On March 3, the Washington Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge of an appeals court decision on July 7, 2008, which overturned part of King County’s critical areas ordinance. The CAO prevented rural property owners from developing up to 65% of their land.
In July, attorney Brian Hodges, who sued on behalf of the Citizens’ Alliance for Property Rights (CAPR) said, “The county basically drew a line around rural King county and said ‘we’re just going to take-away 50 to 65 percent of your property.’” He also said that property owners might have claims against the county. “We haven’t really thought about what recourse, but there should be some recourse for people who have been denied the use of their property unlawfully for the past four years.”
Now that the supreme court has refused to hear an appeal, damage claims for illegal taking can proceed. The appeals court commented in its ruling that the fundamental purpose of the Takings Clause is not to bar government from requiring a developer to deal with problems of the developer’s own making, but “to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.”
Steve Hammond, president of the Citizens’ Alliance for Property Rights, said the order “puts the nail in the coffin” of the most controversial element in the critical-areas package.
“I’ve been saying since 2004, when I was on the [County] Council, this is not the right thing to do,” Hammond said of the clearing law. “This is the homeowner having to make a donation to the open-space program. Two-thirds of your property is a pretty significant donation. That’s bad.
Read more in the Seattle Times.
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