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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.
George Mason University is known for its free-market orientation--one of its profs, a privatization theorist, recently collected a Nobel Prize--so it's no shock that GMU's Mr. Fuller found more to like in the project than would an economist from UC-Berkeley. As for Mr. Adams' inquiry, it is not without "attitude." He asks, "What are the crime rate forecasts for the Village, based on its high density of housing? Isn't this likely to be a high-risk zone for illegal drug sales?" And what about all that open space that Mr. Smith would set aside--isn't that likely to invite crop circles marking the way for an alien invasion? Good grief. Let's try to be a little fair-minded.
Mr. Siegel's critique of the Fuller report, it appears to us, does reveal deficiencies. Yet any projection must be highly speculative, because outside factors, even if honestly described now, may change. (Remember those forecasts of endless federal surpluses made in the '90s before the tinsel empire of profitless e-stocks imploded?) The part of the Siegel report that can't be disputed is its call for a truly independent analysis of Dogwood's economic impact on Spotsylvania County. Now the county is relying upon the Dogwood-commissioned Fuller assessment as though it were a lost Gospel--even though, says Mr. Siegel, the way Mr. Fuller valued Dogwood's proffers violates the county's own standard of calculation.
Mr. Siegel's client is the Coalition to Save Chancellorsville Battlefield, composed of several well-regarded preservationist groups. Yet the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors thus far has refused even to meet with coalition representatives (although Supervisors Gary Jackson and Jerry Marcus and Supervisor-elect Bob Hagan commendably have conducted individual meetings). Civil War Preservation Trust President James Lighthizer, who has traveled the country talking to local officials about sensitive battlefield development, says such a snub is without precedent.
The Spotsylvania Planning Commission summarily dismisses hours of citizen objections to the Town of Chancellorsville and votes immediately to urge rezoning for the project. Two supervisors suggest that the county administration leans on staff to issue only glad tidings about proposed developments. Nationally respected conservators of history get treated by five county supervisors like they have active TB.
Let's have that impartial analysis, or every county resident will draw his own conclusion--about his local government's integrity.