You’re going to hear a lot about state Initiative 933 in the coming months, much of it intended to mislead you. Ask hard questions about what you hear from the backers of I-933, the so-called “takings” proposal whose stated intent is to make government pay property owners who think they are being prevented from realizing their land’s full value. The standard pitch for the initiative has a sound-bite quality aimed at provoking outrage against government over-regulation of property rights. But that’s not what Initiative 933, the “property fairness initiative,” is all about. Property fairness isn’t the objective, if fairness has anything do with the overall public good. I-933 is not a Washington-born, grassroots uprising. It is part of a sophisticated, well-funded, well-organized, extensive and intentional nationwide effort to destroy landuse planning in America — under the guise of reforming eminent domain and protecting property rights. Similar versions of it are popping up all over the West. Much of the campaign funding is coming from the same organizations in Chicago and New York, and can be linked to libertarian organizations and their supporters. There are clear ideological connections and shared funding sources for campaigns in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Washington to promote measures similar to I-933. Taken together, it is clear that the effort is coordinated and driven by a single goal: to wreck planning at all local levels in this country. How do the I-933 backers intend to do that? By making it impossible for local jurisdictions to afford the billions of dollars property owners would demand for their presumed loss of use. Localities that don’t have the money to compensate for “taking” certain uses through planning regulations would be forced to waive those regulations. No regulations means no control over what happens next. Think it can’t happen? Look at our neighbor to the south. Some residents of Oregon who voted for Measure 37, that state’s version of the takings initiative, are discovering to their horror and chagrin that local governments are now essentially powerless to stop determined landowners from doing whatever they want — in defiance of any land-use planning. Look around Skagit County, where decades of hard work have preserved a fragile balance of development and farmland preservation. Like how it looks? Take good pictures. If I-933 is approved by voters and fully implemented as intended, the scenery will change dramatically. When the dominoes start to fall, you can kiss farming good-bye in Skagit County. We’ve said repeatedly that initiatives are the worst possible way to make policy. They are self-serving, driven by narrow agendas and almost always deceptively promoted. And they result in unexpected bad outcomes much too often. Worse, I-933 isn’t a response to our state’s issues — it’s an import, cooked up elsewhere to impose a Draconian antigovernment philosophy on local jurisdictions around the country. We are not opposed to development or property rights, and have in fact supported appropriate development and respect for property owners’ concerns about planning requirements. However, I-933 amounts to dissatisfaction with the state’s Growth Management Act being jammed through a knothole. If what you want is no planning, I-933 will do it. If you want to surrender your local decision-making authority to a few ideologues back East, I-933 will do that too. But before you decide, take a look at some of the massive projects that are planned for Oregon communities that can no longer control their own destiny after Measure 37. And look closely at who is behind I-933 and what their real motives are. Then decide if this is really the way we should be making planning decisions that ultimately affect all of us forever. Editorials reflect the consensus opinion of the editorial board and are written by its members: Publisher L. Stedem Wood, Editor Don Nelson and City Editor Dick Clever. Signed columns reflect the authors’ viewpoints.