Here is more response to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s transportation/land use package, none of it favorable. If there’s any consolation for the Governor, it’s that his opponents are not united in their criticisms — they are focusing on different aspects of his plan.
The Home Builders Association of Virginia is blasting the Governor’s main land use reform as the equivalent of an Adequate Public Facilities requirement for roads. States the HBAV in a prepared statement:
The concept of requiring public roads and other public facilities (public schools, fire and rescue, public libraries, public water and sewer, etc.) to be in place prior to residential or commercial development is a flawed concept. It’s biggest fallacy it that it completely ignores the reality of growth and development. In the natural order of development, the construction of public roads follows residential and commercial growth. Localities neither have the vision nor the resources to build roads to nowhere, which APF growth management authority would require.
The Kaine plan would allow localities to reject rezoning projects that would overwhelm local roads with traffic. When applied elsewhere in the country, the Home Builders contend, the concept has had three dire consequences. It has:
- Restricted the supply of new housing, driving up the cost of new and existing housing,
- Worsened sprawl by forcing employees working in the inner suburbs to seek affordable housing at greater distances from the major job centers, and
- Diminished quality of life by making mothers and fathers spend more time commuting to and from work.
Kaine’s “quick fix,” concludes the Home Builder statement, “will only exacerbate the transportation crisis in Virginia through the exportation of unwanted housing to the more rural areas of the state, clogging those roads.”
Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity-Virginia have denounced the tax increase proposed by the Governor. In a prepared statement, the small-government lobbying group said:
We’re pleased that Governor Kaine has recognized the importance of locking the transportation trust fund and using the state surplus for one-time capital expenditures, solutions which Americans for Prosperity has long-supported. But taxpayers across Virginia are wondering: what part of ‘no new taxes’ did Governor Kaine not understand?