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Home / Washington Business - February 2006 / Chair's Corner: State Must Overcome Duplicative and Overlapping Regulations |
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Chair's Corner: State Must Overcome Duplicative and Overlapping Regulations |
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Written On: February 2006 |
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Written By: by Creigh H. Agnew - Chair, Board of Directors |
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Throughout our long history, we at Weyerhaeuser have learned we must be responsive, easy to work with and offer solid solutions when building and maintaining strong customer relationships. All of us in Washington's business community understand how these practices are necessary for success.
We’re also affected by our legislators' decisions and actions involving land use regulations. Too often, completing a project requires an arduous journey through a regulatory quagmire. We believe it not only impedes business, but it is also costly to our state. It is time to work together to find ways to simplify the regulatory process, similar to how businesses respond to customers' needs.
Consider how land use regulations affect the real estate and homebuilding sector. A bright spot in our state’s economy, this sector has not only contributed to Washington's up-tick in tax collection, but gains in this sector have helped the state earn a budget surplus.
Along with growing and harvesting trees, Weyerhaeuser Company has long been involved in real estate and homebuilding. Our forest products are used to build houses and our Pacific Northwest subsidiary, Quadrant Homes, is the largest homebuilder in the state. When Quadrant completes a successful project, it's not just our company that profits from that success. Our state's citizens also benefit. These benefits include tax revenues that support public services, family wage jobs and access to affordable homes.
As forestland managers, real estate developers and homebuilders, we know how important it is that our business practices meet stringent standards. We must operate in ways that protect the environment and public health. At the same time, we must meet our customers' expectations for high-quality, affordable housing. Neither can be sacrificed.
To meet these obligations and achieve economic prosperity, we believe we need better regulatory balance. This is often an overused term so let me explain how our company views the opportunity to improve regulatory balance.
We see problems caused by overlapping, duplicative permitting and appeals processes. Often, multiple regulatory agencies have authority over different aspects of the same development project. For example, for residential developments many of the same issues may be addressed in plats, site plans, and shoreline, hydraulic, stormwater and other permits. Each agency’s approval and appeal process is different and must accommodate appeals boards or courts on different schedules. This often causes unnecessary costs and delays.
Further, there are risks of inconsistent decisions by different agencies and sometimes it is necessary to cycle back to modify previous agency decisions to resolve inconsistencies with subsequent decisions. When that project involves similar agencies at different levels of government, or if environmental reviews are required, the challenge is compounded. And that is just to gain approval for a permit.
Other businesses in Washington share our company's commitment to meet regulatory obligations. We suspect they also share our frustration with the quagmire of land use regulations. These challenges add cost, uncertainty and ever-retreating completion dates. Quadrant Homes' three master planned communities — Northwest Landing, Snoqualmie Ridge and Redmond Ridge — illustrate this point. Each project took more than a decade and millions of dollars to permit and entitle before even one house was built. Ironically, these communities are lauded by governmental land use planners as notable projects that meet the state's Growth Management Act.
To be fair, government has made some progress to address the regulatory morass. Streamlining the permitting of public transportation projects is a good example. We applaud this and hope the same approach will be used elsewhere to achieve timely, predictable, streamlined permitting at all levels of government.
Can this be done while preserving citizen and interest group rights within the land use appeal process? Yes, because those rights are non-negotiable and must be preserved.
As stated, the challenge is changing our regulations to allow for timely decisions. In the coming months, the governor and Legislature will consider possible changes to land use and environmental laws. We must ask them to focus on simplifying this tangle of regulatory approvals and work with us to achieve regulatory balance that will benefit everyone in the state.
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