The Journal of Business is sadly mistaken to oppose the closing of the Washington Growth Management Act’s infamous vesting loophole, as Senate Bill 5042 will do.

While the Journal’s recent anti-5042 editorial implies the vesting loophole may become abused at some point, let’s face facts: Spokane County has exploited this dodge for ages, creating massive sprawl that costs us all, sucking the life out of our city and leaving taxpayers on the hook.

Time and again, Spokane County has enlarged its Urban Growth Area, in–venting population forecasts to justify expansion, then vesting (approving) building lots within the new area before the state has a chance to rule the expansion illegal. In 2013, 640 new lots were vested in new UGA territory before the state reversed the county’s UGA expansion. In 2015, the county even expanded the UGA expansion first, and then changed their population projection to fit it. And on it goes.

I say this with love, but Spokane is the Northwest’s slowest growing, most impoverished major city. We aren’t housing inrushing masses; we are bleeding established communities while laying waste to farmland and habitat.

These county maneuvers are not only shady, but expensive. They waste tax dollars in court battles the county loses, and in the vast sums you fork out to build and endlessly maintain unneeded new streets, water lines, sewers, schools, emergency services and so on, even as city schools close and neighborhoods wither. The resulting choice between shabby neighborhoods and sleepy suburbs where “night life” means beer and wings at a strip mall then costs us our best young people, who leave for livelier cities.

Meanwhile, metro Spokane’s ruinous car dependency grows worse, locking in still more carbon pollution while making a car a prerequisite for a job. New homes lack bus service because they are too widely spread. With too many street miles for our tax base, potholes go unpatched and snowy streets go unplowed.

SB 5042 would reduce this costly evasion of the Growth Management Act by delaying vesting by 60 days within a newly expanded Urban Growth Area, giving the state time to review the expansion, saving both the environment and taxes.

To those who say this will push every builder to Idaho for its lax laws, why hasn’t this happened in Portland, where dodgy developers have long promised that strict growth controls would send everyone and every business across the state line to less-regulated Washington? Thanks to Portland’s focus on density, walkability, and transit, that city generates companies and highly skilled workers at a rate Spokane can only envy.

Yes, zoning within Spokane’s Urban Growth Area should loosen in order to put more housing where it should be, but those policies are already coming. Let’s keep pushing for more.

However, let’s first put an end to these county falsehoods, legal expenses, extra taxes, pollution, and sprawl that benefit only a few at the expense of the many. Anyone who cares about building a more vital, prosperous Spokane should support SB 5042.

David Camp is a Spokane-based marketing consultant, 350 Spokane Board Member, and an avid advocate of the city he has called home for 16 years.