City of Olympia v. Drebick (United States Supreme Court)

This is a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court seeking review of a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington. Drebick, a commercial developer, seeks reversal of the Washington Supreme Court’s approval of the imposition of “traffic impact fees” on its development project by the City of Olympia, Washington, even though the amount of the fees was not related to the actual impact on traffic of Drebick’s project. NELF was asked to file an amicus brief in support of Drebick’s petition. Although the case arises in Washington, the issue whether such impact fees or similar exactions must bear some relation to the actual impact of a development is one that NELF has addressed previously and is of particular concern to NELF and developers in New England. This is because of the prevalence in New England of so-called “linkage fees,” for example in Boston and Cambridge, that are permitted by statute. Similar to the exaction at issue in this case, many New England linkage fees are based on the square footage of the proposed project without regard to actual impact. If the Supreme Court decides to review the case on its merits, its decision will have an impact on developers in our region. In its amicus brief, NELF argued that the reasoning of the two key Supreme Court decisions in this area—Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994) and Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987)—applies in the impact fee context and requires that such fees must be connected to the project impact of a proposed development. In this case, in clear violation of the teachings of Dolan and Nolan, the fees were based on a calculation of the total traffic impact of all projected new developments in the city’s entire “urban growth area,” which total impact was then allocated to individual projects on a per square foot basis, without reference to the actual projected impact of any individual project. NELF also argued that, because courts across the country have reached different conclusions about the applicability of Nolan and Dolan, which deal specifically with exactions of real property, to monetary exactions, the Supreme Court’s clarification of the issue is urgently needed.