1992 was a good year for Wise Use and property-rights. Jim Klauser incorporated the Washington Property Rights Network in February of 1992. Klauser's Property Rights Network quickly spread the tidings. His co-incorporators and initial board of directors gives a snapshot of who is really interested in the small land-owner's plight: Art Castle of Bellingham, who was a full-time industry official at the Building Industry Association's Political Action Committee, the Affordable Housing Council; Rufus Rose, Island County Planning Commission member and later to become head of the Island County Property Rights Alliance; Paul Nolan and George Heinrich of SNOCO PRA; and Maxine Keesling, a retired realtor with the (King County) Property Rights Alliance. The initial board of directors or the organizations that they represented, would become the development industry's spearhead for the Wise Use Movement's assault on the Growth Management Act in Puget Sound.33
Klauser would have a good year in 1992. He was a featured speaker at The Umbrella Group's Grassroots Convention, sharing the stage with such luminaries as Karen Budd, a former Watt staffer who wrote the Catron County ordinances that currently plague several counties; Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, a former Washington governor who had just published "Trashing The Planet", a Wise Use encyclopedia of pseudo-science; David B. Howard, Chairman of Alliance for America; and William Perry Pendley, President and Chief Legal Officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation, James Watt's "sagebrush rebellion" organization. Klauser was introduced as the Executive Director of the Washington Property Rights Network, which claimed property rights organizations in fourteen counties and 50,000 members.32
Klauser's Washington Property Rights Network had been busy indeed. WPRN Board member Art Castle formed the Whatcom Coalition for Land Use Education (CLUE). CLUE immediately paid Chuck Cushman $1,000 to organize protests that disrupted county hearings on a sensitive-areas ordinance. Likewise, WPRN board member Rufus Rose was busy with the Island County Property Rights Alliance. Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson counties formed property rights alliances. Thurston County formed a Committee for Land Use Education (CLUE). In one of their early newsletters, Whatcom CLUE acknowledged that their choice of name came from the example in Thurston. Clark County activists in Cushman's stomping ground had greater aspirations and called themselves the Washington Private Property Coalition.36,37,56
The best was yet to come. In the Pierce County Property Rights Alliance, Klauser's Washington Property Rights Network discovered a gem of an idea: secession. Several years previously, some of the people who would later be part of the Pierce County Property Rights Alliance had attempted to secede from the Eastern part of Pierce County and form a new county called Liberty. The effort was unsuccessful and withered away over the next few years. But the notion of creating new counties from old ones as a path to political control was now circulating among the development industry's front groups.68
Note: see appendix II for more information on the secession front groups.
By the Fall of 1992, both King and Snohomish Counties had secession organizations formed by their property rights alliances. In King, Ted Cowan was a leading spokesman for the Cedar County Committee. Up in Snohomish, two proposed counties were being formed. The Skykomish County Committee was represented by Arne Hansen, while the north half of the county was rallying around the flamboyant John Stokes and his Freedom County Committee.
In Whatcom County, the Whatcom Coalition for Land Use Education was incorporated by Jack Swanson, a local attorney. The initial board of directors was Art Castle, C.H. "Skip" Richards, and Bill Geyer. Castle was an official with the Building Industry Association and head of their Political Action Committee, the Affordable Housing Council. He has since moved his operations to Kitsap County. Richards is a real estate investor and developer. Geyer was the former head of Planning and Economic Development for the City of Bellingham. Geyer would later form the Keystone Forum political action committee, which he had operated as a political discussion group since 1991.37
In the first month of operation, Whatcom CLUE spent considerable funds. Immediately after incorporating, CLUE hired Chuck Cushman to come to Whatcom County for two rallies on May 21 and May 28, 1992. Additionally, CLUE used newspaper advertising and mass mailings on the order of 4,000 pieces as part of their initial organizing drive.39,44,51,53
In the next year and a half, CLUE would spawn two lobbying efforts for county secession, a referendum campaign and many of its members would run for public office. Additionally, CLUE would make nearly $2,000.00 in contributions to political campaigns. Likewise, CLUE leaders would also play a substantial role in the statewide takings initiative, I-164. Given this level of activity, is CLUE an unregistered and unreporting Political Action Committee?
