http://www.governing.com/notebook.htm
Dec. 7, 2006
Say It Slowly for State Legislators
Let’s Link Land Use to Transportation

The greatest value of the smart-growth movement may have been its connecting of land use to transportation. It’s so obvious — where you put highways and transit lines affects how land is used nearby — some may well wonder that these things were ever not connected. But this is the price of America’s hyperfederalism: Highways are laid out by state governments and transit by regional authorities, and land use is the responsibility of local governments. And many times these entities don’t work well together. Which makes the revolt in Prince William County, Va., very, very interesting.

Prince William is an exurb of Washington, D.C., that has seen 72 percent population growth in the last 15 years. As this formerly rural county has been drawn into the Washington metro area, it has enjoyed the benefits (rising income levels, better shopping) and the drawbacks (choking road congestion). Like others in Northern Virginia, its county government and legislative delegation have begged the state for new highways and expanded roads, but to little avail. (More than most, Virginia lawmakers hate raising taxes.)

This fall, the county did an end-run around the state with its own $300 million bond referendum for road improvements, which is a nice down payment. It was this referendum, approved by 80 percent of voters, and the feeling that the state government had let down Prince William, that gave Supervisor W.S. Covington III an idea: If the state wouldn’t fix transportation, then maybe Prince William shouldn’t approve any more housing permits.

In November, Covington introduced a resolution to stop all residential construction for the next 12 months. “This is something we need to do to get the governor’s and the General Assembly’s attention,” he told the Washington Post. “The resolution recognizes the fact that there is a limit as to how far local governments can go. The state has been collecting these tax dollars for years, and they have been neglecting our infrastructure.”

This isn’t a no-growth effort, then, it’s a protest. (Thanks to the housing slowdown, there are no big residential projects on the drawing boards.) Covington’s point: If the state can’t manage its half of the land use-transportation equation, then maybe the county shouldn’t do its part either. Others on the county board of supervisors say they’ll likely go along, if the county attorney says it’s legal. “I think to get the attention of the General Assembly and, you know, the governor, I will say that this would be a shot across the bow to say we need some help dealing with these types of problems,” one told the Post.

It’s not clear that Virginia legislators would recognize a warning shot if they heard one, but one group certainly did: homebuilders. An official with the Northern Virginia Building Industry Association warned that Prince William’s moratorium could cripple its economy. Besides, he said, it was wrong to punish homebuilders for the foolishness of a distant government. “It would make equal sense to put a moratorium on all new automobile sales in the county to solve the transportation problems,” he told the newspaper.

The obvious problem, in Virginia and elsewhere, is that the state is a lousy place for making transportation decisions because it’s too distant from the people served. Better that Northern Virginia make its own decisions about the transportation it needs and the price it’s willing to pay. Better yet if some of those decisions could be made by the localities themselves. Wouldn’t that just invite chaos? Unlike, say, the current situation?

P.S. That little air force base town (est. pop 50,000) is spelled Warner Robins