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April 18, 1999, Sunday

SECTION: REAL ESTATE Pg. H-1

LENGTH: 1338 words

HEADLINE: Now, the feds are getting involved in urban sprawl

SOURCE: COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

BYLINE: Dori Meinert

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Al Gore is striking a chord in many communities as he crisscrosses the country decrying the spread of suburban sprawl.

The House and the Senate each have a special task force investigating whether federal policies have encouraged such runaway development.

Competing for the attention of important swing voters living in the suburbs, the Clinton administration and members of both political parties in Congress are proposing anti-sprawl initiatives.

However, just what federal lawmakers can, or should, do about sprawl remains unclear.

Since 1990, more Americans have been living in the suburbs than in urban and rural areas combined. Traditionally Republican turf, the suburbs have become a key battleground in national elections.

"To keep the White House and win control of Congress in 2000, Democrats will have to hold onto their core in the central cities and build a new political base in the suburbs," writes Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, in a recent edition of The New Democrat.

That reality isn't lost on Gore. Since January, Gore has mounted an aggressive campaign against sprawl as part of the Clinton administration's " livability agenda."

In today's congested suburbs, Gore is fond of saying, "A gallon of gas can be used up just driving to get a gallon of milk. A commuting parent often gets home too late to read a child a bedtime story."

The issue, likely to be a factor in his expected presidential campaign, clicks with suburban voters "because people are losing what they moved out there for," said Democratic analyst Celinda Lake. "The changes are dramatic and because the economy is good, they can afford to worry about quality-of- life issues."

Appeal to anxieties

Even his critics admire how effectively Gore is tapping into suburbanites' anxieties over the building boom.

"Most Republicans I know are green with envy, so to speak, about how clever that is," said Steven Hayward, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco.

Last fall, voters from California to New Jersey approved almost 75 percent of the 240 ballot measures in 31 states related to open space, according to a recent study by State Resource Strategies, an environmental polling firm.

San Diego County, however, bucked the trend last November when voters decisively defeated the Rural Heritage and Watershed Initiative, a countywide measure that sought to shut off most development in the back country.

More than a dozen states have adopted some type of growth management planning system. Twenty-seven governors -- 19 Republicans and eight Democrats -- discussed "smart growth" in their state-of-the-state speeches in January. New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, successfully pushed a statewide bond initiative last November aimed at saving half of the state's undeveloped land.

Their concern is fueled by reports like the Sierra Club's, which says that about 400,000 acres a year fall prey to residential and commercial developers. About 70 percent of prime farmland is now endangered by development, says the American Farmland Trust.

Both San Diego and Los Angeles received "dishonorable" mentions in the Sierra Club's sprawl report.

San Diego was cited by the club because of recent dramatic increases in both population and traffic congestion that are threatening the large number of endangered species in the region. San Diego County saw 70,000 acres of land developed from 1982 to 1992.

Concerns about sprawl are not lost on local leaders in San Diego County. Just last month, two county supervisors inaugurated a "smart-growth" initiative aimed at bringing diverse groups together to grapple with growth issues related to housing, transportation, the environment, water, economic development and local facilities, such as schools and libraries.

Faced with a population that will swell by 1 million residents over the next 20 years, the local smart-growth coalition hopes to craft real solutions for taming costly sprawl while preserving the region's quality of life.

California's population is expected to grow by 12 million over the next two decades, from its current 33 million. Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Riverside counties were among the 10 counties nationwide with the largest population gains between 1997 and 1998, according to a recent Census Bureau report.

But what should the federal government do about sprawl?

Nothing, says Jonathan Adler, a senior policy fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

"Land use is about as local as issues get," Adler said. "The idea that we need Al Gore or (Environmental Protection Agency head) Carol Browner to be national land-use planners is pretty silly."

Besides, he and other critics say, the problem of sprawl is highly exaggerated and smacks of elitism.

"How bad can it be if they (suburbanites) are willing to spend their life savings and buy a house and move their families there?" asks Ron Utt, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

However, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., a leading smart-growth advocate who helped write his state's anti-sprawl laws, argues that the federal government has a role to play in the debate because federal policies and funding over the decades have encouraged the type of activities that produced the congestion, pollution and deterioration that Americans are now complaining about.

"The federal government has been in the land-use business since it started taking land away from the native Americans and giving it to European farmers," said Blumenauer, citing federal railroad, highway and dam projects that have changed the face of the nation over this century.

Whether federal officials' concerns about sprawl will translate into action is unclear, especially in light of the tight budget blueprint for fiscal year 2000.

However, the debate over the next two years is certain to shed more light on the role that federal policy plays in shaping such growth and development.

Both the Senate and the House have livability or smart growth task forces examining the impact of federal policy on sprawl.

Sens. James Jeffords, R-Vt., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., have asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to review the impact of federal programs on sprawl. The report is due at the end of this month.

President Clinton has proposed $2 billion for reining in sprawl and preserving open space as part of his livability and land legacy initiatives. His proposal includes spending $700 million to help finance a $9.5 billion bond program to help communities preserve green space, protect water quality and clean up abandoned industrial sites. It also includes additional grant money for states to coordinate and improve planning of transportation projects.

Several bills have been introduced, including separate ones by California's two Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, that would fully fund the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, providing the federal government and states with more money to buy and preserve undeveloped land.

Kathryn Hohmann of the Sierra Club said that the budget resolution was "bad news" for those hoping that large amounts of money would be put toward the livability agenda. Blumenauer sees changes in federal policy coming in small steps, rather than in giant leaps.

For example, he cites the wide bipartisan support for his bill that would give communities a voice when the U.S. Postal Service decides to relocate facilities, often abandoning downtown post offices in favor of bigger facilities on cheaper land at the edge of town.

"These are not inherently partisan issues," said Blumenauer, who was a smart growth advocate long before Gore brought the issue to national attention.

Small changes are possible, he said, because lawmakers "want to go home and have something positive to talk about."

GRAPHIC: All sprawled out | Sprawl experts ranked the top 20 U.S. cities for unchecked growth, traffic congestion, loss of open space and population growth. Two Southern California cities received dishonorable mentions for providing an example for the rest of the country not to follow.; Most Sprawl- threatened cities (H-12) SOURCE: Sierra Club; PAUL HORN / Union-Tribune

LOAD-DATE: April 18, 1999

Document 61 of 105.


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