Environmental gains in a budget-dominated Legislature

For all the storm and stress of the 2011 legislative session, rays of progress broke through the financial carnage and budgetary wreckage.

Lawmakers used creativity and collaborative effort instead of a debit card to move ahead.

Two pieces of land-use legislation are prime examples of reworking old models for limiting sprawl, conserving valuable open space and preserving farmland.

The Cascade Land Conservancy was a persistent and eventually successful advocate for a proposal to help developers acquire development rights to timber and agricultural lands, and transfer them to participating cities and towns.

The device allows the owners of working farms and forests to make money, while resisting the lucrative temptations of beckoning urban sprawl.

They transfer their development rights to developers who use them to expand projects in urban centers.

Cities decide if they will receive the development rights and where they will apply. Those private investments typically increase existing market values. Incremental gains in property-tax revenues are captured to pay off investments in public infrastructure — roads, parks, water, sewers — that make private investment attractive and possible. The funding mechanism is known as tax-increment financing.

Making the alternative work meant finessing the legislation to accommodate the fits and starts of Washington state law. For now, the legislation applies to King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.

Cash-strapped legislators were able to avoid public funding and still invite investment with a financing tool that is widely used in other states.

Inside cities there is an opportunity to use land more creatively and more intensely. Meanwhile, in rural areas, trees can be harvested, crops planted and taxpayer expense avoided by not extending urban services.

Preserving the economic viability of Washington's agricultural land while at the same time protecting environmentally sensitive habitat and watersheds rarely succeeds by government fiat. Headlines confirm it.

Decidedly out of the spotlight was legislation that nurtures another approach. The William D. Ruckelshaus Center, jointly hosted by Washington State University and the University of Washington, helped build a collaborative process eventually known as the Voluntary Stewardship Program.

Building on a framework began four years ago, a system of standards, benchmarks, expectations, reviews and enforcements was created to engage parties, not endlessly provoke them.

Last month, Gov. Chris Gregoire signed into a law a voluntary plan developed and endorsed by tribal and county governments, and agricultural and environmental interests.

Pursuit of clean water and productive farms while protecting critical areas on agricultural land was a shared objective. Their template for mutual success was earlier efforts in Puget Sound's Nisqually River Delta.

If you ever find the rhetoric and duration of local environmental battles obscuring what is truly at stake, check out Open Spaces, a quarterly online magazine (www.open-spaces.com/) from editor and publisher Peggy Harrison. Since 1997, she has assembled and presented an extraordinary range of regional authors and their essays, poems and analysis.

Tuesday night at Seattle's Town Hall, Harrison introduced three writers featured in a new book from University of Washington Press. Reading from their entries in "Open Spaces — Voices from the Northwest," Lee C. Neff, Eric Redman and William Ruckelshaus shared insights and understanding with tight, bright prose.

Sustaining Pacific Northwest values is work in progress, and always should be. The Legislature took important steps that initially went unnoticed. Tax-increment financing and inclusive environmental stewardship will have their moments. Ultimately, the results will speak for themselves.

Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His email address is ldickie@seattletimes.com