act) must be adequately addressed.

The GMA mandate is two fold; in addition to preservation, it is intended to accommodate new development. The time has come to reflect on GMA, to perfect its policies and to bring about greater flexibility and balance to complement our community and individual needs.

This month, I’m taking you back before GMA’s adoption, to witness the early and complicated turn of events in the 1970’s that led to an era of unrest in the 1980’s motivated by booming growth and the loss of pristine resource lands in Washington’s big three (King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties — counties that continue to dominate statewide politics. It is through the telling of this history that my desire to review the Act and to make changes in pursuit of the balancing components of it, are made clear.

It may surprise you to know that, even at the time that GMA reforms were adopted, they were not considered elegant or finely honed solutions by any foe or ally for the issue. Gapping holes and contradiction riddled the pages of the original GMA legislation, left there as a result of voter pressure and an intense political tug of war. These problems led to several amendments in the years that immediately followed. Even still, some failures, easily discernable at the time of adoption, are yet un-addressed. But, let’s start at the beginning.

The state’s adoption of growth management was a revolution with many fronts. Through interesting twists and turns of political events, accurately characterized as a race to the finish line, Washington’s GMA was shaped through eleventh hour compromises and political necessities which led legislators to the eventual adoption of the spliced together Act in 1990 and 1991.

Several states (Hawaii 1961, Oregon, 1973, followed by Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont in the 1980’s) first pioneered state-supervised land use planning and regulation or growth management and served as examples for our state.

However, in 1969, the first proverbial shot heard ‘round the Sound awakening us to the era of land use regulation was the landmark “Lake Chelan” state Supreme Court decision. In this decision, justices ushered property owners into a new chapter in Washington’s land use history with their finding that filling privately owned shore lands interfered with public use of waters — a startling revelation at that time that promised to jeopardize any development on fill in the state’s navigable waters — and sent business and labor scrambling to cut their losses.

Between 1970 and 1972, Governor Dan Evans proposed “groundbreaking” environmental legislation contained in the State Environmental Policy Act. These new laws emphasized the interdependencies of environmental systems and heralded regional cooperative planning. However, this regime failed to produce desired results because the laws stood on an already unstable foundation of loosely constructed local land use regulation.

As an answer to critics of Washington’s land stewardship, state legislators first considered and nearly adopted a comprehensive state supervised land use regulatory system in the early 1970’s, entitled the Model Land Development Code. Attempts to adopt that code and another based on the first and presented to legislature in 1973 and 1974 failed in the senate both times and was placed on the back burner when a nationwide oil shortage diverted federal subsidies (planning assistance dollars proposed for states by Senator Scoop Jackson in 1970). In 1989, the pot once again began to boil.

As suburban Seattleites sat grid locked in their cars ten years after these reforms failed to pass muster, many fumed over dense downtown Seattle development and skyrocketing housing prices. As their communities changed, they began a growth management revolution that swallowed the entire state.

Managing growth became important when suburbanites began to lament the bulldozing of farms and forests on the east side of King county and as the revolution continued to swell, the State Supreme Court attempted to shore-up flimsy state regulatory foundations by imposing major procedural requirements.

Politicians jumped on the environmental bandwagon as Seattle-area elections denied incumbent conservatives, making way for environmentally minded newcomers, and when citizens overwhelmingly supported Initiative 31 “CAP,” a citizen-driven initiative that imposed height limitations and annual quotas on office space.

Now enter, a citizen-backed growth restriction initiative, the state legislature, and Governor Booth Gardner.

From 1989 to 1991, a long series of skirmishes developed in pursuit of growth management legislation.

House Speaker, Joe King, first answered the environmental toll by trumpeting a state Growth Strategies Commission at the same time stalling a bill for new gas tax until the commission was formed. He had to wait a year, but in 1989 17 people were appointed to develop growth strategies that would: 1) Accommodate and guide state growth; 2) Link transportation to land use planning; and 3) Enhance regional planning.

Unfortunately for King, a political loophole allowed Governor Gardner to snatch control of the commission, making it an executive function. Through Gardner the commission experienced a re-birth, essentially as previously established by legislature, but with new members. Their report was due in 1990.

About the same time as the GSC began its assignment, special interest groups began formulating Initiative-547 which encapsulated their spin on growth and gathered petitions to place it before voters. But King saw a window of opportunity to at last put his brand of bill before the legislature and launched yet another legislative growth management committee, this time with greater success. King appointed the then state Representative Maria Cantwell to coordinate the ambitious project.

Their proposal became House Bill 2929 and was adopted after members of the legislature wrangled and quarreled over the bill and its subsequent revisions until Gardner, apparently anxious to set this issue behind him, held them in special session — ending with the bill’s adoption on, none other than, April Fools Day, 1990.

Now on his desk for ratification, Gardner vetoed 15 of eighty-nine sections, with the remaining sections becoming ESHB 2929 and the law of the land on April 24, 1991. His gutting of the bill was a source of many gaps left in Act, which caused the citizens to once again stir and which led to the passage of GMA II.

Citizens backing I-547 who had meanwhile tabled their initiative when it appeared the state would take action on its own, now, sensed that many issues were unresolved and decided to proceed after all. Their confidence was high the initiative would pass given the ease with which they collected thousands of voter signatures from the greater metropolitan area.

Intitative-547 was described by many people as more protective on the environment than GMA and had components that applied to all counties — even those with very small populations. It also intended to establish two powerful “regional growth management review panels” to govern virtually all aspects of growth in the state, imposing deep sanctions on local agencies for non-compliance.

Although polls showed strong support, government, business and labor worked steadfastly to defeat I-547. However, officials made promises to move forward with a legislative bill on growth.

So in 1990, last to arrive back at the finish line was GSC, who submitted its report on growth management. This report helped to shape a new bill now emerging to bridge gaps left in the first round of GMA.

Just as the entire effort appeared to unravel, Gardner established one more special ad hoc committee. This so-called “four-corners” group gathered for several months to negotiate and make revisions to the bill. On June 27, 1991, what was first issued as an executive bill materialized in new form and was adopted as RSHB 1025 or GMA II. The two bills became law by July 1991, a shadow of the original bill with major holes and procedural chasms — yet to be refined.

Before state GMA, land use regulation was limited to what would be developed and where it would be placed. Growth management was intended to seamlessly stitch together the patchwork of land use regulation, streamline processes, and propel adequate development of public services before private development. It was also intended to preserve space for unique community assets and protect resources with environmental vulnerability.

Even after amendments, uncertainty and vague language continues to cramp the major catalysts of the Act itself, leaving gapping procedural inflexibility in its wake that has hamstrung property owners, developers and commercial enterprises since its unwieldy inception. I hope that the retelling of this not-so-recent history helps put into perspective where we were going when we started down this rabbit hole.

State GMA is long on good intentions and procedure, but unfortunately short on substance and satisfactory success. The Act needs an overhaul. Kitsap County is participating in several ways to influence and guide those changes, based on yours and our experiences.