Showdown in Cowlitz County

Washington state voted down I-933, and the fallout is already painful. I-933 would have required government to compensate landowners for the loss of use and value in their land due to intrusive regulations. It was a carefully crafted ordinance, modeled on one in effect in Oregon and similar to one approved here in Arizona, but it lost in Washington largely due to urban disinterest in property rights. As many homeowners are discovering, that's a shame.

Localities are required by state law to maintain and update "critical areas ordinances" -- laws dictating where people can and can't build on their own property. Some places -- rural areas in particular -- held off on doing so pending the outcome of the vote. Rural Cowlitz County voted for I-933, but the locals swam against a state-wide tide. Now their officials are getting with the program dictated by state politicos.

The consultant from Portland stood at the front of the room in a pair of dress slacks. The rural landowners, a long beard here, a pair of work jeans there, lined up in chairs.

"It's called socialism!" a man in the crowd shouted.

"Vote Republican!" crowed another.

Yet another man said the government is run by "overeducated idiots."

"We're getting awful tired of it," he said.

The flyer said the meeting would be about Cowlitz County's critical areas ordinance, the local environmental regulations that govern where people can and can't build on their own property.

But, really, it was about much more. The landowners said they didn't like laws being shoved down their throats by educated elites.

Local reaction is understandable -- the law is being shoved down their throats by self-appointed elites who have accumulated political power and aren't shy about imposing their desires on people who live far away. To such people, individual rights are unpleasant and archaic obstacles to policies intended to make the world a better place -- better to their taste, of course. It's pure hubris, but it's an attitude that prevails in today's America -- to the point that it's barely concealed.

Jason Franklin, who works for Parametrix, the firm hired to help update the ordinance, said the "best available science" would be used to determine what's a wetland, what isn't, where it's OK to build, where it isn't.

"I don't agree with coming out of college, reading best science and making decisions unless you've been out there," said Bob Janisch of Castle Rock.

"We have some higher degrees between us," Franklin acknowledged. "Those smarty people that read all those studies and write all those books --- that's us. ... We have a lifestyle that we choose and you choose yours and we try to meet in the middle."

In a county typically feisty about property rights, those were fighting words.

"These laws that they want to make today is just a screw down on you," another landowner, Jerry Reagor called out to his comrades. "It's not about protecting the environment. It's about controlling your life."

Am I alone in thinking that the consultant from Parametrix sounds like a condescending putz?

Absent the protections of legislation like I-933, the landowners of Cowlitz County -- and elsewhere -- are probably doomed. Angry public meetings don't matter to urban-based authoritarians who make the rules -- and who frankly have the support -- for now -- of a majority. Homeowners like those in this article will simply be outvoted and ignored.

If people get angry enough -- if -- they may yet have another chance at the ballot box.

Or maybe Cowlitz County -- among other places -- needs an open revolt.