By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 3, 2006; GZ01
When Royce Hanson warned in February that Montgomery County's once-renowned planning agency was on the "verge of becoming dysfunctional," he implored the County Council to bring in "bold leadership" to revive the agency's reputation and address the "challenges of a maturing county."
As it turned out, Hanson was writing his own job description. The County Council voted unanimously last week to put him back in the position he held more than three decades ago, starting in 1972.
Hanson, 74, takes over this month as chairman of the Planning Board, the county's most powerful appointed position. Sitting in his office at George Washington University last week, Hanson emphasized that his new role is broader than day-to-day management of the county's Department of Park and Planning.
The chairman is the county's planning educator in chief -- part judge and part crystal-ball reader -- charged with predicting how and where Montgomery will grow and setting a course for the $100 million agency.
"I want to create an environment in which the highest level of professional competence and performance is expected and obtained," Hanson said, where "people feel confident that they can exercise professional judgment as professionals and that will be respected."
Public confidence in the department was shaken last year after the discovery of construction irregularities in the community of Clarksburg.
A series of investigations, including one the County Council requested from Hanson, found poor management, lax oversight and systemic problems beyond those of Clarksburg.
Four high-level planning staff members resigned, and the outgoing chairman, Derick Berlage, decided not to seek reappointment.
The board advises the council and oversees the county's park system and the development of major housing and commercial projects.
The first duty of the new chairman, Hanson wrote in one of several reports to the council, is "returning its staff to the front rank nationally," because "the quality of the board and council decisions ultimately depend on the quality of staff performance." That means Hanson will help select a new planning director, a position that has not been filled on a permanent basis since November.
In assuming the chairmanship, Hanson said he does not expect that he and the other four board members will agree on every issue, but that they will develop a broad consensus "so what you're disagreeing on are means rather than ends." The strength of the board, he wrote in the February report, is that it "has to do its thinking out loud and in public and has the latitude to focus on the future rather than [on the] in-box of immediate concerns."
The son of an Arkansas farmer, Hanson is considered one of the architects of the county's agricultural reserve, which protects more than one-fourth of county land. During his tenure from 1972 to 1981, the county also created the first policy in the region to try to ensure that infrastructure keeps pace with growth.
A land-use expert, Hanson left Montgomery County in the early 1980s to teach at universities in Minnesota and Texas. He returned in 1998 to teach at the policy sciences graduate program of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and until this week was director of the Center for Washington Area Studies at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy.
Hanson said he never expected to return to the planning agency. Looking back, he said, it's important to be modest "about one's confidence in one's own judgment." Hanson never anticipated, for instance, the demand to build large-scale churches in the county's agricultural reserve. "We were thinking of the country churches that served rural communities."
He has an affection for the county's intense community involvement, joking that zoning is something of a religious experience. "People really care, and that's good," he said.
That doesn't mean he'll always agree with a passionate argument. "There's a difference between listening and agreeing to everything you hear," he said. And he views his job as weighing in on what he described as a continuing ethical argument.
"Satisfying 'A' or 'B' will make one or the other happy, but may not necessarily serve the public interest," he said. "When you're the trustee of the future, you're making decisions in the best interest of your clients -- the public."
In the 1960s, Hanson was twice an unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Congress, and he lost in the Democratic primary for county executive in 1978. Like a skilled politician, he declined to get specific about subjects such as the intercounty connector or the Purple Line, a proposed light-rail link that would connect Bethesda, Silver Spring and New Carrollton.
"I try not to have an opinion based totally on a lack of information."
Likewise, although he has some ideas for propping up the county's trendsetting program that requires developers to build moderately priced units, he is not ready to try them out in print. His ideas "may be really bad," he said with a grin. "They need testing and arguing before creating expectations."
