Proactively managing change in Skagit County

By: Bev Faxon

When Home Rule Skagit promoted a charter form of county government in 2018 to replace the commissioner system, opponents countered, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

The two incumbent commissioners running for office opposed a charter. They argued that things must not be broken, because they traditionally ran unopposed. This November, both face challengers. Maybe this means something IS broken? Or maybe this is democracy: choice at the ballot box, a chance to evaluate our government.

Covid-19 illustrates one government role – to create policies and provide fact-based information during a crisis. We suffer when government fails to make policy in the public interest, fails to represent all communities when making policy and fails to communicate transparently.

We also suffer when government refuses to be proactive. The Trump administration shelved guidelines for a possible pandemic, and then buried signs of a real pandemic when it came. They wasted months of lockdown without distributing tests, developing testing protocols or providing metrics to govern reopening.

The government failed at a basic level: it failed to assess and prepare for a possible crisis and then failed to address that crisis when it came.

Another crisis looms, one that many governments have ignored much as our federal government ignored Covid-19. Like Covid-19, our knowledge of this crisis is rooted in science. Like Covid-19, this crisis can devastate the economy and tear the fabric of our lives. And like Covid-19, it requires action from the global to the local. I am speaking, of course, of climate change.

In Skagit County, we have a blueprint to help address the climate crisis – the Skagit County Climate Action Plan. It has languished for a decade, even as data has continuously emerged. Continuing to ignore our County Climate Action Plan parallels the way preparation for a pandemic was ignored.

What is the chain of accountability for the Climate Action Plan? Why isn’t the climate crisis in the forefront of our planning?

Similarly, what is the chain of accountability for Skagit’s Shoreline Master Program, also frozen for a decade? Writing in the online grassroots blog, Skagit Scoop, Christie Stewart Stein points out, “Skagit County has failed to meet every deadline to update its Shoreline Master Program.”

According to the county website, an SMP “balances development, public access and shoreline protection,” thus addressing county economy, ecology, recreation and property use.

The website also states, “Our current plan was adopted in 1976 and hasn’t substantially changed; it is no longer based on current science, current law or current conditions.”

According to the Scoop, Skagit County received a 2010 Department of Energy grant, signed for by Commissioners Ken Dahlstedt and Ron Wesen, to update the county SMP. That state-mandated update, due July 2013, was finally drafted in 2016. But the commissioners never adopted it. The current target date is now July 2021.

Both the shelved climate plan and the out-of-date SMP illustrate the commissioners’ failure to position Skagit County to meet challenges that cannot be ignored without paying a price.

In August and November, voters will consider the function of county government as they vote for commissioners. The Skagit Scoop provides articles on county issues – these stories do not necessarily illustrate a broken county government, but they do illuminate how our county could be more resilient, responsive and prepared to face the future.

Change is coming to Skagit County. Will our commissioners proactively manage those changes, or will those changes become a rising sea we cannot navigate?

Beverly Faxon is a Skagit County resident supporting Home Rule Skagit and the county charter movement. She worked for 35 years at the Skagit Valley Food Co-op, retiring in 2019.