MASTER PLANNED DEVELOPMENTS, MARIJUANA AND THE RISE OF DEMAGOGUES

The last week has been a fun-filled ride spent listening to a series
of public hearings about master planned developments and marijuana.

I attended five days of hearings concerning the development agreements
for YarrowBay's two master planned developments in Black Diamond and
there was a pubic hearing Tuesday in Kent City Council Chambers about
the moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries and collective grows.

It may not seem there is much in common between the two, but, there
is.

I have been covering contentious and, at times, outright hostile
meetings for longer than I would like to admit. My entertainment is
the roundhouse swings that come in my direction as often as the
government officials.

There is an ongoing race to the bottom of the popularity list between
government guys, lawyers and journalists.

Most nights I don't sleep well if I don't have at least one guy who
wants to run over me with a slow-moving cement truck.

What struck me over the last week at the various hearings was
language. I spend a lot of time thinking about words and how people
use them. The way someone uses language can be a self-disclosing
window into an inner world.

For anyone who spent time at the development agreement or the medical
marijuana hearings, it is clear there are many folks with genuine
concern for what they see in their future. A great deal of the
testimony was straight from the heart, real talk from real people on
all sides of the issues.

The common theme that jumped out to me is badly written laws breed
confusion and fear and they spread like wildfire.

From the fog of fear and confusion comes demagogues and they can be
very dangerous to the democratic process.

They feed on the fear and use the confusion of bad laws and poorly
conceived public processes to inflate their own image.

If you want to find their motivations, follow the money.

The language of a demagogue rings with apparent clarity until someone
pulls one of the cards out of the house and it falls.

When you sit and listen to the hours of emotional testimony and
shouting, it can be difficult to find the core of the issue.

What I have seen at the land use and the medical marijuana hearings
are epic wrestling matches with bad laws.

The state Growth Management Act may have been conceived with the best
intentions, but, it has devolved into a monstrosity. Even God falls
asleep trying to figure this code out.

No one beyond land-use lawyers can possibly follow the twists and
turns of this law and the attorneys argue about the meaning of every
other sentence.

I believe the GMA has forced cities into writing defensive code meant
to stand up in court. Cities write zoning laws conceived by lawyers
instead of planners. The farther we travel down this road, the more
the city planners are pushed to the sidelines, as the attorneys
prepare for battle.

I'm in no way criticizing attorneys, their job is to protect their
clients. They are forced to walk this road with blind alleys just like
everyone else.

The result is the regular guy is cut out of the process and that makes
him mad.

Big surprise.

Talk about bad law, a first grader could write better law than the
feds and state Legislature have done with marijuana.

We have a federal law stating it is a Schedule 1 narcotic, and we have
a state law supposedly allowing a collective grow of marijuana, under
conditions no one can quite figure out.

Would everyone please break out the black lights and roach
clips.

This is the goofiest mess I have ever seen.

At least first graders can figure out how to be fair and tell the
truth.

These law puzzles with missing pieces create the demagogues that come
out saying all the right words for all the wrong reasons. They drain
the truth out of a discussion and replace it with confusion for their
own self gain.

The best defense against this is always being honest with ourselves,
and being willing to think on our own, rather than agree with someone
because it makes three guys cheer and clap.

Take it from me, the cement trucks aren't that hard to dodge ... most
of the time.

It is my job to write as clearly and fairly as I can. I believe
newspapers are essential to the public process. It is a place where
all the voices can be heard.

I have been hatching a plan to try live debates on the paper's website
covering a variety of subjects. I think it could be a lot of fun and a
way for real dialogue to break through. It's an idea.

I see demagogues as a danger and bad law as a looming threat, but, in
the end regular folks will see through the smoke. If we listen
carefully the tinny talk discloses the truth.