County Condemns Altering Development Fees

By Jonathan Mummolo (Contact)

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously yesterday to oppose a state bill that would replace a 30-year-old system in which local governments have collected millions of dollars from developers to compensate for the impact of new homes.

Under the bill, local governments no longer would be able to negotiate proffers — payments made by developers to offset the cost of providing roads, schools and other government services to new residents. Instead of proffers, Loudoun and other Northern Virginia counties would be allowed to charge developers a flat fee of $8,000 per new house.

The legislation, Senate Bill 768, also would sharply restrict the county’s ability to receive non-cash contributions from developers, such as park land, libraries, affordable housing units, trees and playground equipment.

Under the current system, Loudoun County collects an average of about $47,000 in proffers for each new home, the highest such figure in the state.

Supervisors voted to “strongly oppose” the bill, arguing that it was a gift to building industry lobbyists in Richmond and would destroy one of the county’s main mechanisms for managing growth.

“Unfortunately, what this is is an anti-taxpayer bill,” said board chairman Scott K. York (I-At Large), “because what will occur is that the development community will forego paying that which is the result of their development and put it on the backs of us, the taxpayers.”

Photo: Tracy A. Woodward

A view along Glebe View Drive near the corner of Mount Auburn Place in the Broadlands community. This photo was taken in March 2007.

The legislation was endorsed by the Home Building Association of Virginia — which helped write the bill — though the building industry has defended the proffer system in the past.

Members of the industry have said the bill is necessary because of the housing slump and the inordinately high proffers extracted by fast-growing Northern Virginia counties such as Loudoun.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. John C. Watkins (R-Chesterfield), has said that the bill would benefit homebuyers most, because developers typically pass along the cost of proffers to buyers.

But the legislation has been opposed by slow-growth advocates, who complained that the complicated and far-reaching bill was introduced quickly without adequate time for review, a notion supported by several Loudoun supervisors yesterday.

The bill would “obliterate what we have worked [on] for 30 years with respect to the proffer system, only to destroy it in about 30 minutes’ worth of work,” York said.

“The impact to this county could be tremendously dramatic, and I am shocked at how this bill has gone through with no study and no regard to what impact it will have on the Northern Virginia communities,” said Supervisor Kelly Burk (D-Leesburg).

The bill is currently before the Senate Finance Committee.

Also yesterday, the board approved an application by Inova Healthcare Services for a special exception allowing the company to build an outpatient-only medical facility on Route 50. The measure passed unanimously, without debate.

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