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There’s something energizing about midsummer. If it’s not the camping trips, or the afternoon concerts in the park, then it must be the flurry of property rights campaigns gearing up for the fall election. Here’s the latest: In Oregon, the “Yes on 49” campaign kicked off yesterday. (Measure 49 is the state legislature’s referendum that will trim back some portions of Measure 37.) I can’t find a website for the “No on 49”...

As I mentioned last week, greater Vancouver leads the Northwest in transit ridership, with somewhere between two and three times as many annual bus and train rides per person as Portland and Seattle. So the obvious question: how come? Why does Vancouver do so much better in transit statistics than its southern neighbors? If you’re from Seattle, the “obvious” answer might seem to be Vancouver’s SkyTrain light rail system, which...

Property rights activists are floating a new regulatory takings measure—this time in Alaska. A new ballot initiative is being proposed in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, an area north of Anchorage that is expected to experience rapid growth in the coming decades. Why a “property rights” bill in “Mat-Su”? Tough to say. Property is so lightly regulated there that the borough’s website prominently includes this explanation: Zoning, Land Use and Building Regulations DO...

In the aftermath of last year’s battle royale over property rights, some of Washington’s leaders in Olympia have come up with an interesting proposal: an attempt at compromise brokered by the nonpartisan William D. Ruckelshaus Center. My sense is that a sizeable chunk of those who voted for Initiative 933 might find their concerns addressed by compromise solutions. Many of the strongest objections to property regulations, at least in Washington,...

Northwest endangered species have been generating a lot of ink lately. Rocky Mountain gray wolves are likely heading for de-listing. Meanwhile, Puget Sound’s orcas were recently added to the list. Even a recovery effort for a handful of rare rabbits made the news. There are plenty more examples, of course, but these species remind us that much of the region’s natural heritage relies on the protection afforded by federal laws. So it’s a...

I first ran across Sightline’s book Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Thingsduring the winter of 1997, just after it was published. I was working as an editor at a now-defunct weekly newspaper, and part of my job was to look through stacks of new books that publishers sent us and assign reviews for a handful of them. Stuff was one of ’em. I can’t remember if we reviewed it,...

A wolf. Or least a wolf hunting tag if you’re an Idaho resident.  Bad, right? Yes, but it’s not really as simple as it first appears. As you may already know, the federal government is preparing to remove Rocky Mountain wolves from the the Endangered Species Act, probably this year or next. (The re-introduced wolves have been exceeding recovery targets since 2002.) When “de-listing” occurs, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming will initiate a...

Last autumn, Western states braced against an onslaught of “takings” initiatives masquerading as protections for property rights. In the run-up to the elections, voters were regaled with scary stories of abusive government regulation and eminent domain. Many of the stories turned out to be apocryphal, but some were genuine. And those of us who warned against the initiatives, such as I-933 in Washington, said we’d support real fixes for real...

It looks like the Washington legislature is going to take up eminent domain soon. According to editorial coverge in the P-I: A bill this legislative session should require general public notification (beyond Web-based meeting dockets) of condemnation decisions and direct notification of landowners by any government considering using eminent domain to acquire property. Openness is vital. That sounds like an unalloyed good to me. There’s also movement afoot to go...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… There’s rumors on the Internets, as they say, that property rights supporters are going to revive Washington’s Initiative 933 and California’s Proposition 90. And it hasn’t even been a week since the election! I mention this for two reasons. First, I’ve been dying for chance to write the phrase Whac-A-Mole—and this is really the perfect opportunity. Second,...