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About
Face
Gov.
Tim Kaine has backed away from the land-use
legislation he touted during the 2005
campaign.
By
Bob Burke
As
a candidate Tim Kaine promised frustrated
commuters in the state’s most congested regions
that he would “give local communities more power
to say ‘NO’ to out-of-control development.”
But
supporters of increasing that link between
land-use and transportation say that in this
year’s General Assembly session Kaine is not
backing up his campaign talk. During
behind-the-scenes negotiations last week, they
say, Gov. Kaine pulled his support for critical
land-use legislation that would have given
localities the power to reject a rezoning request
if the local road network couldn’t handle the
extra demand.
That
stunned supporters of Kaine’s growth- management
initiatives, among them Del. Robert Marshall,
R-Manassas, who in January introduced a similar
bill on Kaine’s behalf. But that bill was
quickly killed last month by a House of Delegates
subcommittee. Marshall says he was working last
weekend on an amendment to revive the rezoning
authority in the Senate when Kaine aides told him
the governor wouldn’t actively support it.
“They
pulled the damn rug out from under me,” an angry
Marshall said yesterday. Why Kaine pulled back is
in dispute. Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall said the
governor hasn’t wavered from his support for the
rezoning authority, but acknowledged Kaine’s
shift. “We
counted the votes and didn’t have them” in the
Senate local government committee, which would
have voted on the amendment. “So [we] could
continue to expend good effort after bad… or
move on to what is achievable.”
Marshall,
though, called that “a lame-ass explanation”
and said the votes were there to get the
legislation out of committee and onto the Senate
floor for a vote. Supporters think the bill would
have passed and then forced House members to face
a recorded vote on the rezoning authority, which
would have been worthwhile even if the House
rejected the bill.
The
lack of committee votes “is not the real
reason,” Marshall fumed. “Something else is
going on.” What Marshall and others suspect is
that the Kaine administration is putting
transportation funding ahead of land-use controls,
and has cut a deal with the housing and real
estate industries, who oppose the rezoning
authority, so he could advance proposals to
increase transportation funding.
Kaine’s
proposed funding package would increase
transportation funding by $3.7 billion over four
years, while a proposed Senate package would raise
about $4 billion in the same period. GOP leaders
in the House are proposing about $2 billion in
increased transportation spending over four years.
“We’re
very frustrated,” said Chris Miller, president
of the Piedmont Environmental Council (a financial
supporter of the Road to Ruin project). “We are
increasingly of the opinion that Kaine has not
delivered on the commitment to push for land use
and transportation policy reforms. So we are not
supporting any of the proposed transportation
funding packages, because they lack any of the
major reforms we’re talking about.”
When
asked if the Kaine administration had traded its
support for the rezoning legislation to boost a
funding proposal, Hall didn’t issue a flat-out
denial but said only, “I’m aware of no such
agreement.” He said Kaine still supports giving
localities the rezoning authority and described it
as “part of a more comprehensive transportation
package, and we are probably more in a posture of
[trying to] fight the battles we have a reasonable
chance of winning.”
The
proposal isn’t dead yet. On Monday Republican
Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr. included the rezoning
authority in a floor amendment to legislation on
cash proffers for transportation. He’s not sure
if that effort will succeed, and says the response
from opponents has been intense. “The
homebuilders reacted as if I was trying to chop
their head off,” he said. “My phone yesterday
and today was ringing off the hook from their
membership.”
Opponents
in the homebuilding and real estate sectors worry
that the rezoning authority will give localities
too strong a hand to reject development projects.
But Hanger and others view it as a fairly modest
step, because it applies only to rezoning
requests. In fact, many proponents say that
localities already have the authority. “I viewed
it pretty much as just clarifying what is accepted
as current practice in some localities, as one of
the things you take into consideration,” he
said.
Hanger
suspects some legislators “are a little queasy
about voting on it because they don’t want to
have to vote either way.” He doesn’t consider
it a controversial bill. “I’m a conservative
Republican and pro-business. But I think we’re
at a point right now where we clearly need to
engage in appropriate planning.”
Hall
argued that Kaine has already had success this
year in pushing land-use initiatives, including
legislation to allow localities to transfer
development rights and to require traffic-impact
statements for new developments. “The land use
and transportation nexus has been discussed much
farther down the field, I would argue, because of
the leadership of the governor,” he said.
Bacon's
Rebellion News Service
March
8, 2006
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