Is the Growth Management Act Working? A Survey of Resource Lands and Critical Areas Development Regulations

Section II of this Article begins with a summary of Washington\u27s statutory requirements for both local resource land and critical area development regulations. Section II then reviews the circumstances under which those regulations have been adopted. Section III describes the methods used by the research team to collect and evaluate those regulations. Section IV examines whether Washington counties and cities have met their adoption deadlines. Section V describes the general approaches being taken for meeting those requirements. Section VI compares the regulations to one another in order to judge their consistency and relative restrictiveness throughout Washington. Section VII looks at whether the regulations conform with model guidelines prepared by Washington State, and Section VIII reports on how the adopted regulations compare with guidelines found in other states and in the professional literature. Finally, Section IX concludes with a summary of the research team\u27s findings and a discussion of their implications, including my recommendations about what should be done to strengthen Washington\u27s growth management system