For Now, Loudoun Curbs Dulles Growth

By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 12, 2006

In a single, dramatic day in January 2004, a freshly minted Republican majority on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors reversed eight years of slow-growth policy.

Supervisors opened a vast territory west of Dulles International Airport to water and sewers, and they ordered an about-face on the county's support for a series of slow-growth legislative initiatives in Richmond.

It was the latest yaw on a punishing voyage toward suburbanization in Loudoun, a semirural county between the airport and the Blue Ridge buffeted by successive boards' pro- and slow-growth policies over the past 20 years. Now, supervisors have turned again: On Wednesday, they rejected a proposal to allow as many as 33,800 houses in southeastern Loudoun.

This is not the pro-growth government you thought it was.

Usually an election precedes the next lurch in governance. But the board has struggled to balance escalating budgets fueled by rapid population growth. It has endured hours of anti-growth testimony from residents. It has witnessed election losses by Republicans in Loudoun to an electorate fed up with high taxes and traffic. Supervisors are more mindful than ever, many say, that if they do not respond to that anger, their job security in next year's board election is not at all assured.

"Is this board slow-growth now? That's the $20 million question," said board Chairman Scott K. York (I), generally a moderate on growth. "One thing I can say: This board of nine people can be judged, as a unit, schizophrenic."

Wednesday's decisive vote provided a new chapter in Loudoun's struggle with the convulsive expansion that has placed it among the fastest-growing counties in the nation. But it also illustrates that nothing stays the same for long in this bedroom community of 260,000. Not the landscape, not the elected leaders, not even, apparently, their views.

"Two years ago, there were six people who supported this proposal," said Supervisor Stephen J. Snow (R-Dulles). "Why would we have put it forward if there wasn't support for it?"

Snow has been the board's leading proponent of a plan to open up the Dulles South area west of the airport to thousands of new houses. He has argued that giving developers permission to build would be a worthwhile bargain in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars of such badly needed infrastructure as highways, parks, libraries and schools. One developer, Vienna-based Greenvest, was even prepared to donate 123 acres for a new Loudoun campus for George Mason University.

"This was my fault," Snow told board members Wednesday, when it became clear that the Dulles South proposal would fail. "I thought that this board wanted the build-out and the infrastructure."

Several factors influenced the shift in direction. First, Supervisor Lori Waters (R-Broad Run), one of the Republicans who took office in 2004, came to believe that the fast pace of development in Loudoun was incompatible with her goal of keeping county taxes low.

"I support some development," Waters said. "But it's a balance. I'm concerned about the people who live here now. In some cases, development can bring them benefits; and in other cases, it's too much of a burden."

Next came a series of electoral victories in Loudoun for slow-growth Democrats. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine stunned Virginia by winning the county last year alongside state Del. David E. Poisson, who upset four-term Republican Richard H. Black. State Sen. Mark R. Herring won every precinct in a special election in January to replace Republican William C. Mims, who took a job in the state attorney general's office.

Finally, supervisors were confronted by overwhelming and well-organized opposition to Dulles South. The Piedmont Environmental Council, the Warrenton-based anti-sprawl organization, and a handful of local groups took to the Internet to rally Loudoun residents and persuade them that Dulles South would overwhelm highways and send property taxes soaring to pay for demand on such county services as schools and public safety.

Supervisors received hundreds of e-mails from opponents, and they listened to 10 hours of testimony, most of it in opposition, at hearings.

"We're thrilled with the outcome," said Sandra Chaloux, who founded the Gum Spring Regional Citizens Network to oppose Dulles South. "I think for me personally what was really important about it was to see that the voice of citizens mattered. Prior to this week, we really didn't have a whole lot of evidence of that."

Board members who opposed Dulles South from the start believe the majority's about-face on growth is an illustration of political expediency and not a change in philosophy. All nine board seats come up for election next November, and so far in the gubernatorial and state legislative elections, Loudoun voters have shown support for a more modest pace of growth.

"It helps to have a national election in the same week," said Supervisor James Burton (I-Blue Ridge). "Board members realize that when the general public gets angry about a particular subject, they come out and vote. Many of the board members saw a parallel between what happened nationally on Tuesday and what happens a year from now."

The other Republicans to vote against the plan were Vice Chairman Bruce E. Tulloch (R-Potomac) and Supervisor Mick Staton Jr. (R-Sugarland Run). Both represent districts that have overwhelmingly chosen Democrats in recent elections. Staton, in fact, was the Republican candidate who lost soundly to Herring in the special state Senate election in January.

Tulloch and Staton disputed the idea that the board has changed.

"We were trying to get innovative ideas on development," Tulloch said. "What we got was a monolith. At the end of the day, it just couldn't sustain itself."

Staton said he had opposed the density of Dulles South for months. He said Loudoun should be doing more to attract commercial development because, unlike houses, it would bring jobs, decrease the tax burden on homeowners and reduce commuter congestion on eastbound routes into job-rich Fairfax County.

"There's been a great effort by special-interest groups to portray this board as pro-development, pro-rapid growth, even corrupt in some ways," Staton said. "And I dispute all of those characterizations."

The Dulles South vote is not the first that seeks to restrain growth. In September, supervisors voted to dramatically restrict the building of houses in the county's rural west. Although conservationists were disappointed that the board settled on a less restrictive plan than had been originally debated, the measure, which comes up for a final vote next month, would reduce the total number of houses that could be built in the western two-thirds of the county from about 37,000 to roughly half that.

The restrictions would replace similar rules thrown out on a technicality a year ago by the Virginia Supreme Court -- rules that few in Loudoun would have predicted that this board would bother replacing at all.

That unpredictability has frustrated developers, who have spent two years and millions of dollars drawing up blueprints for planned communities in Dulles South. They began the process believing there was support for their vision among supervisors. They ended it Wednesday knowing that, at least at the moment, there is not.

"At the end of the day, you push for where you want to go," said York, who has opposed Dulles South all along. "Sometimes you win; sometimes you don't. Two years ago, I wouldn't have thought we'd be where we are today."