Property-Right Vote Losers to Keep Fighting

Proponents of an extensive, some say radical, property-rights measure that went down to solid defeat at the hands of Washington voters Tuesday say they will continue their quest for a law that protects private property owners when environmental and other regulations limit the use and value of their land.

But opponents of the referendum, widely seen as a national test case of the property-rights movement, said the defeat should be seen as a resounding public rejection of laws that would compromise environmental, health and safety regulations imposed on the community.

“It’s the beginning of the end of ‘takings’ legislation,” predicted Dee Frankfourth, who directed the campaign against Referendum 48, which lost by a 3-to-2 margin. “People don’t own property in a vacuum,” she added. “They own it relative to the rights and responsibilities of those around us.” Voters favored the measure in rural counties around the state, but urban areas of western Washington overwhelmingly opposed it.

“We got 40% of the vote,” said Jim Klauser, director of the Northwest Legal Foundation that drafted the measure. “That’s a lot of people out there physically affected by property regulations, and they’re not going to go away. We’re going to move forward and not lose sleep over this.” Klauser said further efforts to pass a similar law likely would be made in the Legislature.

The measure, which had passed the Legislature this year with little fanfare before opponents got it referred to voters, would have required taxpayers to compensate landowners any time government regulations diminished the value of their land, a “taking” according to supporters. One academic study estimated local governments in Washington state could be forced to pay out as much as $11 billion in compensation.

David Socolow, who monitors “takings” legislation for the American Resources Information Network, an environmental cooperative in Washington, D.C., said that Washington is the third state to popularly vote down such a law. “If [property rights] is such a grass-roots movement,” he asked, “why do they keep trying to get in the back door” of state legislatures?

Klauser said the proponents of the measure had difficulty convincing urban voters that the referendum “did not just affect mom-and-pop landowners. It was about the affordability of housing, about the way we live. That’s what it’s all about.”