A recent ballot measure in Florida is making national headlines and is raising the fundamental question of who should be entrusted with the authority to make land use planning decisions.  If adopted, the ballot measure would require local voter approval for comprehensive planning and zoning decisions.  It is a reaction to public displeasure with decisions of local governments in Florida and the perception that local jurisdictions made inappropriate land use and zoning decisions to facilitate development in the pursuit of increased tax revenue.  

The public outcry in Florida echoes many of the same issues that were debated in Washington twenty years ago when state voters faced the same fundamental question of who should have authority to make land use decisions.  In Washington in 1990, that debate did not have the populist overtones of the Florida ballot initiative and focused, instead, on whether local governments or state agencies should be entrusted with land use decisions. 

Competing legislation captured the two options.  Initiative I-547 proposed a top-down approach, whereby “regional growth management review panels” would be responsible for approving land use plans, much like Oregon’s land use planning statute or Washington’s structure for shoreline planning under the Shoreline Management Act.  By contrast, the bill proposing the GMA, embraced a “bottom-up” approach which gave the  local governments discretion to make land use decisions.  Ultimately, the “bottom-up” approach prevailed when voters rejected I-547 and the state adopted the GMA.  The legislation was based on the notion that the local governments should be able to accommodate its unique local circumstances in its land use planning.     

The debate is not completely dead, even twenty years later.  Critics, including Futurewise, question the GMA’s bottom-up approach.  As in Florida, critics’ concern may be rooted in distrust of the local governments’ decision making process; anecdotally there is a perception that local jurisdictions bend too easily to the will of the development community in the local government’s pursuit for tax revenue. 

The many aborted development projects that were casualties of this recession fuel the discontent and lead to second-guessing of land use planning decisions.  However, unlike the populist approach advanced in the Florida initiative, in Washington, the critics have argued for an increased state role in the oversight and approval of plans; in other words, critics have argued for the exact top-down approach that was rejected by voters twenty years ago.  The approach is based on the premise that state agencies are more immune from development pressures.  

A top-down approach is not any more appropriate for Washington now in the midst of this recession than it was twenty years ago when the idea was rejected by voters. 

First, as a practical matter, it is unclear how the state would be able to allocate resources to fund a new program with significant oversight responsibilities in light of the looming budget crisis which is prompting budget and program cuts.  Second, the concept of local discretion has appeal in this state and the top-down approach is fundamentally inconsistent with local and regional discretion.  Indeed, in 1997 the legislature amended the GMA to reemphasize the local deference required under the Act in response to critics’ concerns that growth boards were not giving sufficient deference to local government planning decisions.  The top down approach would be more likely to impose uniform requirements and approaches in contexts across the state.  It would inhibit communities, through their elected officials, from accommodating unique local circumstances.