The Board of Supervisors takes vague commitments & abandons its workforce housing policy in Tysons.

(UPDATE & CORRECTION:  In a comment we've chosen not to publish, Navid Roshan-Afshar, who routinely seems to see himself as the defender of all things Tysons, calls this post "a flat-out lie" in his usual tactless manner.  (Yes, this is not the first time he has made such an assertion--and sometimes he is "flat-out" wrong.)  The post isn't a lie, but it is inaccurate, for which we apologize to our readers.

In fact, the developer has pledged to provide 65% of the workforce housing sometime, somewhere in Tysons--almost certainly not in The Arbor luxury condominium complex--and put some funds aside for the rest to also be built sometime, somewhere in Tysons.  According to Fairfax County:

As with other major, new projects in Tysons, affordable housing will be offered. The developer will pursue providing 20 percent of its total units as affordable. In a unique strategy, they may be offered either in The Arbor or other buildings in Tysons.

As approved, at least 65 percent of the promised units will be provided onsite or offsite. For the remaining 35 percent, the developer may make a cash contribution instead. The money, which ranges from $75,000 to $85,000 per unit, will go to the county’s affordable housing trust fund for Tysons.

We doubt the prospective construction of this workforce units will be anywhere near the Metro stations--or anytime soon.  This amorphous commitment is inconsistent with the County's policy plan for developing workforce housing county-wide which calls for a minimum 12% onsite with extra required to achieve higher overall densities (an additional FAR 0.5) in places like Tysons and Reston's station areas.  And the per unit money falls significantly short of what it will actually cost to build these units.  Moreover, the Board decision gives the appearance of an intent to segregate workforce housing in less desirable locations with less desirable construction--call them "slums."  The deal was opposed by the County's professional staff, but the Board overruled the staff.  

It sets an ugly precedent not only in Tysons, but also for Reston, where providing housing for all walks of life has been a cornerstone planning principle for more than a half century.  We are deeply concerned that this kind of deal making at the cost of workforce housing will undermine the County's workforce housing policy broadly as well as Reston's planning principles.  Why should any other developer now be treated differently?

We thank Navid for pointing this out, but hopefully he can do so in a more civil manner in the future.)

In a decision made Tuesday, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved an application to build a 25-story condominium building at Tysons called "The Arbor" WITHOUT any workforce housing as called for in Tysons plan and County policy planning.  Instead, the Board settled for a contribution of cash to a fund for future workforce housing construction in Tysons.  

Here is how Michael Niebauer of Washington Business Journal reported it:

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved plans for The Arbor, a 140-unit, 25-story condo tower with more than 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail at Arbor Row, Cityline Partners' 2.2 million-square-foot redevelopment of the West Park office park. Developer Renaissance Centro is the contract purchaser of the Arbor Row condo pad. . . .

In approving the project, the board rejected staff's recommendation of denial, which was based on Renaissance Centro's ability to provide affordable workforce dwelling units, or WDUs, on site.

As we wrote on Monday, the developer has proffered to provide up to 20 percent of its units as WDUs, but it has only guaranteed that 65 percent of the so-called "Proffered 20" will be actual units, and none of them necessarily have to be within The Arbor (though they must be somewhere in Tysons). In lieu of the units it does not provide, Renaissance Centro will make a payment to a Tysons affordable housing fund.

Staff did not agree that Renaissance Centro should be awarded bonus density in return for cash. . . .

So it turns out, pretty much as we expected, that the Board of Supervisors cares less about its commitment to workforce housing than it does about its balance sheet.  While the funds the developer contributes are intended to build workforce housing in Tysons, we doubt that they will ever be used in that manner.  At best, they will be diverted to workforce housing in a less desirable place, quite probably remote from Metrorail which makes Tysons such an attractive place for workforce housing.  

As WBJ reported in January (as did we):  "The second option is simply a cash contribution to a new Tysons Affordable Housing Trust Fund, generally equal to 1.5 percent of the sales prices of all units at The Arbor, plus 1 percent of the net base sales price paid in installments. But the Tysons Plan is wary of cash in lieu of affordable housing, noting explicitly it is "not desired.""

In general, housing developers in Metro station areas are expected to devote at least 12 percent of their dwelling units to workforce housing and that percentage can rise to 20 percent if the developer wants extra density--which is definitely the case in Tysons.  Yet, instead of obtaining 12-20% of the net sales price of The Arbor sales toward future workforce housing, the County settled for one-tenth of that sum (1.5%) in cash.  How does the Board presume to provide the number of workforce units required by its own workforce housing policy with so little funding?  Its decision virtually assures that the County will not be able to provide workforce housing at a level that even remotely achieve the goal of the County's much touted effort to create workforce housing.  We have not seen such a cynical forked-tongue decision by the Board of Supervisors in some time, but it continues to surprise--in a bad way--especially now that the Board elections are behind us. 

Restonians and their leaders need to be aware of this sellout by the County Board because it provides a benchmark for future housing development in Reston's station areas.  We must insist that the County live up to at least its established commitment to affordable housing in Reston to preserve Bob Simon's goal of housing for everyone.  

Big Money is Talking in Tysons. Will the County buy it?

