Leopold does something rare

Wow, for once John Leopold actually told the truth:

Years before he became Anne Arundel County's chief executive, John R. Leopold sounded a lot like the critics of his current plan to impose perhaps the highest development impact fees in Maryland.

In 2001, Leopold attacked county leaders' idea of raising those fees "during our current recessionary slump." He argued that it could hurt commercial growth, dampen the prospect of affordably priced housing and unfairly burden selective homeowners.

"They are insidious, regressive homeowner taxes," Leopold, then a member of the House of Delegates, wrote in a letter to the Maryland Gazette.

Today, as Leopold tries to balance the county budget amid millions lost in state aid and real estate tax revenue, the second-year county executive acknowledged that he has flipped his position.

We have known Leopold has lied, inflated his accomplishments, and changed his position in order to get whatever political office he is seeking at that particular time over the course of the last 30 years. I am just amazed that Leopold finally had the guts to admit it for once.

What of course is just as disturbing, unfortunately, is the fact that we have this guys masquerading as a conservative Republican who is coming out in support of raising fees that he himself called "insidious, regressive homeowner taxes." This is something Councilman Ed Middlebrooks noted:

"Historically, he has been consistent on where he has been on impact fees," Councilman C. Edward Middlebrooks, a Severn Republican, said of Leopold. "He fought against them, and he thought the transfer tax was the way to go. Then, when he had the opportunity to actually do something, he abandons everything he has said over the years for raising impact fees. How can that be?"

How can one truly call themselves a conservative Republican if you are supporting higher fees and taxes that you know to be morally irresponsible? I mean, raising any fee by a multiple of four is about as far from a consistent conservative viewpoint as one can possibly get.

Unfortunately, John Leopold at the end of the day remains an embarrassment to Anne Arundel County and an embarrassment to the Maryland Republican Party for his O'Malleyesque stance on this important pocketbook issues...

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 02-20-2008

Leopold's Deep Impact

This story about the impact fees is not going to go away anytime soon...

The county charges fees for planning reviews, permits and water and sewer hookups that can exceed $20,000 per single-family home. Factoring in a proposal by County Executive John R. Leopold to boost impact fees by as much as fourteenfold, homebuilders would be saddled -- before the first nail is driven through -- with up to $57,000 in county charges per home site, based on data assembled by the Homebuilders Association of Maryland.

That's more than triple the fees in Harford County and quadruple Howard County's fees, according to the analysis released this month.

Great planning. Let's really drive up the cost of doing business in Anne Arundel County by making the cost of building a home (you know, before any part of the home is built) more than most new BMWs.

Thankfully, my friend and my County Councilman Ron Dillon is a voice of reason on this particular matter:

"It's very concerning," said County Councilman Ronald C. Dillon Jr., a Pasadena Republican. "This isn't something that developers are going to absorb. This is going to absorbed by the consumer, and most of these consumers are county residents looking to move up."

Of course, this is a very common sense approach considering anybody who understands basic economics know that consumers are the ones who are going to wind up footing the bill on this thing.

Fortunately, the County Council is not rolling over and playing dead for Leopold, and we are actually going to get some actual debate and legitimate consideration of this issue:

The County Council decided last night to form a work group to study the issue.

This council's going to leave this hearing open … to help members of the council address some of both the policy issues and practical matters that have been raised in the past weeks in the discussion over impact fees," Council Chairman Cathy Vitale, R-Severna Park, said at the end of the second public hearing on the topic last night....

...Ms. Vitale said the work group, whose members will be announced by the end of the week, will help the council "continue to take a deeper look" into the best way to make development pay for itself. She said the group will have people from the business community, the environmental community, citizens, school advocates, and members of the nonprofit and affordable housing sector.

Obviously the composition of this work group will greatly impact the group's results. But I am glad to see the Council take appropriate measures to study the issue first. The fact of the matter is that John Leopold wants to continue to do everything that he can to make it less affordable to live and work in Anne Arundel County. His constant calls for higher taxes and higher fees are particularly distributing given the fact that he is Republican (even if it is in name only).

We as conservatives need to make sure that we do our part to make our voices heard and say no to higher costs and higher fees that will severely impact middle and working class taxpayers. Principle is more important than party on this critical issue.

