Playing Both Sides Of Dulles South Fence?

Isn't it kind of weird that two state agencies loosely under the authority of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) are standing alongside the two opposing interest groups in the contentious Dulles South dispute?

First there's the Virginia Department of Transportation, which was told by the Kaine administration over the summer to conduct a detailed analysis of the proposal to open up a vast undeveloped area west of Dulles International Airport to thousands of new homes.

Kaine, who won office last year in part by promising to do a better job tying land-use decisions to transportation, wanted to illustrate the traffic impact that would result from massive development in Dulles South. "Not Good" was the shocking answer, so, of course, Kaine and VDOT were instantly viewed as allies by opponents of Dulles South development -- and as agenda-driven partisans by supporters of the plan.

Enter George Mason University, an ambitious state-run institution with plans to build a new campus in Loudoun County on property donated by Greenvest, a developer poised to build as many as 15,000 homes in Dulles South.

GMU's Board of Visitors is appointed by, you guessed it, the governor. But that didn't prevent university officials from making the case last week to the county Board of Supervisors that the residential and retail aspects of Greenvest's proposal make Dulles South a perfect place to open a new campus.

The apparently conflicting interests within the governor's shop were not lost on Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott K. York (I), who sent a letter to Kaine a couple of days later.

"It appears that GMU may be being used as a marketing tool by a consortium of large developers to 'sell' this monstrous project to a very skeptical and vocal public," York said.

Also not lost on York was the irony that GMU chief of staff Tom Hennessey told supervisors that the university would expect the county to provide millions of dollars in transportation and infrastructure improvements to serve the new campus.

One wonders: Isn't that exactly the kind of burden, albeit usually demanded by residential development, that Kaine is trying to help local governments avoid by encouraging them to consider transportation more thoroughly when making land-use decisions?

Said York: "Being handed a mandate by a state university at the behest of the development community is extremely troublesome."

By the way: Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall had no comment.

Tightening Up Finances

Speaking of Dulles South, one of Loudoun's leading advocates for planned communities, Brian Roherty of the Right Growth Policy Institute, has been appointed to a new committee created this fall by supervisors -- a panel called the Committee on Financial Performance Audit. It is tasked with working alongside the board's external auditor to study the finances of the public schools and county government.

Needless to say, the appointment did not come without objections. Anti-sprawl Supervisor James G. Burton (I-Blue Ridge) voted against Roherty's appointment because Roherty lives in Fairfax County.

Opponents of Dulles South screeched because Roherty won't say where his nonprofit organization gets its money. (Not so fond of the scathing ads he has placed in local newspapers mocking them, they assume it's from the development industry.)

Roherty has some street cred when it comes to budgeting. He is a former state budget director of Minnesota and a former executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. When he formed the Right Growth Policy Institute this year, it was with the intention not only of promoting planned communities but also of taking a closer look at county financial policy.