Lewis County will disband what is considered by some to be an obsolete part of the annexation process after the completion of the recently approved Chehalis annexation.
The Lewis County Board of Commissioners officially disbanded the Washington state Boundary Review Board for Lewis County during its regular Tuesday morning business meeting this week.
However, according to the resolution, the decision will not be effective until the end of next month, Jan. 31. The effective date is set for after the period of time when it could rule on any legal challenges filed against the divisive City of Chehalis annexation.
The resolution also states that the date for disbanding will be extended if the board still has active business on the effective date. In that case, the effective date would be the day after the board concludes its business.
The Washington state Boundary Review Board for Lewis County is a five-member board that can be called on to hear legal challenges to annexations and other territory changes. The board can be asked to make decisions for the creation of special districts, recommendations for city incorporation and, most commonly, annexation.
The Boundary Review Board does not review changes automatically. Instead, members of the board are expected to be informed on any current annexation, merger or other change and rule on legal challenges. After an action, such as the Chehalis annexation, any local government entities involved and property owners can call on the board to settle legal disputes.
The move by the Lewis County Board of Commissioners is permitted to disband the board as part of the Washington state Growth Management Act, which was passed in 1990. An amendment to the act a year later under RCW 36.97.157 permitted a county legislative authority such as the Lewis County Board of Commissioners to disband its boundary review board if certain conditions were met.
“When a county and the cities and towns within the county have adopted a comprehensive plan and consistent development regulations … the county may, at the discretion of the county legislative authority, disband the boundary review board in that county,” reads the state code.
A research essay by the Municipal Research and Service Center, an independent legal research nonprofit based in Washington state, dating back to 2006 stated that while there was still some use for boundary review boards, the Growth Management Act in many ways functioned to replace the need for the local boards.
Lewis County Community Development Director Mindy Brooks said, after the passage of the resolution to disband the local authority, that the process of creating an urban growth area ahead of annexation has effectively replaced the function of the board.
According to Brooks, even the board's oversight function is no longer necessary as the city annexing territory is required to give property owners in the area a 60-day notice of annexation and an opportunity to appeal the annexation on a legal basis.
“With the Growth Management Act, and that's all the requirements of the county and the cities to do the assessment when we bring an area into the urban growth boundary, we're basically saying at that time, this is where we want annexation to occur over the next 20 years,” Brooks said. “We've maintained a BRB for many years, and it really was a tool to get a last ditch notification to the county that annexation was coming, in case we hadn't heard, so we could talk about rights-of-way. Now, with the new (interlocal agreement) processes that were just adopted into the RCW, we expect most annexations to happen like that, which means we're coordinating from the get-go.”
Lewis County is one of 15 counties in the state to still use a boundary review board. There are 39 counties in Washington state, with many of the most rural counties eliminating the “quasi-judicial” authorities.
Brooks added that many of the counties that have decided to maintain a boundary review board are larger and more populous counties that have more regular challenges and more need for an independent body to take on the workload.
