The Judge Who Dissolved Two Towns
A legal loophole in territorial law leaves aspiring municipalities in limbo after Judge Hanford declares the town-incorporation statute unconstitutional.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The last session of the legislature passed an act authorizing the judges of the several district courts to incorporate towns in their respective jurisdictions upon an application in the form of a petition from the citizens of the proposed town, which is not to be more than a mile square, and to appoint the first board of trustees. Judge Hanford has already received petitions for the incorporation of two towns, Mount Vernon and Blaine, and has refused both, as he thinks the law is invalid. He holds, although he has not yet had occasion to make a formal decision upon the law, that the law is invalid because it delegates legislative powers and the appointment of officers to the judiciary, and because it provides for ex parte applications without giving notice to anyone. The law comes squarely within the objections that rendered the local option law invalid. Judge Burke received a petition of the same nature and refused the application upon the same grounds. As the matter now stands there is no way for a town to become incorporated if all the district judges hold with Judge Hanford that the present act is invalid; but Judge Hanford thinks that the towns can better afford to wait until the state is organized and then get legal charters than to rush in now and form town governments that will not stand the test of law.
“Judge Hanford thinks that the towns can better afford to wait until the state is organized and then get legal charters than to rush in now and form town governments that will not stand the test of law.”
This 1889 legal wrangle highlights the long-standing friction between local governance and state-level constitutional authority in Washington. Today, the struggle persists in the form of complex Annexation and Growth Management Act battles, proving that Seattle and its surrounding suburbs have been fighting over the definitions of 'local' control for over 130 years.
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