Loudoun Board Seeks Conditions on Metro Deal

On a 7-2 vote, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Tuesday agreed to conditions that must be met before the board agrees to move forward with the Metrorail Silver Line extension to Dulles and Ashburn.

A compromise proposal had been offered by the U.S. Sec. Ray LaHood after the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the entity tasked with constructing the project, refused to back down from its desire to have an underground station at Dulles Airport. Other snags have popped up along the way, such a project labor agreement that benefits unions, but the aerial route and who will pay for cost overruns had carried the debate.

The MWAA Board of Directors meets July 20 to consider LaHood’s compromise and LaHood had asked the representatives from the funders of the project – Fairfax County, Loudoun and Virginia – to join him at the meeting prepared to ink the deal.

Loudoun’s vote makes that possible only if additional conditions are met, a primary one being that supervisors wish to retain the county’s 90-day option to withdraw from the project after the final engineering is complete, including a final estimate.

The project, initially estimated at $2.5 billion has soared to $3.83 billion, leading to various cost-cutting proposals, namely an underground station at Dulles Airport. That underground station has had a moving price tag through out the process: Once touted as a potential $600 million cost saver, MWAA suggested it could be done for just $300 million, while LaHood placed the savings for its elimination at more than $550 million.

County Chairman Scott K. York (I-At Large) said he opposed the elimination of the 90-day review period as he laid out a series of conditions.

Another condition of the county’s acceptance of the compromise requires that a placeholder be made in the project cost for three parking garages. Under LaHood’s compromise, the county would seek a public-private partnership to cover the cost, or work out a deal with the state. But Loudoun supervisors wanted to clarify that if either of those options failed, the cost would revert back to the project, not solely Loudoun taxpayers.

The conditions Loudoun supervisors are requesting include:

1. Loudoun will make a reasonable and best effort to assemble a financial option for the three Loudoun garages, thereby taking the cost of the garages out of the project.
2. This reduced project scope is contingent upon either a private sector partner and/or the Commonwealth guaranteeing and backing the cost of these garages or other alternative financing options that require no local tax funding support, as well as the realization of TIFIA financing. Staff recommends that the garage costs be kept as an allowance in the overall project cost pending Loudoun working through a potential transaction with the private sector and the Commonwealth. If Loudoun is successful, then the costs are removed from the project. If not, then they remain a project cost shared by all parties.
3. The Airports Authority accepts the amended compromise proposal, including the Aerial Station.
4. Fairfax County accepts the amended compromise proposal.
5. The Commonwealth accepts the amended compromise proposal.
6. MWAA donates the land for the parking garage at the Route 606 station.
7. Consideration be given by WMATA in regards to reducing their standards for parking garages at Metro stations and considering alternate parking fees for the garages in Loudoun County.
8. I move that the Board of Supervisors again reject the offer of the Airports Authority to maintain an underground station by financing the differential for only Loudoun and Fairfax Counties, but not reducing the burden on the Dulles Toll Road users.

Supervisor Stevens Miller (D-Dulles) said many of the disagreements about the project only surfaced after the debate about whether the airport station should be underground or aerial. Supervisor Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac) pleaded with MWAA to give in to the aerial option.

“The underground station is not worth a half a billion dollars,” McGimsey said. “It’s not worth it. Please be reasonable and change your mind.”

Elected officials and the bodies on which they serve at every level of government have panned MWAA’s insistence on the underground station, making Leesburg Supervisor Kelly Burk (D-Leesburg) wonder what the MWAA board members are thinking.

“I can’t understand why it’s taken this long for them to wake up,” Burk said.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) has long called the Metro project a boondoggle and spared no vitriol with where the debate has gone.

“What is the benefit to people of LC? There is no benefit. Zero. Zippo,” he said, adding that he’s puzzled how Loudoun’s costs keep going up. “This is the worst bargaining I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Delgaudio then ranted about the lack of a Loudoun County representative on the MWAA board.

“We should say no to these people who don’t let us have representation. Who are they? Red China?” he asked in a very animated spiel. “Is this the Soviet Union now, where we don’t even have a representative to decide what happens to $400 million of our money?”

Supervisor Jim Burton (I-Blue Ridge) joined Delgaudio in voting against the item