Kaine Plan On Traffic Unleashes Swift Blitz

Other developers got a warmer reception from Del. Terrie Lynne Suit (R-Virginia Beach), who greeted them with a hearty "Good to see you again!" as they piled into her seventh-floor office overlooking Capitol Square.

"We're hoping he can come up with something that's reasonable, that he's not going to cram down our throats," John Olivieri, a Hampton Roads home builder, said of Kaine. "Our answer is planning . . . not just trying to stop growth or stop building."

"Absolutely -- right," Suit said, nodding her head.

A group from Richmond had scarcely sat down in the corner office of Del. Riley E. Ingram (R-Hopewell) before he told them that he also opposes what Kaine is backing.

"To me, housing, home building -- it's what drives the train," said Ingram, who chairs the committee where the legislation will probably be considered first. "It's the engine. That's just my opinion."

"Well, we like your opinion a whole lot," responded Vicki Stitzer, who runs a Richmond home interior business.

Even as the home builders buttonholed lawmakers, the debate over Kaine's growth proposals rippled beyond Richmond to Northern Virginia, where for years development has been a central political issue.

Stuart Mendelsohn, a Fairfax land-use attorney and former Republican county supervisor, predicted that developers would pass along the higher costs of doing business to home buyers.

"If the local government extracts additional money from developers, guess who pays?" Mendelsohn said. "It's the person who wants to buy that house."

Fairfax County Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said Fairfax would welcome additional tools to ask more of developers but added that the state must ante up more money for transportation or the effort will be worthless.

"This . . . isn't just the land-use piece, it's the transportation [financing] piece," he said.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the D.C.-based Coalition for Smarter Growth, praised Kaine for what he called a commitment to push for better land-use planning while looking for more money to expand road and transit networks.

"He ran on this issue," Schwartz said. "He won on this issue, particularly in the outer suburbs including Loudoun and Prince William."

Others were less supportive.

"To think that somehow we can just stop building houses until transportation is built is unrealistic," said Bob Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance. "A lot of jobs planned to come here in the next 10 or 15 years are not going to come here if there is no place to house workers."

Back in Richmond, House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) said he could find common ground with Kaine on several transportation issues, including giving localities the ability to transfer development rights to concentrate building.

"Clearly, we need to look at some of these things," he said during a news conference at which House leaders announced their legislative agenda. The initiatives include changes in Medicaid, repealing the car and estate taxes and funding Chesapeake Bay cleanup.

Staff writers Lisa Rein, Nikita Stewart, Chris L. Jenkins, Rosalind S. Helderman and Amy Gardner contributed to this report.