The Sun's tripleheader

The Sun editorial today manages to take on three of their favorite topics: defending John Leopold, supporting higher fees, and criticizing the tax cap.

I am not exactly sure what the Sun's editorial board is trying to accomplish here. The fact of the matter is that Leopold chose to go maverick on the issue of impact fees and decided not to try and work with the County Council on this issue. Furthermore, the Sun's arguments on the need for higher impact fees leave much to be desired:

And yet everyone agrees that the present fee is woefully outdated; there's a difference of opinion on how best to cover the costs of roads, schools and other infrastructure associated with new developments.

I certainly do not see a consensus for the need to hike these impact fees. As I have noted yesterday, the Administration needs to show that there is a demonstrable need for the fees that cannot be met by restructuring existing dollars before such an impact fee can ever be considered.

Which leads me to the Sun's other point:

For a county government that labors under a property tax cap, Anne Arundel needs additional revenue to meet its infrastructure needs.

We are fortunate that we have a tax cap in this county. I am sure that liberals such as John Leopold would find a way to hike our taxes if such a fee were not in place. But once again, I have seen no need for additional revenue. We as a county do need to find new ways to address issues regarding our infrastructure, however I still have not seen where Leopold has made much of an effort to work within the existing budget framework first.

Anne Arundel County has enough problems under John Leopold's leadership. The Sun's cheerleading for higher taxes and fees on Maryland's working and middle class families does not help one bit.

Leopold to make housing less affordable

John Leopold has decided that, given problems with affordable housing in the county, that the best solution is to make houses even less affordable:

A proposal to tack more than $21,000 onto the price of building a four-bedroom home in Anne Arundel County has incensed homebuilders and developers, who predict a sweeping bundle of increases to impact fees could deflate the growth boom around Fort Meade and drive them into other jurisdictions.

County Executive John R. Leopold has said the current impact fee of $4,904 a house - typically passed on to buyers - is long overdue for an increase because it doesn't cover the "full freight" of building roads and schools and providing county services. He has said that if higher fees, such as $1 million more for a 200,000-square-foot office complex, slow down "meteoric" growth, "that is not an undesired outcome."

Clearly it is important that Anne Arundel County have enough money available for additional school construction and additional infrastructure construction, however this is clearly far from a constructive way to obtain such revenue.

As I have demonstrated numerous times before, there is a tremendous amount of fat in the school system budget. Layer upon layer of bureaucracy. Pouring money in programs that have not been proven to work. Why can we not, first and foremost, find additional sources of revenue within already existing revenues? Why can't the School System budget be reorganized and re-prioritized to cover these costs?

Furthermore, how much fat is John Leopold really cutting the budget? yes, I am sympathetic to the ever increasing cost of adding additional infrastructure, particular when it comes to new sewer and water lines, and new roadways. But how are we making do now? Are we to believe that the burden is now so problematic for Anne Arundel County that it is required to quadruple the existing fee in order to cover the costs? What steps has John Leopold taken to restructure the county budget in order to cover these costs? What plans does Leopold have for the additional revenues that will (in theory) more than cover the increased costs for these projects?

None of those concerns address either the concerns about building affordable housing and about increasing commercial development, and of course, the concern about BRAC:

Bob Burdon, chief executive of the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Chamber of Commerce, said the proposed impact fees would be "counterproductive" to Leopold's stated goal of boosting commercial growth....

...."What makes it more profound is that the county has the opportunity of BRAC and the opportunity to attract quality business and development in this county, and all of that is potentially in jeopardy," Burdon said of the base realignment process that will occur over the next four years.

There are a number of concerns regarding Leopold's proposal here. The fact of the matter is that the cost to the consumer is going to rise if higher impact fees are passed. Yes, this is a way for Leopold to cover up the broken promises he made on the campaign trail. But at the end of the day, the developers are going to make their money back regardless. A higher impact fee is a higher cost that the homeowner or the business owner has to pay when they purchase a new home or rent a new commercial property. Developers who think that they will be unable to make the money on these fees back will take their business to surrounding counties, and artificially inflate the prices of new properties that are built.

Most importantly, as the case usually is when you talk about John Leopold, Anne Arundel County taxpayers are going to get the short end of this deal....