Washington State Growth Management Program

Author : Samuel Myers Alcorn
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 71 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (112 download)

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Download or read book Growth Management Planning's Effects on Employment Trends in Washington State Rural Counties written by Samuel Myers Alcorn and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About half of Washington State's rural counties plan under the state's Growth Management Act (GMA) while the remainder do not. Part of Washington State's Growth Management Act (GMA) mandates comprehensive planning for rural areas to protect agricultural lands and concentrate new development within existing developed areas and townships. During a recent statewide review of the GMA, stakeholders in rural Washington State counties argued that the limitations set by GMA rural land use regulations have negatively affected the economic viability of rural counties. This research compares employment trends between rural counties that plan under the GMA to counties that do not. It begins with a case study comparing the employment trends in Stevens County, a rural county that voluntarily opted into following the GMA planning statute, compared to employment trends in Okanogan County, a rural county that chose not to plan under the GMA. This is followed by a comparison of combined employment data from multiple rural counties grouped by GMA planning or non-planning status. An interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) is conducted on quarterly data from 1993 through 2017 on county level employment for both Stevens and Okanogan counties, as well as groupings of rural GMA planning and non-planning counties. The ITSA tests if the 1997 enactment of RCW 36.70A.070(5) is statistically correlated to a change in employment trends. This statute designates what is allowed to be built in Limited Areas of More Intense Rural Development (LAMIRDs), a GMA rural land use planning option used in most Washington planning counties. This analysis is done to test if the claim that GMA rural land use regulations have negatively affected economic viability in Washington's GMA planning rural counties compared to counties that do not plan. The results of the ITSA show that the enactment of RCW 36.70A.070(5) is statistically correlated to a negative change in employment trends in Stevens County which opted in to planning under the GMA. However, when Stevens County employment data is combined with data from the other GMA planning rural counties of Douglas, Pacific, and Franklin there is no correlation with employment change. This suggests that the employment figures in Stevens County are an outlier from the general trend of GMA planning rural counties. In fact, the average employment for the combined data from GMA planning rural counties has a consistent positive trend from 1993 to 2017. Compared to Okanogan, Lincoln, and Klickitat, the rural counties that do not plan used in this study, the GMA planning counties are preforming better in employment growth. The non-planning rural counties did not see overall growth on average employment even though they are not subject to state regulated growth management land use planning. This contradicts the argument that GMA land use planning is negatively affecting the economic viability of rural counties. The results of this study show that rural counties planning under the GMA are having better economic outcomes than rural counties that do not plan. Thus, the non-planning rural counties are not seeing comparatively stronger employment growth and they are not protecting their lands through growth management planning. However, this does not mean that the GMA rural land use policies are being effective at increasing employment. The ITSA model showed no correlation to employment change in either direction. For Washington State it is time to reevaluate how rural land use planning can be paired with rural economic development in order to promote new industry that is viable in exclusively rural counties. This should be done in order to encourage more rural counties in Washington to begin planning under the GMA to further protect the natural lands of the state in addition to supporting their economies and communities.