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February 22, 2001

10 years of GMA: we’ve only just begun

By KEITH DEARBORN
Dearborn & Moss

    Much has been accomplished. Most local governments have adopted their new GMA comprehensive plans and completed most of the implementing development regulations. But has it been effective in stopping sprawl? New census data this spring will begin to answer that question.

The Growth Management Act was adopted by the Washington State Legislature and became law in 1990. It has been 10, sometimes-controversial years, since it was enacted. Millions of dollars have been spent by cities and counties on new comprehensive plans and development regulations to control growth. There have been hundreds of compliance decisions by growth boards and Superior Courts. Our State Courts of Appeals and Supreme Court have rendered over 25 decisions interpreting the GMA. Every year since its adoption, the state Legislature has amended the GMA, frequently to address unintended consequences.

The GMA has changed profoundly how local governments in Washington make planning decisions and how much money they spend reaching these decisions. Within two years of enactment of the GMA, only two county commissioners outside of Central Puget Sound remained in office. The rest either quit or lost their bids for reelection, in part because of their stance on growth management. Even 10 years later, GMA issues still played a part in some of the 2000 county elections.

After 10 years, there is both good news and bad news regarding implementing the GMA. The good news is that most local governments have adopted their new GMA comprehensive plans and completed most of the implementing development regulations. One could willingly declare victory. For example, virtually every city and county in the state now has regulations that protect critical areas and almost all counties planning under the GMA have identified resource lands and adopted regulations to protect them. However, most observers believe there is much that remains to be done.

And this is where the bad news begins. In reality, we have not finished GMA implementation, but just begun. Assessments such as this article are too brief, and probably too early. In a few years we will certainly have more reliable information upon which to base judgments. While this review can be readily criticized as too simplistic and selective, we have to start somewhere.

How effective is GMA?

Some will say it is a cop-out to suggest that it is too early to tell whether the GMA has been effective in stopping urban sprawl. However, while the GMA is 10 years old, most GMA plans and development regulations have been in effect, at best, for no more than five years. This is really too short a time period to reach reliable conclusions. We will have new census data this spring. Better judgments will be derived from this information. However, some conclusions on effectiveness can still be made.

We do know that more people live in cities today than did in 1990. However, we also know that most city population growth is the result of annexation and incorporation. One of the real growth management problems is fragmented and uncoordinated decision-making at the local level. Often, the bigger regional picture is lost. While coordination of planning has improved under the GMA, the stark reality is that we have more municipalities responsible for land use decisions today than we did in 1990. Many attribute the formation of these new cities and towns to concern about GMA actions of counties and other cities, i.e., they were either doing too much growth management or not enough. Unquestionably, the GMA has had some influence on the creation of new cities and this clearly is an unforeseen and unintended consequence of GMA implementation.

A growth trend that can be identified readily from preliminary census data and population estimates of the Office of Financial Management is that population growth is not concentrating but spreading-out — mostly up and down the I-5 corridor but also in Eastern Washington. While King, Pierce and Snohomish counties still gained the most population, Whatcom, Skagit and Mason counties all grew at faster rates. And for the first time, Eastern Washington counties grew faster than those in the west. Benton, Douglas, Franklin, Grant, Stevens and Pend Oreille all grew more rapidly than Kitsap, King or Pierce counties. It is not yet possible to say whether this dispersion of population is because of or in spite of the GMA. It is clear, however, that more and more people prefer living in smaller towns and rural areas — outside the historic urban growth areas that existed in 1990.

It is also clear that public facilities and services are not as adequate today as they were in 1990. Unhappiness over road congestion, school crowding, and lack of playfields for recreation and declining green space fueled demands in the late 80s for the GMA. One of the most innovative features of the GMA is the required linkage between capital facility planning and land use decisions. The key word is concurrency — public facilities and services should be adequate and available when needed to serve growth. However, the promise is not being realized. The unintended consequences of inadequate roads, parks and schools are illustrated frequently in our region. Places where everyone agrees growth should be concentrating cannot because of concurrency standards or failure to plan for roads, parks and open space or schools needed to serve the planned growth.

We spent less per capita on infrastructure in 1990 than we did in 1970. Undoubtedly, with the possible exception of Seattlites, we spend less today than we did in 1990. Clearly, public votes on recent initiatives have created some new limitations but the bottom line is still the same. For most, the true measures of good growth management are road congestion, schools, parks and open space. While we have some clear successes, they are limited in nature. On balance, we are still falling further behind in supplying adequate public services and public facilities to serve our growth. The result of this is to encourage dispersion and not concentration of growth.

Another issue that is frequently discussed is uniformity in county or city regulations. Clearly, the GMA is not structured to require all local governments to use the same standards. Bottom-up planning is the foundational principle of the GMA — cities and counties have the responsibility and authority for growth management. The voters affirmed this principle in 1990, voting down I-547 by an overwhelming majority. There is very little oversight by State agencies of local GMA planning. Having three growth boards mean that compliance decisions can, in theory, reflect regional differences and unique local circumstances. Lack of uniformity is an intended consequence of the GMA — but it does create problems. For example, some counties in the state are not allowed, because of growth board decisions, to permit densities or activities that are allowed by adjacent counties whose plan or development regulations were not appealed. Another example is critical area regulation. Critical areas in Western Washington are essentially the same from a science perspective but standards to protect them vary dramatically. Typically, the counties and cities whose regulations were appealed to a growth board have more stringent critical area regulations than those for which there was no appeal. Even stout local control advocates are beginning to ask whether this makes sense.

It has become axiomatic, politically, that good growth management is only achievable with narrowly drawn, tight urban growth boundaries. Some believe this is the only way to stop urban sprawl and save rural lands. While the wisdom of this approach to stopping urban sprawl was challenged in the early 90s, the tight urban growth boundary strategy is not questioned seriously today. It is another foundational principle of GMA implementation. Yet this too has unintended consequences, some of which have been described above.

Over the last 10 years, growth management has become an accepted and institutionalized function of local government. Efforts at repeal have failed. The GMA is here to stay. The vast majority of elected officials are not asking today, “Why are we doing this?” There is a broad constituency that is committed to better planning for growth and protection of critical areas and resource lands. Perhaps this is the biggest achievement of the first ten years of the GMA.

The hard work now begins — the truth and consequences phase of the GMA. While most elected officials no longer question why, voters are still interested mostly in results. The GMA establishes thirteen planning goals and a general framework for how they can be achieved. Growth boards and our courts have fleshed out this framework to some degree. Almost every city and county now has its plan and implementing regulations in place and is required by the GMA to review and evaluate how effectively they are managing growth and achieving GMA goals. In the first decade of the GMA, the political commitment has been established. Over this next decade, we will see if the promises of the GMA begin to become a reality.

Keith Dearborn is with Dearborn & Moss, a law firm based in West Seattle which specializes in land use law. He has been involved in writing and amending the GMA and served on the Land Use Study Commission which was charged with finding ways to integrate land use regulations with GMA.


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