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Posted on 07/27/2005 8:45:49 AM PDT by sionnsar
Critical Areas Ordinance foes register name, taking it from less vocal property rights group
Just who is the ``real'' Rural Majority?
Ron Ewart of Fall City and Preston Drew of Carnation think it's rural folks like them. Foes of government, they oppose any regulation they figure tramples on their property rights.
On their side are roughly 18,000 residents who signed petitions to do away with the county's controversial Critical Areas Ordinance and two other pieces of environmental regulation.
What they didn't have was a catchy name that, as a bonus, carried great symbolic weight.
They've got one now -- at the expense of the original Rural Majority, which unveiled itself earlier this month. That soft-on-the-CAO group is looking for reasonable solutions to divisive rural problems.
Ewart and Drew have taken their name and given it to a new, nonprofit corporation they filed with the state. Now they could sue anyone else who uses it.
To hammer home who is in the majority, they insert ``real'' just before Rural Majority in their logo.
Ewart declined to comment beyond what's in his e-mail Tuesday announcing his new corporation. He cited the coverage the King County Journal has given the ``former'' Rural Majority, including a guest column by Ken Konigsmark of Issaquah, one of its founders, in Tuesday's edition.
``They must like being slaves to government,'' Ewart wrote in his e-mail, referring to Konigsmark and other ``radical environmentalists.''
They can have the name, Konigsmark said, because what his group stands for is more important than what it's called. Their goal is to collect about 20,000 signatures in support of changes they're proposing to the CAO. The signature drive is ``going very well,'' he said
``All that does is express or display jealousies about what we are doing and the high ground we are taking as a group,'' said Konigsmark, a Boeing manager who lives on an acre and a half of rural land near Issaquah.
The group has yet to discuss what it will do about a new name, he said.
``It's unfortunate,'' he said, that Ewart and his group would rather fight than work together to find positive solutions to protect and preserve rural areas.
Besides, Konigsmark said, he believes that a majority of rural residents believe in his group's fair approach to county environmental regulations.
Ewart has distanced himself officially from an original property rights group, the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights. With about 1,000 members, it may add chapters in other counties.
Another core group of suburban and rural residents is working on forming a new Cascade County, a reaction to what they claim is a Seattle-centric control of the rural areas.
Ewart's new group isn't splintering the property rights movement, said Rodney McFarland of May Valley, the alliance's president.
They're on the same side, he said, but Ewart ``is a little more vocal.''
But they're not on the same side with some urban and suburban residents who have a different vision of rural areas, he said. It's not possible to create a quiet, clean suburbia on large lots in rural areas, he said, which are not necessarily quiet or pretty.
What's being legislated out of rural areas, McFarland said, are ``sights and smells you wouldn't put up with in a suburban setting.''
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