Friday, December 6, 2019
CapitalPress.com
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Washington lands chief proposes tax for wildfire prevention
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Washington Lands Com-
missioner Hilary Franz pro-
posed Monday taxing insur-
ance policies to raise $63
million a year to prevent and
fight wildfires.
The $5-per-policy tax
would apply to home, auto
and other types of property
and casualty insurance. The
proposal varies only slightly
from one that insurance com-
panies successfully opposed
last year.
Franz said the money
would allow the Department
of Natural Resources to carry
out long-range plans to thin
forests and reduce the risk of
catastrophic wildfires.
“Strategic plans are only
as good as the funding that
comes forward to imple-
ment them. Otherwise, they
are simply piles of paper on
a shelf,” she said at a press
conference in Tumwater.
Franz last year backed a
proposal to raise the tax that
insurance companies pay on
Ted S. Warren/Associated Press File
In this Aug. 21, 2015, photo, an air tanker drops fire retardant on a wildfire burning
near Twisp, Wash. The state commissioner of Public Lands released a proposal Mon-
day that would provide $63 million each year to fight wildfires and take steps to pre-
vent them in the first place.
gross receipts.
Insurance
companies
argued that a tax on their
revenue would force them
and their customers to pay
for something that benefits
everyone. Northwest Insur-
ance Council President Ken-
ton Brine said Monday that
directly taxing policy holders
was no better.
“People are not going
to be thrilled about getting
higher taxes right now,” he
said. “You can’t get a more
regressive tax than this one.”
Franz said that the tax
could pay for 42 more fire-
fighters, 15 more firetrucks
and crew leaders, one heli-
copter and more training for
volunteer firefighters. The
money also could fund forest
thinning, controlled burns,
replanting burned areas and
other measures to protect
property.
As proposed, the money
could not be tapped, or
raided, for emergency fire
suppression. The DNR
annually asks lawmakers
for a separate appropriation
to cover the actual costs of
fighting fires.
House
Environmental
Committee Chairman Joe
Fitzgibbon, D-Burien, said
he will introduce a bill to
impose the tax and direct its
spending.
Fitzgibbon said climate
change will make wildfires
worse and that preventing
blazes will be less expensive
than fighting them.
“This is an approach that
will save us money in the
long run,” Fitzgibbon said.
Representatives from the
Washington Fire Chiefs, The
Nature Conservancy and
American Lung Association
endorsed the proposal at
the press conference. There
were no Republicans there.
Rep. Tom Dent, R-Mo-
ses Lake, joined Franz a
year ago to support a wild-
fire-spending plan. The idea
of taxing insurance policies
came later.
“There was a lot of push-
back on that, me included,”
Dent said Monday.
Dent said he still back
many of Franz’s ideas for
spending the money, but he
opposes raising taxes.
“I think there is plenty
of money,” Dent said. “We
need to narrow down our
priorities.”
Without raising taxes on
insurance companies, law-
makers this year appropri-
ated about $38 million in the
current two-year budget for
fire prevention and suppres-
sion by the DNR.
Besides arguing that it
was unfair to single them
out to pay for fire preven-
tion, insurance companies
said higher taxes would
put them at a disadvantage
in selling policies in other
states.
A DNR spokesman said
the agency tried to alleviate
the concern by directly tax-
ing policy holders.
Brine said the industry is
still concerned about hav-
ing to collect the the tax
and how the revenue will
be interpreted by tax and
insurance regulators in other
states.
Halloween trademark sparks agritourism dispute
Two companies
claim ownership of
‘Nightmare on 9’
trademark
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A trademark dispute has
erupted between a Washing-
ton farm and a haunted house
company over a popular Hal-
loween event that may prove
instructive for other agritour-
ism operations.
The Thomas Family Farm
and the SeattleHaunts attrac-
tions company have both filed
lawsuits seeking damages and
to stop the other from using the
“Nightmare on 9” trademark,
which refers to the Washing-
ton State Route 9 along which
the farm is located.
Both complaints acknowl-
edge the farm and the oper-
ator were involved with the
first annual “Nightmare on 9”
haunted house in Snohomish
County in 2012 and that they
parted ways after the 2018
Halloween season.
However, the two disagree
about who devised the trade-
mark concept and about their
initial roles in operating the
event.
The lawsuit filed in state
court by Thomas Family
Farm claims the idea origi-
nated with the farm, which
also paid a commercial
designer for the logo, while
SeattleHaunts provided the
labor in 2012 and was after-
wards hired as a contractor to
run the operation.
The farm also alleges it
registered the trademark with
the Washington Secretary of
State last year.
