Honor life of the commons over private rights, liberties

The perspective that follows our comments appeared in the July 19, 2006 edition of the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader.

Mr. Jay's perspective on the issues brought forward by the critical areas ordinance update process are very welcome in our discussion, and his remarks provide information that we need to take into consideration.

One of the purposes of this web log is to provide access to as broad a range of perspectives as possible on issues of interest to the North Olympic Farm Bureau and the community as a whole. We want to be as fully informed on issues of concern as we can, and knowledge gained ahead of meetings and negotiations helps provide us with a more accurate context and understanding of community opinion. That helps all of us avoid unnecessary confrontation points during those meetings.

We would not agree that the critical areas update discussion is still in the he-said-she-said stage, nor that discourse was lacking in the perspective exchange that took place in the pages of The Leader. Instead, the combination of perspective pieces, including the one that follows, allows us to open meaningful dialog between the various positions surrounding the issues.

While we may have been at that he-said-she-said stage at the end of May and beginning of June, when a great deal of public interest was generated as a result of first readings of the proposed critical areas update, we have seen several discussions, both on the record and off the record since that time. A basis was built for the formation of a Planning Commission subcommittee that will be working on modifications to the initial draft update, with an opportunity for a fully public process in the works.

Within the past week, we've learned that the proposed ordinance update that reached the public was written within the final few days preceding the May 17 deadline. We've also learned from an email message obtained by a county resident as part of a public records request that Jefferson County's senior planner was directed to hold one-on-one negotiations with the Washington Environmental Council's local representative. Both of these topics were discussed during the public comment portion of the Board of County Commissioners meeting on Monday, July 17.

We sincerely hope that we have left anger and frustration behind us as we move into a phase of full public participation in the process of working together on how Jefferson County's residents will be regulated by our government. It's becoming evident that county staff have a workload that is so large that they have difficulty meeting our basic needs, and that we need to assist them wherever possible. It's not enough to complain . . . we all have to be actively engaged in the governance process.

Because the political process is currently serving more as a divisive, rather than unifying force in community life, we prefer to avoid placing our natural resource issues and challenges onto a partisan political playing field. We are dealing with issues of importance to the landscapes and waterscapes that our children, grandchildren and beyond will be living in. We are willing to work hard to ensure that our ecosystems are protected, and that our children and theirs will not be regulated out of the opportunities they will need to make it possible for them to live and work in this marvelous place.

Part of the problem we see with the critical areas ordinance, along with several other natural resource regulatory systems, is that the underlying philosophy appears to be that the individual urban, suburban, or rural landowners cannot be trusted to provide top-level stewardship for the natural resources located on or near their properties.

We beg to differ.

We firmly believe that the vast majority of landowners of all kinds are concerned about ecosystem health and enhancement. We are far better served by processes based on education and incentive than we are by a regulatory regimen directed toward controlling our activities. We are also aware that there is already a considerable body of laws and regulations to be used, if needed, when someone is not providing adequate stewardship of his or her real property.

While Mr. Jay, and others, work hard to protect the commons, the reality is that this nation opted for a strong form of real property ownership when the country was formed. For better or worse, depending on one's viewpoint, it's that strength of ownership that has long provided one of the pillars for the economic strength that allows our nation to have the surplus financial resources to be able to afford to provide strong protections for our ecosystems.

While errors in land mangement have been made over time, we, as a people, have made great strides toward reversing the damage done in past decades and centuries, and have arrived at a point where we are continuously improving the health of our ecosystems. Yes, there is work that remains to be done. There is, however, a better way to do that work than to opt for increasingly onerous restrictions on what people can do with and on their real property. We are gathering together to build that better way.

We hope that there are many more who will join us in that effort.

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Perspective

Honor life of the commons over private rights, liberties

By Tom Jay
Chimacum

For the past month I have been dismayed at the coverage The Leader and the Peninsula Daily News have provided on the critical areas ordinance and the ensuing outcry from some farmers and landowners. Both papers focused on the emotional and personal aspects of the outcry, and while eventually airing op-ed pieces on each side’s perspective, neither paper has researched the roots of the disagreement. Hence, the context of public discussion is still in the smoky, he-said-she-said stage. The perspective pieces were justification, not discourse. Anger trumps real argument, and we were left with the vacuity of posturing.

Years ago Bill Clinton made a cynical statement in answer to a question about the dynamics of politics. He said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Apparently a majority of Americans agree with him and his sharp-clawed successor, George W. That reductive cynicism translates into an ethic that imagines our home places as ciphers in a profit and loss statement.

A friend of mine remarked, when I complimented him on the care he took in tending his place: “Most people don’t see that. They say, ‘Wow, what a great investment you’ve got here.’ “ He’s keeping his place well for his kids, not the money.

The concept of passing on a well-cared-for place rather than a pile of dough is an echo of a more fundamental problem: the perennial one-eyed avarice of private property for the resources embodied in the public trust we call the commons. The commons are the air, waters, weather and soils that sustain us and the cycle of life. No one owns the commons. In fact, it owns us. Right now we have become a sort of planetary flu that may debilitate its host.

Property, on the other hand, is the lines we draw on the commons. These lines represent the areas of control where we act out our pretensions, found our dreams and seek, perhaps, an appropriate providence. For the last 200 years, property-minded capitalists, large and small, have mined the commons (the public trust) with a vengeance. Imagine gold miners in Northern California shooting Native Americans fighting to defend their traditional fishing grounds.

Yes, you say, but we’ve come a long way. We have laws. We do have laws — and the majority of them enshrine the rights of property and ignore the life of the commons. They are about private rights and liberties, not community responsibility. The last 200 years have been a “taking” on a massive scale. Witness the decimated salmon runs brought on by habitat conversion and destruction, the pitiful attempt to replace wild fish with hatchery “rags.”

The agreement between Jefferson County and WEC is not a taking; it was a retrieval of a portion of the commons steadily eroded by the economy of property since European settlement. Did anyone think of sending the timber companies and farm organizations a bill for lost salmon runs or ruined shellfish beds? The anger around this issue may well be that the debts of fathers have been left on the doorsteps of the sons and daughters. This is unfair but does not belie the essential need to heal the commons.

Another Democratic statesman, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, put it nicely when he said, “The economy is the wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.” Prosperity is an old word that means hope and abundance. It is the work-quickened tilth of creation. It is the opposite of debt and despair.