Delayed Vote on Growth Draws Ire

Some Question Tulloch's Motives

Vice Chairman Bruce Tulloch said he feared the plan could bring a legal challenge. (By Tracy A Woodward -- The Washington Post)

Just hours after the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors delayed a long-awaited vote Friday on a controversial plan to restrict home building in the rural west, the e-mails began flooding into the county government center.

In a county known for its volatile board, residents were confused ("What happened on Friday?"). They were upset ("Did you think people wouldn't notice that you didn't take the vote?"). And mostly, they were angry at Vice Chairman Bruce E. Tulloch (R-Potomac), the man responsible for the delay.

"What kind of game are you playing, Mr. Vice Chairman?" said John J. Seraphin of Leesburg in an e-mail distributed to all nine county supervisors. "You gave your word. That was supposed to be a done deal."

Tulloch said he pushed to delay voting to protect the county from the kind of legal challenges that caused the Virginia Supreme Court to strike down a similar Loudoun measure last year. He succeeded only because Supervisor Sarah R. Kurtz (D-Catoctin), who had planned to vote for the measure that night, was out recovering from an appendectomy.

Tulloch said he wanted more time to deliberate, and he said the board and the county Planning Commission needed to hold new public hearings -- now scheduled for the end of next month -- for that to happen.

"I am sleeping well at night because of what I did last Friday," Tulloch said. "If people want to criticize me for doing the right thing, then they themselves have agendas that are not in the interest of the citizens of Loudoun County. It was a principled vote, and it was the right thing to do."

Still, even Tulloch's colleagues were left to wonder about his motives. He won election to the board in 2003 with a promise to give the development industry a new voice in government.

More recently, Tulloch -- an oft-mentioned candidate for chairman of the Board of Supervisors next year in a county where slow-growth candidates have won most recent elections -- has professed his support for limiting most homes in western Loudoun to 10- and 20-acre lots. Current rules allow three-acre parcels.

A county report estimates that the stricter proposal would reduce the number of homes ultimately built in the west from 46,000 to 14,000. The proposal is popular among a coalition of western landowners seeking to preserve their rural lifestyle and eastern suburbanites who believe growth restrictions will keep traffic and tax bills in check. It is unpopular among developers and western property owners who say the value of their land would be diminished.

Some advocates of the new plan are wondering whether Tulloch is trying to have it both ways: Support the proposal to lure slow-growth voters in 2007, but help landowners who are trying to develop their land under the three-acre rules by giving them more time to complete applications.

"At some point he has to make the choice in what he truly believes," said Supervisor Lori Waters (R-Broad Run), who supports the new rules and who urged Tulloch on Friday to allow the vote to go forward.

Said supervisors Chairman Scott K. York (I): "The net effect is that when you delay the process, you allow more people to come through."

Even those who oppose the rural proposal acknowledge that a land rush is underway in western Loudoun as property owners try to subdivide their land while the three-acre rule remains. Since the last set of rules was tossed out by the state Supreme Court last year, applications for more than 3,300 lots have been received by the Loudoun County Health Department, which oversees the approval of wells and septic systems for new lots.

And the pace has not slowed, even as supervisors move closer to a vote on the new rules.

"We thought people were going to say, 'There's no way we can meet that deadline,' " said Joe Lock, a supervisor in the Health Department. "They haven't."

Egging on property owners is the possibility that supervisors will enact a "grandfathering" provision to allow all property owners with pending subdivision applications to continue under the three-acre rule. The Planning Commission, which makes advisory recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on land-use issues, urged supervisors to adopt such a provision. And several supervisors -- including Tulloch -- say they are thinking seriously about doing so.

"I am not out for hurting the families that have been farming this property for generations," he said.

Supervisors are scheduled to vote before the end of July, when they will begin a month-long recess. What remains to be seen is whether the debate over "grandfathering" produces another delay.