If you need a reminder of how the debate over transportation funding is totally detached from the real world, read the op-ed piece by Del. Clay Athey, R-Front Royal, in the Times-Dispatch today to re-establish a connection with things happening beyond the cognition of most state politicians and the reporters who cover them. Athey, as you may recall, was the main author of the oft-forgotten land use provisions of the infamous HB 3202 known primarily for Abuser Fees and unconstitutional regional transportation authorities.
The land use provisions of the bill seem to be holding up better than the road-funding pieces, even if their impact has yet to be fully felt. The legislation called for the creation of Urban Development Areas that would steer growth in fast-growth counties into districts where jurisdictions were prepared to concentrate their investments in roads and infrastructure — and allowed localities to assess impact fees to help pay for it.
Local governments are still in the process of putting the law into effect. Yet this process is largely invisible to the public because the Mainstream Media refuses to cover it.
This massive blind spot in media coverage amounts to journalistic malpractice. Not only is the most important local-governance reform of the past 50 years going unreported, the media is skewing coverage of the transportation funding debate, unwittingly providing cover for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine who has called a special legislative session in the hopes of raising $1.1 billion a year in new taxes. Political reporters are uncritically regurgitating claims that Virginia is running out of state money to build secondary roads and depicting Republicans as anti-tax Neanderthals without providing the critical perspective that, oh, by the way, the financing and administration of transportation at the level of local government just happens to be going through the most dramatic, friggin’ changes in the past half century!
In case you’ve forgotten the coverage that Bacon’s Rebellion provided a year ago, here is a refresher from Athey of what is going on:
[Sixty-seven fast-growth] localities now have the authority to set road impact fees on by-right development outside of designated Urban Development Areas. This change helps pay for transportation improvements resulting from new by-right development, encouraging localities to focus growth and address mobility needs as development occurs. …
[A] second land-use provision in HB 3202 gives large urban counties flexibility to assume responsibility for maintenance of their local roads within an “Urban Transportation Service District.” By ending the separation of land-use decision-making from the responsibility for road maintenance, this change is a crucial first step toward devolution of state responsibility for secondary roads that serve only a local function to the governments whose land-use decisions result in congestion.
To encourage localities to provide this service, those counties — in addition to receiving state payments — would be authorized to assess full impact fees to help pay for additional public facilities like roads, public safety, and schools.
Got that? An alternative financing mechanism to pay for building secondary roads already exists. One of the reasons that General Assembly Republicans are adverse to new taxes is that HB 3202 significantly has already increased the ability of local governments to raise funds through impact fees. The refusal to pile on new taxes before the impact of last year’s legislation is understood does not make the Republicans anti-tax Neanderthals.
Athey and Del. Robert G. Marshal, R-Loudoun, authored legislation that will conduct a two-year study to monitor the transition to Urban Development Areas, determine if additional legislation is needed to help localities as they make that transition, and evaluate all existing land use planning tools and infrastructure financing options. Of course, these facts are unknown to the public because the Mainstream Media has not deemed it worthy of coverage — if, indeed, these facts have even entered the consciousness of Virginia’s editors and reporters.
If Virginia’s newsroom executives had any conscience, they would quit their jobs in shame, retire to monasteries, flagellate themselves with whips, and beg a merciful God for forgiveness.
I confess: I, too, was guilty of overlooking this side of this story, at least momentarily. Bacon’s Rebellion reported the Urban Development Area (UDA) story extensively a year ago, but we’ve let it drop since we lost our sponsorship funding. Since then, unable to report the news ourselves, we have have fallen into the habit of relying upon the reporting of others. Thus, I criticized Republicans last week for offering no alternative to Gov. Kaine’s tax plan. (See “Beyond ‘Just Say No to Taxes.‘”)
But I now recant. While I do not think that the messy business of land use reform is anywhere near complete, UDAs and their associated impact fees will have a huge impact on land use and transportation. We should wait and what kind of job they do before adding another load of taxes to the mix.