Letter: What do Sasquatch, mushrooms, apple pie and rent control have in common?

We were told in this current shortened legislative session that bills were a premium and thus our appeal for a review – if not repeal – of rental inspection programs was not going to happen.

Well, apple pies made the cut.

Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, is serving up hot SB6451 which, if it passes the taste-test of his colleagues, will designate apple pie as the official pie of the State of Washington.

With limited time with which to deal with, oh, I don’t know, dealing with the 2018 court-imposed McCleary deadline by which to ensure school funding is “adequate, uniform, and stable,” we’ve got apple pie as a staple on the table.

Jeez, that’s right up there with cryptids and fungi which made news-of-the-weird from the state capital last time lawmakers got together to decide what should occupy their time.

And now rent control.

Now – and our own Mayor of the City of Lakewood, Washington said it wouldn’t happen – rent control may indeed very well happen if sponsors of HB2583 get their way.

At the 22:38 minute mark of the video-audio recording the night of the July 5, 2016 Public Hearing on Lakewood’s then-proposed Rental Inspection Program – which became law less than a month later – in Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson’s preliminary comments he said this:

“What we’re not doing is we’re not considering anything that has to do with rent control. Those have not been and there is no intention to consider anything like that. In fact, we have a couple of lawyers up here who both have a fairly clear understanding that rent control is unconstitutional under the Washington State Constitution. We wouldn’t attempt that even if we wanted to.”

Well, we’re there.

According to the good folks at Washington Landlord Association, associated with the Rental Housing Association of Washington – a representative of which spoke that night of July 5, 2016 in opposition to Lakewood’s Rental Inspection Program – “this bill allows local cities and counties to allow rent control on rented/leased residential properties, which includes manufactured housing communities. This bill repeals the 1981 state preemption against rent control and allows cities to regulate your rent in any way that they would like.”

And so, as warned about previously, what begins as a snowflake so easily becomes a flurry of falling and suffocating legislation and down the slippery slope of government’s unfettered, bureaucratic snowpocalypse we go.

For those who thought Lakewood’s Rental Inspection Program was no more than repairing a light switch, maybe now the light will come on.

Enjoy that apple pie.