What Happened to Free Markets?

“Drivers Seeing Red Over Greenway Toll” reads the headline in the Washington Post. The article reveals that the State Corporation Commission (SCC) has received over 100 letters opposing the Greenway’s owner’s application to increase tolls over the next six years. The Republican-controlled Loudoun County Board of Supervisors are screaming foul, and my good friend Republican Frank Wolf has written a letter, which he uses in his campaign ads, opposing the toll increase. It is an election year and Frank has a tough fight in a year when Republicans are being depicted as devils around the world. Let’s put politics aside as the SCC must do and consider some facts.

In 1988 when the private toll road legislation was passed to permit the first private toll road in the United States since before the Civil War, State Route 267, later named the Greenway, was not even on the VDOT 20 year plan. A year before Ralph Stanley, President Ronald Reagan’s Urban Mass Transit Administrator, left his government job to develop the Greenway and sell his idea to legislators in Richmond and to the public. Ralph setup a small office across from the Courthouse in Leesburg. I met with him often and we shared ideas on right-of-way issues. We became good friends. I was personally very interested in seeing this project happen. At the time I was commuting on Route 7 from Chevy Chase Maryland to the Leesburg Airport, an increasingly frustrating and dangerous journey. I could also see the benefits this road would bring to Loudoun County, Leesburg, and my business at the airport.

When the Greenway opened in 1995 it was toll-free for the first month or so. When a toll was levied, trips on the Greenway dropped as commuters and other drivers returned to Route 7. But slowly back they came to the Greenway as traffic increased on dangerous Leesburg Turnpike. My point is that they had a choice.

So why is the SCC even involved in setting toll rates? The Greenway is not a monopoly like Dominion Power or other utilities. It was not built with public funds. The owners of the Greenway pay for the State Police to patrol the road. If drivers feel the toll is too high, they can take alternates like Route 7 or Route 50. If VDOT and the State Legislators want to compete with the Greenway, they can raises our taxes (a government toll) and make Route 7, Route 50 and other roads competitive. Fat chance – we have just spent a year of gridlock in Richmond over these transportation issues.

No Sausage Factory Here

Watching government in action has often been compared to the production of sausage – not a pretty sight. The 9/11 meeting of the Loudoun County Planning Commission meeting to consider the Crosstrail rezoning application should be a case study for the Harvard School of Government. Despite being held on the 5th anniversary of our nation’s most disastrous day, at the same time as the Redskin’s opening game, a major Presidential address to the nation, and the second installment of ABC's controversial, highly promoted, and widely watched mini-series, “The Path to 9/11”, the members of the Planning Commission, County staffers, two member of the Town Planning Commission, Town staffers, senior officers (including the CEO) of the Peterson Companies, and several dozen consultants worked until midnight to approve Crosstrail: 5 for, 2 opposed, 1 abstention, and 1 absent.

Chair Teresa White Whitmore should have the Harvard chair in Meeting Management. She brought warring parties not only to the peace table, but conducted an orderly debate where all parties had an opportunity to express their views and resolve differences. After the final vote was tallied, I had the feeling that even the two opposed were not violently opposed. One said almost nothing during the whole five hours and gave no reason for his opposition. The one abstention did so because she had only been on the commission a few weeks and had not heard the entire debate. Judging from her questions and observations, it was my feeling that she leaned toward a Yes.

The Crosstrail application now goes to the Board of Supervisors. If this body works as hard and as responsibly as the Planning Commission, the process and the results will make Loudoun County and Leesburg a better place to live, and will hopefully set the tone for better government. Sausage production is not a permitted use in the County Government building. Take note Leesburg: Your zoning laws on this use should conform to the County’s.

There are strange thing done…

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By men who moil for gold

So begins a poem by one of my favorite poets, Robert Service, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”. If Service were alive today and lived in Leesburg, his poem might have read something like this:

There are strange things done in the midday sun
By a Council that that covets gold;
Leesburg’s trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
Loudoun’s folks have seen queer sites,
But the queerest they ever did see
Were the Council forums on the banks of the Goose
That out numbered the residents ten to three.

The strangest sight I ever did see was at the recent Town Forum at the Senior Center in Leesburg. Picture four members of the Town Council (Umstattd, Burke, Martinez, and Reid), eight Town staff members, and one County staffer (a total of 12) making a thirty minute pitch to four seniors who had just finished a bridge game. Twenty other seniors folded up their tables and chairs, and left before the Town group uttered a word.

After much whining about the unfairness of having no vote in the Crosstrail land planning process, not withstanding the fact that Mayor Umstattd has always opposed annexing any land into the Town, I asked if I might say a few words. “No you may not,” exclaimed Council member Burke. “You were not invited.”

Four seniors pitched, one senior muzzled. Indeed, a strange thing at a public meeting in a public building.