Great news! Thanks for the update.

Well, with the NVTA news today, I'm glad there's something good coming out of Richmond...

a two win day.  The Transportation Monstrosity was exactly that, a monstrosity, and if today's ruling forces them back to the table to (hopefully) produce a responsible plan, then I consider it a win.

And anyone who is unhappy sitting in traffic can blame last years bill for the extra year delay.  The sooner they do it right the sooner real progress can be made.

project rebid, we'd be getting somewhere...

I saw the Transportation Bill of '07 as a "half-a-loaf is better than none" situation. It wasn't pretty, but it DID promise to get better roads and transportation solutions built faster for NoVa. I'm a "solutionist" kinda guy, and this was a (albeit ugly) solution.

Now we have to wait for fixes to 15N and completion of interchanges on 7 here in Leesburg/Loudoun, even as WVa finishes their 4 lane highway to our doorstep to the West.

In a down revenue year, the death of the NVTA/Transportation Bill will push the next solution into 2009, and in a Gubinatorial election year the R's won't want to hand the D's any victories, so they'll stall any fixes to have something to run on.

Perhaps a win for a legal principle, but a loss for Virginia, to me.

The 2007 transportation bill was no solution to anything, not even close to "half a loaf" relative to the $100 billion or whatever we need for transportation maintenance/upgrades in Virginia.  Even worse, the money it DID raise was either through the hated abuser fees or through the balkanized, now unconstitutional regional authorities.  In other words, this was a complete, unmitigated fiasco.

Sure, sometimes it is better to get some relief than nothing, but in this case, with the amount of money and long term implications, a half-assed solution that provides temporary relief is not a good trade off.

This is the same thing that we're arguing for the Metro to Wiehle project - it's such a major undertaking that we'd better do it right.  And if we can't do it right, nothing IS better.  

Let's save the half-loaf solutions for relatively minor projects.

A defeated bill is far from proof.  No offense, but bills are dropping like flies this session.  A bill actually passing would be an accomplishment.

Would you like some ice with your bitters? :) :) :)

Progress is two steps forward, one step back. We won the Senate last year, and bipartisan redistricting is advancing. I  think believing we might have had something to do with this bill dying is not completely beyond the pale.

We're going to have to fight for every inch of legislative and electoral ground in the quest to put Virginia on the right track for the long-haul. The forces of obstruction are dug in deep. A few months of the Assembly with only a few glimmers to show is not something to discourage us, on the contrary, a few months of the Assembly without an abomination coming to pass is an improvement over some previous sessions.

But that's just how I see it.

Shame you can't pass a constitutional budget

Living in the third fastest growing locality in the Commonwealth and an area which has not only from a government perspective just like NVA been about as hypocritical as it comes with regard to continued to development. The localities want to run campaigns blaming the developers and pointing fingers at developers for creating the transportation and traffic nightmares as well as the overcapacity of schools and instead of passing siginificant comprehensive zoning and development packages at the local level they lobby the GA to allow them to keep their hands in the kitty jar of developer paid fees. Its about the most disingenious thing in local development; blame the developers for the rapid growth pains when the BOCS has the power to approve all zonings after Planning Commission review. Fact is localities like PWC, Fairfax, Chesterfield, Stafford, Spotsylvania etc NEED the developer fees to pay for overblown budgets that without the proffers would result in a shortfall and undoubtedly higher property taxes would result in the end. Truth is here in Chesterfield relative to other localities the property tax level should have never been decreased in the face of looming recessionary times ahead and yet they did so banking on continued passage of development zonings and CDA's that could pay for much more than the the 19% of revenues currently received from zonings. When you have NVA localties charging 46K per lot and Central Va charging less than 15K it is no wonder housing as remained okay here and not so good in NVA in this market. Proffers are just another tax passed on to home buyers by the housing market and local governments have been relying on them for revenues and could ill afford to have them reduced to the proposed "impact fee"level. Without the proffers, local government would actually have to overhaul its budgets where even today roads are not being addressed and schools are over crowded and all have trailers out back.
Local governments eventually will have to raise the property taxes across the board and earmark 3 to 5 cents of the tax rate for transportation funding if they are ever going to be able to address what is currently being neglected.

...and hammer out a compromise for a new system that can pass the General Assembly, that's fine.  But I'm very relieved that the developer-written bill to end the proffer system got killed.  

We don't need any more industry-authored bills pushed through the House and Senate before we know what's hit us -- remember Dominion's bill last year to neuter the agency that regulates it?

New homes, especially in far flung areas without existing infrastructure, require substantial public expenditure, including roads, buses, sewers, electrical lines and schools.  Why shouldn't a fair share of that cost be passed on to developers?

why should only builders/developers bear the burden of the costs for those services. If I was to own an acre lot and wanted to build a home on that lot and tie into County services like water and sewer etc why is it I would not have to pay that 15,600 proffer as a developer does.
Seems to me the impact fee makes sense as much as the proffer does and NO property/individual should be exempt from this regardless of the time of zoning. Fact is any new construction that ties into county services should be rquired to pay the same fair price for such connection.

they actually subsidize older housing.

Developers don't pay the proffers. The new home buyer does.

Every study done by Prof. Steve Fuller of GMU has shown that in Va., new housing more than pays for the services needed, before a single proffer penny is paid.

So the proffers are subsidizing the older housing stock and, perversely, boosting the price of the existing houses by creating a regulatory induced artificial shortage of housing supply.

the proffers increase the home price/value and that why the same builder like a Centex can build the exact same house in Central Virginia cheaper than it can in say Fairfax, Loudon, etc. The reason why the lot prices are rising considerably is the proffer, some 46K in some instances is being passed on the the home buyer.
As to the "boosting" you also create the negative impacts of sprawl where values actually begin to decline in older areas as a result of massive new construction when the inventory of new home contruction reaches a point where, like now, they are reducing prices and the older areas are finding it terribly difficult to move homes in this environment.

Once again she got the story wrong, big surprise.

The bill's been carried over in the House Rules Committee.

Howell told local governments that if they don't drop the $47,000 per house illegal cash proffer demand, the bill will come back in the 2009 session and only have to pass the House to take effect.

Local governments have got to end the exclusionary zoning schemes if they want to avoid continued and ever more extensive retrocession of the police power back to the General Assembly.

Northern Virginia employees are having to commute to work from  Harrisonburg, PA and Hardy County WV and when they go home at night they take their income taxes with them. The General Assembly can't allow No Va local governments to divert this revenue streams away from Richmond and transportation solutions.