Farm Bureau's Legislators of the Year Pt 2
I'm Bob Larson. We talked yesterday about the pair of state lawmakers named Legislators of the Year at the Washington Farm Bureau's annual Legislative Banquet.
The awards went to Moses Lake Senator Judy Warnick and Moxee Representative David Taylor, both instrumental in crafting a fix for the state Supreme Court's Hirst decision.
Taylor was against the ruling from the beginning ...
TAYLOR ... "Not only did I disagree with that decision, I'm here to tell you that that decision ignored roughly a hundred years of water law in Washington state and literally hundreds of years of common law and western water law prior appropriation doctrine."
Taylor says the court ignored previous rulings entirely ...
TAYLOR ... "In order to reach the decision, the court reached, they had to ignore not only previous decisions, but they had to reinterpret water law. That's the only way you can reach that decision."
But now, Taylor said, the night they passed the Hirst fix, the wait for rural landowners is over ...
TAYLOR ... "You can go and get a building permit tomorrow and you can drill a well tomorrow. There are some limitations on the gallons per day usage, but the fact of the matter is if you own property and you've been waiting in limbo to get a building permit, you can move forward because we have taken care of the obstacle the Supreme Court has created."
Farm Bureau president Mike LaPlant says Taylor played an integral role in the Hirst negotiations and the K-thru-12 funding plan that met the requirements of the McCleary decision without the need for new taxes.
