BY COMMANDEERING the local GOP and pouring in campaign cash, developers reopened Loudoun County to unbridled growth. Is Stafford next?
Two years ago, urban planners across America took note of recent changes in the local ordinances of Loudoun County, the second-fastest-growing county in the nation. Permitted housing densities in the western two-thirds of Loudoun had been slashed 85 percent in some areas, 70 percent in the rest.
Developers, builders, speculators, and several big landowners howled. Opponents soon filed nearly 200 lawsuits challenging the new rules. The county budgeted $6 million for its defense and dug in.
Recently, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the Loudoun downzoning on a technicality: While the new policies were being considered over a three-year period, precise boundaries of the affected areas were not included in the public notices.
The ruling surprised many, considering that the county had sent several notices to almost all of Loudoun's landowners during the torturously slow study process. But two facts had made the result a foregone conclusion: (1) The court often sides with business interests and against local governments on minute technicalities and (2) a radical transformation had taken place on the Loudoun Board of Supervisors. In short, one boxer had the ref in his pocket while the other was throwing the fight.
About the same time developers started running to their ambulance-chasers, they launched an effort to reclaim the Loudoun board.
A new organization called "Voters to Stop Sprawl" had swept the ballot in 1999 with a slate of growth-control candidates, and the results--while slow to materialize--had proven profound. Now the pro-development forces started their own campaign group ("Citizens for Property Rights"), determined to oust their opponents from office in the 2003 elections.
They largely succeeded--through a combination of partisan politics, subterfuge, class warfare, and dump-truck loads of campaign cash.
"The way to get [candidates] into office is to throw as much money at them as possible," the chairman of the Northern Virginia Building Industry PAC told The Washington Post at the time. It was a strategy pursued with religious fervor.
The development lobby poured $500,000 into 2003 campaigns for Loudoun supervisor, not counting funds from small ($100 or less) contributors. That was seven times what they had invested in the 1999 races, and four times the war chest of VSS. But a big bankroll alone would not have put the fast-growth slate over the top. They also used clever strategies.
Infiltrating the GOPThe first step was to take over the county's Republican committee. Only 200 or so activists typically attended the committee's organizational meetings, so it would be fairly easy for the fast-growthers (let's call them "Boomers") to take over the local GOP machinery. From that vantage point, funneling the party's nominations to Boomer candidates would be much facilitated; and because Loudoun voters lean heavily Republican, victory in November would then be virtually assured.
The party coup came off like clockwork. Boomers overran the GOP's organizational meeting and elected leading development attorney Randall Minchew chairman.
Wheels were set in motion to nominate local candidates by party caucus rather than through the customary primary election. Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott York, who had ousted Boomer heroine Dale Polen Meyers by a 3-1 margin in the 1999 primary, saw the writing on the wall and filed for re-election as an independent.
Boomers got the official GOP nod for all nine board slots.
In the ensuing campaign, the pro-development Republican slate nonetheless portrayed themselves as candidates advocating "smart growth." By their definition of the term, building homes more densely was "smart," though many voters probably assumed it meant following careful, slow-growth policies.
The GOP Boomers also fanned a key point of resentment arising from the recently enacted growth controls: While permitted housing densities had been slashed in the tony hunt-club country of the west, several suburban areas in the east had been slated for higher densities.
For recent arrivals in the teeming town-house enclaves around Sterling, the new plan smacked of favoritism toward the rich, a perception fostered by Republican advertising.
On Election Night, Boomers captured six of the eight district seats, losing only in the rural west. Running countywide, York just barely turned back development attorney Bob Gordon for board chairman.
"'Smart growth' is dead," crowed Citizens for Property Rights chief Jack Shockey, dropping campaign pretenses once the votes were in. "Loudoun County is open for business."
Although the voters had elected him to preside over the chamber, York saw his leadership powers stripped at the first meeting of the new board. The six Republicans gave the gavel to their choice for vice-chairman, Bruce Tulloch.
Tulloch had made a show of not taking contributions from developers in the 1999 campaign, but had lost by 12 votes anyway. Four years later, he was singing a different tune.
"I'm proud to take your money this year," he told a ballroom full of builders. "You have a voice, and it's Bruce Tulloch."
Rezoning like crazyIn its first three months, the new board approved rezonings for 3,000 more housing units. When Loudoun's planning director predicted such moves would severely tax the county's resources, he drew a reprimand from a Boomer board member.
And when the president of the county League of Women Voters asked the GOP six-pack to recuse themselves from deliberations on the downzoning cases (as their campaigns had been given $65,000 by the plaintiffs), four responded by storming an LWV meeting with scores of supporters in an effort to depose her.
By July, The Washington Post was moved to editorialize:
"Under the guidance of six Republicans who favor heavy growth, every session of the Loudoun supervisors brings another surprise move: reversal of a sound planning policy established by their predecessors; a sudden rezoning with little or no notice; or a reduction of rates charged to developers to help fund new services such as roads, schools, and recreation. What will the supervisors do next--sell off county land being held for recreational use to developers?"
With Loudoun safely stashed in their larder, developers appear to be casting a covetous eye on Stafford, the only county on Washington's suburban frontier to hold elections this year. There are indications their new campaign has already begun.
Before this election year even began, Stafford's Republican committee had already given the campaigns of Supervisors Gary Snellings (R-Hartwood) and Mark Osborn (R-Falmouth) $1,800 each, more than the organization had ever given a supervisor candidate for an entire campaign. A VSS vote study had identified the duo as the two most pro-development members of the board.
Unlike the Loudoun County Republican Party, the Stafford GOP does not disclose its contributions of more than $100. When the State Board of Elections last year told it to report such donations, party Chairman Steven Apicella protested, and the state board reversed itself.
Are developers in the process of making the Stafford GOP a money-laundering operation for the 2005 campaign? We may never know for sure, but the basic pattern has already been set.