Slow Going on Montgomery Growth Rules

The county is expected to remain a magnet for biosciences, for people seeking good public schools and for the federal government, which plans to boost its presence substantially in Bethesda and Silver Spring.

The Planning Board recommends raising the taxes that builders pay for schools to $21,000 on every single-family detached home; raising taxes for transportation to $10,810 on a single-family detached home; and increasing the recordation tax on home sales from $6.90 to $10 per $1,000 of home value, with the first $50,000 exempted.

Leggett said he would back increases of 60 percent in the impact taxes for schools and transportation, not the much larger increases the Planning Board proposed.

"The direction I see us going is, is not to continue existing policy but not to go quite as far as the Planning Board," he said in an interview. "I support a moderate pace of growth consistent with our ability to provide infrastructure."

Many council members also hesitate to raise taxes to the levels recommended by the Planning Board.

The board also proposes putting more emphasis on the availability of public transit in determining whether an area is too congested for further development. That would encourage the placement of housing, jobs and retail near bus, subway and train lines. That, in turn, would help residents weather big leaps in gasoline prices and enable them to grow old in communities with shopping and other amenities within walking distance, said Royce Hanson, chairman of the Planning Board.

"It's a new way of thinking about growth policy in a mature county," Hanson said.

Jim Humphrey, who heads the land-use committee of the Montgomery County Civic Federation, said he believes the Planning Board's proposals include ideas his organization can support, most notably higher taxes on developers to pay for infrastructure. But he said the blueprint fails to address an existing deficit of roads, schools and transit.

"The Planning Board said in 2003 we didn't have the roads and schools to accommodate new growth," Humphrey said. "The Planning Board and council should try to figure out how to make things better, not simply prevent things from getting worse."

He said officials have approved about 30,000 housing units that will be built in the next few years and will cause more congestion.

"What is wrong with admitting we don't have the capacity to accommodate additional growth?" Humphrey asked.

Representatives of the building industry say the planning board is unfairly trying to force new development to pay for old problems. "About 85 percent of the need is from existing development," said Raquel Montenegro, a lobbyist with the Maryland National Capital Building Industry Association.

Council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large) said he is worried that the Planning Board's new way of calculating congestion fails to recognize what compels a commuter to drive, rather than take the bus or subway. Without a better transit system that runs more often to more places, he said, commuters will probably continue to opt for cars.

"If I build a project that generates jobs, transit and housing, the roads either will or will not function," Elrich said. The presence or absence of transit will not necessarily alter that equation, he believes.

Hanson said one of the board's goals was to try to find new ways to allow the county to absorb growth while maintaining a high quality of life.

"I thought we were supposed to be ahead of the curve," he said. "Hopefully, we will begin to find the golden mean."