Downtown tractor rally tries to cultivate support for property rights

As reported here, [I]t was a clash of two worlds that rarely meet -- tractors, flatbed trucks and other farm machinery rolled slowly down the streets of downtown Seattle on Thursday afternoon, stopping traffic and causing pedestrians to turn their heads and stare.

Their invasion said one thing to the city slickers of Seattle: There's a whole lot more to Washington state than the urban Puget Sound area.

The farmers driving the vehicles were the foot soldiers in the battle over Initiative 933, a controversial property rights proposal on November's general election ballot.

Backed by the Washington State Farm Bureau, I-933 would require the government to compensate landowners when property restrictions damage the value of their land, or to modify the restrictions.

"We think this is a common-sense proposal," said farm bureau President Steve Appel, who watched the demonstration from the sidewalk. "It's not that extreme."

Mr. Appel is correct - it is not extreme to expect fairness from local governments, where it comes to what they allow on private property, although those who oppose I-933 would have you believe otherwise.

Television ads produced by the No on 933 coalition have focused on farmers who don't support the measure, but Appel shrugs the ads off with an appeal to logic: "Would the farm bureau sponsor something that's bad for farmers?"

Unfortunately, logic doesn't apply to those who oppose this initiative, who are trying to use fear in their ads against I-933.

The concern supporters of the initiative have with the way land-use regulations work now is that they sometimes prohibit use of certain parts of their land, which can lower the value of the property.

In addition to creating "pay or waive" method for claims filed about regulations, the initiative would bar the creation of new regulations that would prohibit uses of property that are legal now.

"Do you want the government to control everything or do you want to control something yourself?" asked David Card, a Kitsap County resident who came with his wife to Seattle to lend their support to the initiative. "You're never going to get to control it all."

As I've repeatedly said, I strongly believe that property owners know better what they can and shouldn't do with their own property than any government entity ever will, and it should be left up to the property owners what is done with their own property.

It's the fair thing to do.