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Thin
Gruel
The
General Assembly is addressing the land use-
transportation connection for the first time, but
the bills likely to pass won't have much impact.
By
Bob Burke
When
it comes to deciding how much to spend on
transportation, the gap at this year’s General
Assembly is pretty wide. With the anti-tax House
of Delegates digging in against tax-hike proposals
backed by the Senate and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine,
anticipation of a political showdown this spring
is running high.
But
all the talk about money is overshadowing another
critical debate - how to revamp the way
transportation planning and land-use decisions are
made by the state and localities. The noise level
in that arena is lower, which is notable given
that it was a main theme of Kaine’s winning
gubernatorial campaign.
It’s
not that Kaine hasn’t tried – he’s pushed
legislation with mixed success so far. But for
now, the land-use debate differs from the fight
over funding in a couple of ways: There is a a
measure of agreement between House and Senate
leaders for some proposals. As for the rest, the
more controversial ideas were either killed off
quickly or never introduced at all.
Overall,
the land-use initiatives still alive aren’t as
ambitious as some would hope. “We’re
describing all these as first steps, as
incremental,” says Stewart Schwartz, executive
director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
“This is all a far cry from a comprehensive
approach to land use and transportation.”
The
legislation most likely to make it through would
encourage localities and the Virginia Department
of Transportation to coordinate transportation
planning, including traffic impact statements for
proposed new development. It has support from
Kaine and both the House and Senate.
Other
key proposals are cruising through the body where
they began but have no matching bill on the other
side. The Senate’s bill to allow the transfer of
development rights, for example, had unanimous
support there but stalled in the House Committee
on Counties, Cities and Towns, says Jeff Gore,
director of local government affairs for the
Virginia Association of Counties. “That’s an
example of a good new authority that localities
would like to have,” he says.
Gore
says the progress of some legislation shows how
much the political environment has changed.
Proposals that were routinely rejected in previous
sessions are suddenly getting through. For
example, a bill to give Fauquier and Spotsylvania
counties the authority to adopt impact fees for
transportation won unanimous support in the House,
Gore says. Currently only Stafford County has that
authority. “Just the fact that they’re passing
shows that things have changed this year,” he
says. “Legislators have got to be hearing from
constituents on the issue of sprawl.”
While
there’s evidence that legislators are feeling
pressure to do something to fix the state’s
stressed transportation network, they’re not
going as far as some would like. House bill 1610,
sponsored by Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Manassas
and backed by Kaine, would have given localities
the power to reject or modify a rezoning request
if the existing or future transportation network
couldn’t handle the extra traffic. That bill was
quickly killed by a House subcommittee without any
testimony from supporters.
The
Home Builders Association of Virginia called HB
1610 “the mother ship of the 2006 anti-growth
package” and worked hard to stop it. The
Association called the bill “a flawed concept…
that completely ignores the reality of growth and
development.” (Homebuilders association
executive vice president Mike Toalson did not
respond to an interview request.)
Other
groups characterize the defeated measure
differently, calling it “a clarification” of
authority that localities already have.
Kaine during his campaign described the proposal
as an effort to clear up “a gray area” in the
law. “Some localities are acting like they
have” that authority, Gore says, “which we
think they do.”
Even
then, HB 1610 falls far short of a true adequate
public facilities law, or APF, which would apply
to any development, not just projects seeking a
rezoning. Long advocated by the counties
association and Smart Growth supporters, the APF
ordinance wasn’t part of any legislative
package. “So," says Schwartz, "this
was already a step back.”
There’s
also some uncertainty about what impact some of
the proposed laws would have if approved. The bill
requiring traffic impact statements and VDOT input
isn’t clear on what the standards are or how the
process will work, Gore says. “VDOT doesn’t
want to review everything, and localities don’t
want that either,” he says. “We’ll have to
see how that plays out.”
In
a way the biggest frustration for proponents of
changing the state’s land-use patterns is that,
despite a more supportive political mood in
Richmond, the gains seem so modest. “There’s
nothing in here that changes the pattern [of
development] or ties increases in funding to
land-use planning,” Schwartz says. “We’ve
always thought that the best time to adopt reforms
is now, when they’re looking at more money, and
tie it to the funding. But essentially now,
they’re just priming the pump.”
Bacon's
Rebellion News Service
February
17, 2006
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