SeattleHaunts,
mean-
while, claims in federal court
that it was an equal partner
with the farm during the 2012
event and provided contract
services afterwards, with its
owner creating the “Night-
mare on 9” name and hiring
U.S. Copyright Office
A trademark dispute has erupted between a Washing-
ton farm and a haunted house company over the logo
used for a popular Halloween event in Snohomish
County, Wash.
the designer.
The haunted house com-
pany claims the farm’s trade-
mark registration was “fraud-
ulent” and filed “under a
false claim of ownership,”
while SeattleHaunts obtained
a valid copyright for “Night-
mare on 9” from the federal
government in 2019.
Without commenting on
the specifics of the dispute,
adjunct trademark law pro-
fessor Robert Cumbow of
Seattle University said it’s
critical for parties involved
in such ventures to establish
a trademark rights agreement
as early as possible.
While negotiating such
matters may be awkward
when everyone is getting
along, it can create a “messy
situation” when such rela-
tionships fracture, said Cum-
bow, who is also an intellec-
tual property attorney with
the Miller Nash Graham &
Dunn law firm.
“At that point, you’re both
going to wish you put some-
thing in writing,” he said.
Under the law, the owner
of the trademark isn’t the
person who came up with
the concept but rather who
initially relied on it to offer
goods or services to the pub-
lic, Cumbow said. “It’s not
who thought of it, it’s the first
person to actually use the
trademark.”
When an entity or partner-
ship that owns a trademark
breaks up without a contrac-
tual agreement about owner-
ship, “it does become very,
very difficult,” he said.
While not technically
required by law, registering
a trademark with the state or
federal governments will also
bolster an argument of own-
ership, he said. “Registration
gives you the presumption
of validity in your trademark
ownership.”
Without a contract or clar-
ity about who starting using
the trademark first, a court
will generally look to the
relationship between parties
and any other written agree-
ments that may provide a
clue as to ownership, he said.
The goal of trademark
law is to prevent confusion
among members of the pub-
lic as to who is the actual pro-
vider of a sought-after good
or service, Cumbow said.
A court may decide both
parties in a dispute own a
trademark and then impose
limitations on its use, but
there have been cases where
courts held that neither party
owned it anymore, he said.
Environmentalist calls for
discussions on Snake River dams
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Stakeholders need to begin
talking about the possible
impacts to Northwest com-
munities if four dams on the
Snake River are removed,
says the leader of a group that
advocates their removal.
“I don’t see any reason
why we can’t make a transi-
tion to a free-flowing lower
Snake River and do so in a
way that leaves agricultural
communities either whole or
with additional opportuni-
ties,” Joseph Bogaard, execu-
tive director of Save Our Wild
Salmon, based in Seattle, told
the Capital Press.
Environmental
groups
have for years called for the
removal of the Ice Harbor,
Lower Monumental, Lit-
tle Goose and Lower Gran-
ite dams, citing their impacts
on federally protected salmon
and, more recently, orcas.
Bogaard said the conser-
vation and fishing communi-
ties are committed to finding
ways to help ensure greater
certainty for all involved,
including fishing and farming
communities.
“I don’t think it’s some-
thing we do overnight, I don’t
Save Our Wild Salmon
Joseph Bogaard is exec-
utive director of the Save
Our Wild Salmon Coali-
tion.
think it takes 10 years,” he
said. “I think we can, with a
plan and political leadership
and support and buy-in of key
stakeholders, this is some-
thing that can be done in three
to five years.”
Bogaard pointed to “a lot
of evidence, analyses and
studies that have looked at
the science and economics”
around the dams, arguing
that they are “high-cost and
low-value dams with services
that, while they’re import-
ant and there’s communities
that rely on them, they are
replaceable.”
“There’s quite a bit of evi-
dence that suggests that some
of the services, maybe all of
the services currently pro-
vided by the dams, can be fea-
sibly and affordably replaced,
if we work together (and) put
together the kinds of plans
that involve timelines, dollars
and programming to ensure
the communities that cur-
rently rely on those dams or
reservoirs can transition to
alternative means of delivery,
say irrigation water or moving
transportation on land rather
than on the river, or electric-
ity,” he said.
Advocates for maintain-
ing the dams argue that taking
them out would not benefit
salmon or orcas to the degree
that environmentalists say,
and would negatively affect
trade. Barges use the Snake
and Columbia rivers and pass
through the locks at the dams
to take grain to market down-
stream and supplies to farms
upstream.
Pacific Northwest Water-
ways Association executive
director Kristin Meira recently
called
environmentalists’
arguments simplistic, saying
they are touting the idea that
one action in one area would
lead to species recovery.
We wish all of our fellow farmers
a Merry Christmas
and a joyful New Year!
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