Rep. Kretz Gives Hirst Update Pt 2
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. The state Supreme Court has given lawmakers a pair of major headaches to deal with this session ...
JOEL KRETZ ... "Interestingly, the big issues here are the education funding, the McCleary decision, and then the Hirst decision on water. Both of those put on us by an out-of-control Supreme Court, in my opinion."
7th District Representative Joel Kretz says it's "do or die," but there are a couple of bills that are still alive that could overturn the Hirst decision ...
JOEL KRETZ ... "The one I've watched is Senator Warnick's bill, and it has come over from the Senate so it's still alive. It does a pretty good job of it. We are actually looking at going a little bit further. Our approach on this is water, the availability of water, and the impact on rural communities is something is "we're not going to water this down, pardon the pun." We're going to fix it completely or we're not going to do anything and that's saying a lot because we know the impact will be huge in rural Washington if we don't get this fixed. But I think this is our only bite at the apple and if we don't get it right we're really going to be really lagging behind in rural areas for decades. So, we're going to push hard to get a complete, basically a repeal of the court decision and something that will work for rural landowners."
Kretz says they are trying to educate urban legislators to understand this is not just a rural problem, that without water, the land is worth far less and when the tax evaluations come down, the urban valuations will go up hard to make up for lost tax revenue.
