Confused about Initiative 933? You probably are if you’ve seen the ads on TV. Do farmers support it or are they against it ?
Well, the story no longer seems to be about the message of the initiative. Now the story is about the Big Lies that the Corporate Elite of Seattle is buying to influence the outcome of an initiative which farmers need in order to save their farms.
What is going on? Why the Big Lie? Billionaires such as Bill Gates and Paul Allen; Seattle environmental organizations run by Harriet Bullit and Paul Brainerd; Futurewise, the Nature Conservancy, Cascade Land Conservancy, they all are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the “No on 933” campaign. The donations range from $50,000 to $250,000 each, totaling almost $2 million.
On the other hand, the Washington Farm Bureau, representing 34,000 farm families who sponsored the “Yes on I-933” campaign, showed a negative balance at the end of August. The Seattle Elite is trying to lie and buy the outcome of I-933. Why? The state Office of Financial Management showed in a recent report that $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion of property may have been taken illegally by the government from property owners. Just in the last couple of years Snohomish County has lost 2,000 acres of farmland, not from development pressures, but all for environmental causes!
The Seattle Elite knows that the controversy is not about the environment, but about fairness to farmers and property owners alike who should be compensated when the government takes their property for environmental reasons. When you vote in the next couple of weeks you will be asked the following question: “Initiative Measure 933 concerns government regulation of private property. This measure would require compensation when government regulation damages the use or value of private property, would forbid regulations that prohibit existing legal uses of private property, and would provide exceptions or payments. Should this measure be enacted into law?”
That is what I-933 is all about!
As an active farmer, I was privileged to work with Farm Bureau representatives of 24 counties to craft a genuine grass-roots initiative to help farmers. To understand I-933: The Washington Constitution clearly states: “No private property shall be taken or damaged for public or private use without just compensation having been first made.” When government damages the use or value of private property or the right to use the land for growing crops, the farmer should be compensated. The problem the farmers have is they are being regulated out of business. The government requires them to have 300-foot setbacks from water courses, to set aside large tracts of land for native growth protection areas or to require buffers for wetlands. This initiative is called the “Fairness Initiative” because it is about fairness to farmers and property owners alike. I-933 is about the process the government has to go through when it takes property; it defines “damage the use or value” and how compensation is paid, only when it meets the following test:
“Damaging the use or value means to prohibit or restrict the use of private property to obtain benefit to the public; the cost of which in all fairness and justice should be born by the public as a whole … “
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes addressed this issue of fairness in a 1922 case when he stated that government regulation goes too far and becomes a taking of private property when “the cost of the regulation of which in all fairness and justice should be born by the public as a whole.”
I-933 explains that its effect only goes back to 1996 and that “damaging the use or value” does not include restrictions that apply equally to all property subject to an agency’s jurisdiction, such as zoning and nuisance laws. Opponents claim that in Snohomish County designated farmland can be developed for commercial purposes. This is not true because the zoning was done in 1993. Other exemptions apply as well.
A couple of years ago the Snohomish County Farm Bureau spearheaded the Right to Plow Initiative, with the support of a great majority of the voters. This time we are asking you to vote yes on I-933 so that farmers will not only have the right to plow, but have the land to plow! Shouldn’t you be fair when you vote?
Vote yes for farmers! Yes on I-933!
John Postema is president of the Snohomish County Farm Bureau and co-owner of Flower World, Inc. More information: www.propertyfairness.com.
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