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Date published: 12/9/2002
RIGHT OFF, "Dueling Developmental Impact Analyses" doesn't sound as entertaining as, say, "Dueling Banjos" from the movie "Deliverance," but in Spotsylvania County the technical rivalry is no snooze. There, professors who have authored night-and-day-different forecasts of the economic effect on the county of the proposed Town of Chancellorsville are woofing at each other like pugs at a pre-fight press conference. Stephen Fuller, the George Mason University public-policy professor who co-wrote a sunny appraisal of the project's benefits on the dime of its developer, Ray Smith, scorned a competing report with the observation that its author, a retired University of Maryland economics teacher, "does not understand the concept of fiscal analysis." The insulted Terrapin, John Adams, replied that Mr. Fuller's breakdown, which projects an eventual $10-million-per-year benefit to the county, would have gotten an "F" in his class. Mr. Adams thinks the Town of Chancellorsville is just as likely to cost Spotsy $10 million every time the old calendar comes off the wall. Meanwhile, an economist hired by battlefield preservationists, who are upset that the ToC would pave over hundreds of acres of Civil War history, has released a study about as pessimistic as Mr. Adams'. Michael Siegel of Public and Environmental Finance Associates claims that Mr. Fuller got his rosy ToC scenario by low-balling school-enrollment figures and education costs; inflating the value of proffers by Mr. Smith's company, Dogwood Development; underestimating the county's debt service on utilities serving the nearly 2,000-home project; and so on. Stumbling among these colliding blizzards of data, most Spotsylvanians doubtless could use some deliverance themselves--from confusion. We can't provide it. We can say the obvious: The various experts' services are being paid for by those with a hot interest in the project or else rendered with a clear point of view.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
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