Why Fairfax County Needs to become Exempt from Virginia’s Dillon Rule

October 17th, 2019 – Telephone Appointment with Delegate Karrie Delaney

The topic of discussion was how do we remove Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William County from being under Virginia’s Dillon Rule in order to grant local governments the authority to restrict and/or refuse local development? 

Supervisor Kathy Smith’s Chief of Staff, Mike Coyle informed me on October 4th, 2019 that at this point, “The General Assembly would have to create legislation to allow the local government permission to restrict development at the county level. Fairfax County has no legal ability to deny developers from developing any vacant parcel of land at this point. The ability to choose to prohibit development needs to be created at the state level.”

Virginia is a Dillon Rule state as opposed to a Home Rule state, which means that local governments are vastly restricted in making any legislative decisions about their local communities unless the General Assembly grants it to them. This includes development. So how do we remove Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William County from the Dillon Rule?

[My Follow Up E-mail to Delegate Karrie Delaney]

Dear Delegate Delaney,

Thank you for speaking with me today. Per our conversation, here is some background information on the Dillon Rule state.

Background Information on Dillon Rule States vs Home Rule States

Virginia History as a Dillon Rule State
Dillon Rule Case Laws
Virginia Needs to Rethink the Dillon Rule
California Follows Dillons Rule but in a Different Way than the Other States

What states in the US are Home Rule vs. Dillon Rule?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_rule_in_the_United_States

We may also look beyond Virginia to see how other states have effectively created “charter cities” (cities/counties that are Home Rule while allowing the rest of the state to remain under Dillon Rule) and see how they have both passed legislation and how they have implemented the home rule local authorities in effective and beneficial ways.

Candidate for Hunter Mill District Supervisor, Walter Alcorn makes a perfectly sound argument for the position against allowing any land owner from turning his or her property into a development for profit.

“Second, I don’t believe that the quality of any business decisions made by the property owners are relevant to land use decisions of the Board of Supervisors. If the new owners paid a speculative premium for the property hoping to find a path to development, and if they are unable to secure community support for such development, in my view that is simply the risk of being an entrepreneur in our free market system.” – Walter Alcorn

Walter Alcorn made another statement regarding the developers who bought the two Reston golf courses, “You bought two golf courses and you own two golf courses.”

So, hopefully this push back against the developers will increase amongst all Virginia representatives. Every neighborhood and community has the right to decide how developed and how populated their hometown should be, and we need to start shifting that power from the state and county to the residents of the neighborhoods.

As always, I certainly appreciate your time and I look forward to speaking with you more.

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