CLUE made very rapid progress as the newest Wise Use group in Puget Sound. The Bellingham Herald gave Cushman such good press that he now distributes copies of their May 22, 1992 front page at his events. The Herald thoughtfully included a small box immediately below their masthead that gave Cushman's instructions for "how to shape county laws regulating sensitive lands, according to Chuck Cushman," which included: "Attend the next meeting of the Whatcom Coalition for Land Use Education at 7 p.m. Thursday at Harmony Elementary School, 5060 Sand Road." An article written by the Herald's political reporter in Olympia, Bob Partlow, spelled out Cushman's past history and role in the Wise Use movement. This was the only mention in two years of reporting by the Bellingham Herald that the property rights groups were part of Wise Use, other than a denial of Wise Use involvement in a January 1993 profile of Skip Richards as "Newsmaker of the Year."40,86
With a kickstart from Cushman, CLUE was packing hearings on land use ordinances with crowds of angry, ill-mannered supporters. In the process, CLUE members found themselves hoist on their own petard on June 1, 1992. At this meeting, CLUE's tactic of bringing in large disruptive crowds convinced others that they needed to be there to uphold the fairness of the process. The frenzy of meeting-packing by the people that Cushman's visit had stirred up drew sufficient interest on the part of the public to fill Arntzen Hall to overflowing. Richards and others would fume at how property owners were unable to get into the hearing and charged meeting-packing conspiracies on the part of students at Huxley College.47,49
In an interview with writer Dexter Van Zyle, Richards described the hearing:
"I mean that Arntzen Hall hearing where all the people that live out in the county -- of course -- didn't get there as soon as everyone else did. So, they were locked out and told, 'Well, there's no more room in the building and we're not going to allow any more testimony.' And then after a while -- after two hours or so -- after most of them went home, then they said, 'Well, we're going to open things up because some have people have left and there's more room in the building and we're going to stay here as long as it takes to take all the testimony.' So that's the kind of public process...."
Oddly enough, Cushman had been quoted in the Bellingham Herald earlier that week as saying, "The idea is to just fill the building, fill the halls, crowd them out." Having crowded themselves out, CLUE used the success of their own meeting packing strategy as a further grievance and excuse for scape-goating attacks on their environmentalist targets.
Meanwhile, back in Snohomish County, the Snohomish County Property Rights Alliance (SNOCO PRA) had been running a savage campaign against the critical areas ordinance, the county and particularly two county councilmen, Peter Hurley and Ross Kane. Their referendum on the land use ordinance had been the object of lengthy litigation and still hadn't made it to the polls. Using colorful single sheet tabloids, SNOCO PRA warned "NOW URBAN AND SUBURBAN DWELLERS ARE UNDER ATTACK!", "TAXPAYER RAPE!" and "YOUR PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES."
In Snohomish County, the Stand-up Action Committee began to agitate for the recall of County Councilman Peter Hurley. The recall campaign collected a sufficient number of signatures, but there was a problem with the charges that the Stand-up Action Committee used as a basis for the recall. The grounds for recall were found to be inadequate by the state Supreme Court that December. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the allegations in the petition were inadequate to support a motion to recall.82
In a typical Wise Use political train-wreck, the illegality of the recall petition only served to inflame the property rights groups further. The tactic of putting forward propositions that do not meet legal standards and then blaming the failure on some form of malign conspiracy has become a standard practice for these scofflaw property rights groups.
Note: see Appendix III for more information on the abuse of public process.
The Summer of 1992 was an eventful one in Whatcom county. In July, CLUE and Washington Women in Timber sponsored a Wise Use "Yellow Ribbon" rally at the Deming Log Show. State Sen. Ann Anderson and Bill Pickell of the Washington Contract Loggers Association were featured speakers. The Bellingham Herald reported that "We are being denied of our rights to own, manage, buy and sell our own property --a right guaranteed to us by the Constitution," Pickell said. "Our property is being taken over by those with a socialist agenda." According to CLUE documents, "During the speeches, CLUE vowed political action against the CAO [Critical Areas Ordinance]."63,64
CLUE quickly followed up on the vow of political action. At a meeting held at Harmony Elementary School in July 1992, Steve Brisbane announced he would resign from the presidency of CLUE in order to sponsor the referendum petition signature drive and subsequent election campaign. Three versions of the referendum were introduced, one which would strike the entire Critical Areas Ordinance, one which would delete substantial amounts of it and a third which would add additional language to the second version. The second version was the one which became the referendum. The referendum campaign, using the name Coalition for Common Sense, did not file any reports with the Public Disclosure Commission until October, 1993.67
During the 1992 elections, property rights were not a significant issue, nor were the Wise Use groups deeply involved in political campaigns. One year later, the political landscape would be strongly shaped in Whatcom and Snohomish Counties by the overt and covert political activities of the Wise Use property rights groups.
The CLUE agitation at meetings and hearings continued through the fall and into the winter. In December, CLUE filed petitions with sufficient signatures to get the Critical Areas Ordinance referendum on the next ballot in November, 1993.83
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