Some Say Board Chair Should Have More Authority
By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 16, 2007
When Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) and Republican challenger Gary H. Baise meet in Tysons Corner for their first major debate on Tuesday afternoon, they are likely to sound like candidates for a job with real power.
Viewed through the prism of their campaign Web sites, they are men of action and vision. Connolly, the incumbent seeking a second term on Nov. 6, "led the fight" for a rail to Tysons and Dulles International Airport. Baise, a Republican, served on state air, water and solid waste boards, "providing leadership in protecting the Old Dominion's environment."
Lost in the rhetoric is the reality that, unlike chief elected officials in the District and Montgomery and Prince George's counties, Fairfax's head of government is largely a ceremonial figure.
Although he is the sole member of the Board of Supervisors elected countywide, Connolly has no more power by law than his nine colleagues who represent geographical districts. The supervisors' seats are also up for reelection. Together, Connolly and the board set policy while day-to-day operations of government are managed by their appointee, County Executive Anthony H. Griffin. Connolly and Baise say the system is sound. "When somebody shows me it's broken, we'll fix it," Connolly said.
Yet there is a persistent minority view that Fairfax has grown too large and complex to be without an elected chief executive. If it were a city, advocates argue, its 1 million residents would make it the nation's 10th-largest, just ahead of San Jose. "This is the leader of a county more populous than several states," said George Mason University political scientist Mark Rozell, referring to Wyoming, Vermont, North and South Dakota, Alaska, Delaware and Montana. "It just doesn't make sense."
Accountability in Fairfax is spread widely. Supervisors wield considerable influence within their districts, especially over development matters. The chairman functions as the board's chief spokesman and can use his prominence and powers of persuasion, as Connolly has, to set broad policy objectives. The county executive proposes the annual budget, awards contracts and hires nearly all department directors.
For residents, the diffusion of power can create uncertainty about where to go with a problem. When complaints about overcrowding and other neighborhood code violations started to grow in the past year, some residents expressed confusion about who could best handle the matter: the chairman, their supervisor, zoning inspectors, the county executive?
Critics of the system say the buck needs to stop with someone who answers to voters. They say the system vests too much power in a staff that is unelected and unaccountable to the public.
"We're much too big a county for a bunch of professional people to put together budget priorities," said former board chairman Audrey Moore (D), who held the job from 1988 to 1992. "You need the elected perspective and the countywide perspective."
Supervisor T. Dana Kauffman (D-Lee) said Griffin and his staff are comfortable with technical or personnel issues but lack a street-level feel for problems that are brewing. "Fairfax has technically been an urban county for decades, but we've tried to run it with a suburban mindset and with suburban approaches," said Kauffman, who is not seeking reelection.
One case in point, he said, is neighborhood code enforcement. For at least three years, Kauffman said, he and others have been describing widespread frustration among constituents about tepid county enforcement efforts, without results. It took a virtual uprising at a Springfield community meeting this spring to get the attention of Connolly and the staff. Formation of a Code Enforcement Strike Team soon followed.
"Once you become as large and respected as Fairfax County has become, the inherent danger is to think that if it's a good idea you'd have already thought of it," he said.
The current form of government, widely used by cities and counties, has deep political roots in Virginia. The state exerts tight control over local government, based on the 140-year-old Dillon Rule that limits localities to powers expressly granted by Richmond lawmakers. Any major changes in Fairfax government would almost certainly require approval by the General Assembly.
The question of changing the system has surfaced periodically. In 1993, board Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R), attempting to make good on a campaign promise to "reinvent" county government, formed a committee to examine alternatives.
The panel, headed by former governor Linwood Holton (R), discarded the concept of an elected head of government with full executive powers. But only by a narrow 9 to 7 vote did it reject a subcommittee's recommendation for an "enhanced" chairmanship, with the power to submit a budget and hire and fire the county executive and deputies, with the consent of the board.
The Holton panel recommended other changes, including prohibitions on outside employment for supervisors and tying their salary to that of a circuit court judge in recognition of the post's full-time status. Neither idea received serious consideration from supervisors, wary of a voter backlash against a huge pay increase.
Davis supported the idea of a stronger chairman and said last week that he believes the county would benefit from the change.
"I feel more strongly than ever, we've got a dinosaur in Fairfax County," he said. "You've got to have someone in charge at the end of the day."
The two major candidates for chairman say they don't need enhanced powers.
Connolly said he can effectively pursue his agenda -- which has included affordable housing and transportation improvements -- through persuasion. He also said that making the chairman an operating executive would create needless tensions with the legislative branch, the Board of Supervisors.
Connolly's ceremonial status hasn't prevented him from taking an expansive view of his accomplishments, such as saying he "led the fight" for Dulles rail. Though he has been an active player in the project, it has been a mammoth, decades-long undertaking involving multiple Virginia governors, state and federal agencies and private contractors.
Defenders of the status quo say it is difficult to argue that an elected-executive system produces a demonstrably superior product. Montgomery's ability to manage growth and development has come into sharp question in recent years, as evidenced by building-height and design irregularities at Clarksburg Town Center.
In Prince George's County, the Maryland state prosecutor's office is looking into the distribution of grants from the National Harbor Community Outreach Committee, underwritten by the developer of the commercial and residential project. In April, The Post reported that more than $181,000 was given to organizations with ties to committee members or to County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D). Also, during his reelection campaign last summer, Johnson delivered at least $10,000 in grants to politically influential churches that had not applied for the funds.
"Just because Maryland has a model doesn't make it better," Connolly said
Baise, a D.C. lawyer and former Nixon-era Justice Department and EPA official who represents corporate and agricultural clients in environmental cases, compares the Fairfax post to chairmanship of a private board of directors. He opposes the idea of a chairman with executive powers.
"I don't think it's suitable," he said. "You don't have the board members running The Washington Post Company," he said. "Board members are supposed to be board members and it seems to me that that works reasonably well in the corporate structure. I think you get better overall governance with professional people."
Baise added, however, that board members need to meet their oversight responsibilities, and he says that hasn't always happened in Fairfax. He cites the handling of the Dulles rail project, in which staff members signed confidentiality agreements for access to information about the contract between the state, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and Dulles Transit Partners, the private consortium that would build the rail extension. Confidentiality agreements would prevent staff members from sharing information with the board.
"It seemed that there was a breakdown there," Baise said. "Staff should have advised the board on what they were doing." Connolly and other board members have said they were fully briefed on the contract by staff.
For more about Fairfax County elections, go tohttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/.
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