Kitsap lawmaker says Ecology overstepping its authority.

Rep. Jan Angel has sent letters this week to the state departments of Ecology and Commerce asking its directors to refrain from creating new shoreline policies and guidance.

The issue centers around which jurisdiction takes precedence in setting shoreline rules and buffers: the state’s Shoreline Management Act (SMA) or the Growth Management Act (GMA). GMA governs “critical areas” which the Department of Ecology contends should cover some shorelines with generally more restrictive rules.

Both laws have been in conflict and the subject of litigation involving Kitsap County’s shoreline buffer zones. However, Angel says the state Supreme Court ruled last year that the Shoreline Management Act is the governing jurisdiction for the state’s shorelines.

Now, she says, without legislative authority, the Department of Ecology has issued “interim guidance” and is developing new policies on how governments can deal with critical areas within the shorelines.

Property owners win appeal of Kitsap County critical areas ordinance.

from Brian T. Hodges, Managing Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation

We just received a published Court of Appeals’ decision in Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners v. Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board. This case involved the intersection of two state statutes, the Shoreline Management Act (SMA) and the Growth Management Act (GMA), chapters 90.58 and 36.70A RCW.

Both statutes direct local government to adopt development regulations that protect critical areas, but in 2003, Legislature amended the GMA to state that the “protection of critical areas … within shorelines of the state shall be accomplished only through the local government’s shoreline master program.” Engrossed Substitute H.B. 1933, 58th Leg., Reg. Sess. § 1(1) (Wash. 2003) (codified at RCW 36.70A.480(3)(a)).

This statutory turf war has actual impacts on the ground for property owners.