Articles

Author: Brian T. Hodges Washington’s Growth Management Act is a mess. The Act directs local government to continually adopt new land use regulations designed to accomplish a whole host of inconsistent goals. Most notably, the GMA requires that local governments periodically update their critical area regulations – regardless of whether an u ...

Author: Reed Hopper Builder magazine reports: Last week’s announcement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—that it would consider reclassifying the wood stork, a wading bird often found in South Florida’s Everglades, as "threatened" from its current "endangered" status—is the culmination of nearly five years of ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges Regulation for its own sake only leads to more regulation.  Case in point:  Washington State’s land use scheme.  The state’s Growth Management Act was adopted in 1990 and 1991 to require all local governments to engage in land use planning by requiring them to adopt comprehensive plans and devel ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges Earlier this year, PLF stepped in to help Kipp and Marilyn Dunlap protect themselves against an uncompensated taking of their vacant residential lot in Nooksack, Washington (located just south of the Canadian border).  As you may recall, the Dunlaps purchased a quarter-acre lot with the dream of building their home the ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges Washington State requires local governments to continuously adopt, amend, and revisit their land use codes every 5-7 years to meet the moving targets of the state’s environmental and growth management policies.  For years, property owners have complained about the massive cost imposed by the state’s shiftin ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges There has been much to do lately about Watson’s Jeopardy! victory over a couple of really smart humans.  For those who have been … well … hiking in Greenland or something, Watson is an artificial intelligence program that was designed to bridge the gap between data retrieval programs like Google and ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges If truth is held to be a virtue, then why did Washington’s environmental agencies work so hard to stifle a bill that would require them to demonstrate that science used to develop environmental regulations passes the peer-review “sniff test?” The answer (drum-role please): money.  Washington’s D ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges Earlier this year, Whatcom County ended its decade-long legal battle to prevent Lummi Island resident Victoria Luhrs from building a shore defense work that is necessary to protect her home from the damage due to wave attack and shoreline erosion.  And in so doing, the County backed off a harmful policy of ̷ ...

Author: Brian T. Hodges For years, Washington’s Department of Ecology has been trying to determine the source of pollutants entering Puget Sound.  The presumption, of course, has been that those dastardly humans who have the gall to live in a home and drive to work – god forbid that they take a trip to one … ...