The Kitsap County commissioners are said to be huddling this week to consider the implications of a ruling by the Division II Court of Appeals in September that overturned a county regulation that improperly required shoreline property owners to abide by its Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) imposing a setback buffer along the county’s shoreline.

To be sure, the actual ruling reads the instructions for programming your VCR, and it almost certainly makes sense to have it explained by someone who actually understands these things — or possibly a lawyer.

But at the end of the day, the implications are actually crystal clear: The county commissioners, in a brazen attempt to assert control over someone else’s property, got slapped down.

And when the prevailing legal authority does that to you, there are really only two options — continue to flout the law or start obeying it.

The plaintiffs in the case, the Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners (KAPO), argued that an existing 2003 state law prevented local jurisdictions — in this case Kitsap County — from regulating shoreline areas under the Growth Management Act.

The Appeals Court overturned an earlier Superior Court ruling that would have allowed the county to impose even larger buffers.

KAPO’s position is that unreasonably large buffers prevent huge amounts of private property from being utilized the way their rightful owners want them used. Which amounts to theft of the property, since the county is offering no compensation for the monetary value of the acreage it’s taking out of commission.

The court bought that argument, and so do we.

So again, irrespective of how tortured the language of the court’s ruling may be, at this point the county has two very distinct choices — obey the law or not.

Our suggestion would be to go with the former.