Posted Sun, Jan 16, 12:15 a.m.

During the late nineties, then King County Councilman Chris Vance chaired the Council's growth management committee and allowed four development attorneys/advocates to write a hundred page "regulatory reform" law. Hundreds of citizens rose up and raised a ruckus, stopping the law in its tracks. If the citizens of Whatcom County ...

Posted Wed, Jan 12, 1:01 p.m.

Thank you Crosscut and Robert McClure! The abuse of the "vesting doctrine" has been ruining our rural areas, farms and forests, and overwhelming our urban neighborhoods with irresponsible development for many years. Despite our efforts, the so-called "mainstream" press has ignored this problem. The Legislature needs to undo the developer ...

Posted Thu, Aug 5, 11:49 a.m.

The Muni League has many good supporters and volunteers who are sincerely working on behalf of the public...but the organization has an institutional pro-establishment bias which should be wider known. Thank you Knute for taking this on, but you better not run for office around here soon! Many organizations rate ...

Posted Tue, May 27, 3:54 p.m.

RE: WTO at the 4 Seasons Olympic Hotel: It is widely known among trade experts that the demonstrations had a significant impact on the course of events at the conference. It is also indisputable that the issues that were raised by those demonstrations are today commonly acknowledged and central to ...

Posted Fri, May 23, 4:40 p.m.

Seattle Press Opinions Aren't Relevant to the Battle of Seattle: Such a disappointing article for Crosscut! This naive Seattle-Centric perspective of the WTO demonstrations is too typical of how our local media still deals with the powerful historic currents that were and are transforming global economics. Those currents bellowed up ...

Posted Fri, Mar 14, 3:28 p.m.

RE: clarification: I recall reading that Benaroya submitted the landmark status application themselves in order to preempt anyone else from doing it later. Thus, the developer was able to frame the initial issues according to their own interests. The Denny's building is probably not the best example to lead a ...

Posted Thu, Mar 13, 11:33 p.m.

Sly Strategy: Land Developers and their attorneys have been undermining our case law for years by setting up test cases to promote their selfish interests. We used to say that "Bad facts make bad law". How it works is that an environmental or growth management law is targeted by the ...

Posted Thu, Apr 19, 2:58 p.m.

Food for Thought from Brian Derdowski: Skip's article and the resulting commentary has been excellent! The most important thing the Growth Management Act did was to mandate comprehensive land use planning and require that zoning and other regulations be consistent with that planning. It also authorized developer impact fees, and ...