Funny, but FishPrince isn't as far off as he sounds.

The impetus for the GMA was to prevent the further Californication of WA state and to try and prevent every urban area from looking like Lacey or Lakewood - cities that have no core or "downtown" and consist entirely of a series of strip malls and unplanned housing developments. Another component of GMA is to try and preserve a little bit of the remaining natural environment, an idea that at the individual property owner level is socialist, communist, or much, much worse.

GMA is a compromise. Conservatives maintain that every land owner is free to degrade and destroy all of his land as he sees fit, including the direct and indirect effects of degrading and destroying adjacent or nearby property owned by others, and especially public land. Liberals, on the other hand, insist on preserving all property owned by persons other than themselves, ignoring that their ordinary process of living and working the American Dream also degrades and destroys the environment as well. Liberals also tend to be adamant about preserving every speck of public land, regardless of its utility. Given this context, it's not hard to see how the GMA turned out this way.

Sg