County to use Farm Bill funds to buy up development rights

By Sue Forde, Editor
Citizen Review Online

Clallam County, WA – 9/18/02 - Clallam County has gotten its share of the pork-laden Farm Bill [1] passed by Congress last year. County Commissioner Steve Tharinger (D), who submitted a proposal last year to take $250,000 from the county’s capital project fund to use for buying up development rights, proudly announced that the “county’s money had been doubled” by getting federal matching funds from the Farm Bill.

Clallam County is in a budget crunch, short anywhere from $800,000 - $1.4 million to balance the 2003 county budget, yet the county – with Mr. Tharinger’s promotion of the idea – keeps moving forward in buying up land and land rights, removing it from private ownership and placing it into “public” ownership.

The “Conservation Future Fund” which received the benefit of the county’s money last year, uses taxpayers’ money. County taxpayers refused to increase real estate taxes to fund the project, so Tharinger proposed that existing county money be used instead.

The county is looking at three properties, consisting of 24, 28 and 45 acres respectively. Some of the parcels had been short-platted into five acre residential development pieces. Buying up development rights for “future farmland” will further decrease the ability for future generations to live here, with an increasing shortage of affordable housing.

Tharinger stated that should the owners of the acreage the county is interested decide against selling, the farmland grant money is available until 2004, so the county could locate “another willing seller.”

Last December, citizens voiced their overwhelming opposition to the idea of using taxpayers’ money for the fund. In the original proposal, the money to purchase the development rights would have come from a tax increase, passed by resolution of the county commissioners. Over 150 people showed up at the public hearing, including State Representative Jim Buck (R) to oppose the idea. Because of the public controversy over the increase, commissioners backed off the idea, and instead took existing money from the county budget to use for the scheme.

“In the long run, communities that have had these sorts of programs have seen their tax pressure dimish,” Tharinger said then. The lone Republican commissioner, Mike Chapman, said “This is bad government and this is bad process.” Commissioner Mike Doherty (D), who is running for re-election this year, had supported Tharinger’s proposal, saying “Ag land helps create a tax base to offset the cost of development.” He claimed that 400 jobs would be saved. (One wonders where those 400 jobs are, since Clallam County, although once a dairy farm community, has moved away from farming as the income has dried up.) Clallam County’s base used to be primarily timber production, although much of that has dried up, thanks to the Spotted Owl listing under the Endangered Species Act.) 2

Buying up development rights, according to Realtor Don Alexander, will “only make the remaining land more valuable,” and reduce land availability. The more land that goes into government ownership or control, the less remains available to homeowners.

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[1] Some $79 billion has been allocated through the federal Farm Bill – much of which is to be used for “conservation programs” – where farmers take cash payments in return for taking their land out of production and letting it return to the wild. As of July 2001, farmer across the county had already set aside more than 35 million acres as nature reserves, and another million acres of wetlands as part of the two major conservation programs supported by the farm program. See Farm Bill includes billions of taxpayers' dollars to buy up development rights, "conserve" land, Citizen Review Online, 5/15/2002 (http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/may_2002/farm_bill_includes.htm)

[2] For more information about the conservation future funds, read Conservation Futures Fund proponents offer flawed arguments for passage of new tax by Sue Forde, Editor, Citizen Review Online http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/Dec_2001/conservation_futures.htm