In a new Washington Business Journal article headlined, "Cash vs. affordable units: This Tysons development case is worth watching," Michael Neibauer describes how Reston-based developer Renaissance Centro is seeking to sell its way out of providing workforce housing at affordable prices while building a huge luxury condominium complex called The Arbor.  Here is the gritty part of this article:

 The project's website describes The Arbor, with its large units ringed with terraces, as supporting an "active, urban lifestyle indicative of the newly urban Tysons." The site design includes pedestrian paths winding around the building and connecting with Lerner Enterprises' Tysons II expansion.

Fairfax County's comprehensive plan for Tysons, also known as the Tysons Plan, places a premium on workforce housing — those units affordable to households with incomes ranging from 60 percent to 120 percent of the area median income. For providing workforce dwelling units, or WDUs, developers can achieve a 20 percent bonus density.

Renaissance Centro, the contract purchaser of Block D, has offered two options to reach the density it proposes for The Arbor. The decision, according to the list of proffers, is theirs, not the county's.

One option is to provide 20 percent of the units as WDUs, though if those units don't sell in relatively short order, Renaissance Centro would have the option to flip them to market-rate. The difference between the for-sale WDU price and the market-rate price would be contributed to the county.

The second option is simply a cash contribution to a new Tysons Affordable Housing Trust Fund, generally equal to 1.5 percent of the sales prices of all units at The Arbor, plus 1 percent of the net base sales price paid in installments. But the Tysons Plan is wary of cash in lieu of affordable housing, noting explicitly it is "not desired."

Staff does not believe, per the report, "that bonus intensity or height should be granted to the applicant for the provision of workforce dwellings when no actual workforce dwelling units are being provided in the building."

So it's up to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors just how serious they are about keeping some affordable housing in Tysons or whether they will settle for money to address their budget problem, which is a problem of too much spending, not a problem of too little revenue.   

It's an excellent article.  Click here to read the rest. 

Jet lagged at Dulles, Loudoun Times, April 22, 2015

Wednesday, Apr. 22, 2015 by Trevor Baratko

Anyone who doubts the severity of the problems facing Dulles International Airport – the hundreds of millions in capital debt, dip in passenger totals and a consistent failure to compete with the smaller Reagan National down the road – need only consider the speakers headlining an April 16 seminar on why Dulles matters.

There, in an open conversation hall at AOL's Dulles headquarters, stood a governor, a U.S. Senator, congresswoman and a half-dozen state and local politicians. All were speaking to the airport's importance, and listening were more than 300 stakeholders and interested parties. These were busy people – busy people who made time for Dulles, because they know the airport is struggling, and they know they need solutions.

Passenger counts at Dulles have fallen over the past decade, from a peak of more than 27 million in 2005 to 23.6 million in 2010 and less than 22 million in 2014. Cargo activity too has dipped, about 25 percent in the past five years.

Two key stats further underscoring Dulles' trials note that nearly the same number of travelers used Dulles and Reagan in 2014, this despite Dulles being 14 times larger than Reagan, and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which operates Dulles and Reagan, has racked up about $240 million in annual debt service.

Why does the success and viability of Dulles matter? It's simple, economists and politicians say. The airport generates more than $1.2 billion a year in state and local tax revenue for Virginia, D.C. and Maryland, and it supports nearly 250,000 direct or indirect jobs, according to a study commissioned by MWAA. . . .

Click here for the rest of this article.  

While the downward trend in Dulles air traffic has been know for some time, it's linkage and impact on the rest of the area's County--especially the much vaunted "Dulles Corridor" including Tysons and our own Reston--is another sign of the growing economic difficulty of Fairfax County and especially the Dulles Corridor which is counting on the Silver Line to be the engine of County growth for decades to come.  That fewer people that use or work or ship at Dulles only adds to the growing laundry list of things not quite working the way developers and politicians fantasized more than a decade ago when planning for the Silver Line got serious.

We can hope that completion of the Silver Line through IAD and into Loudoun County, now scheduled for 2018, will help reverse the trend for the airport and the corridor, but it will take a long, long time. 

Reston, not Tysons, begins to dominate Northern Virginia real estate, WaPo, October 30, 2014

By Jonathan O'Connell October 30 at 11:34 AM  

 

A busy intersection in Reston Town Center. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

It will be years before we’ll know whether the vision for an urbanized Tysons Corner will become a successful model for re-inventing suburban areas. The long-range plan for overhauling Tysons is just four years old and Metro’s Silver Line trains have only been arriving there for three months. . .

But while multiple projects in Tysons, most notably Macerich’s Tysons Tower, are attempting to combine enough new uses to create dense, walkable areas, none are likely to catch Reston Town Center any time soon.

Working off a plan devised by Robert Simon 50 years ago, a four-block area of Reston Town Center combines 2.8 million square feet of office, 50 shops, 30 restaurants and three residential high-rises.
Tysons, to this point, still doesn’t really have any areas with a walkable grid of blocks, much less a neighborhood or node that dense. . .

(Sarah) Dreyer (Director of Mid-Atlantic research for Cushman & Wakefield) points out that some of the newer offices in Tysons are shaping up as strong competitors to buildings in Reston, particularly those that can offer closer access to the Silver Line than Reston Town Center will be able to. But the plan for Tysons is four years old. The plan for Reston is 50 years old. That’s a 46-year head start.

To be fair, the original plan for Reston Town Center's current development was approved a mere quarter-century or so ago, not a half-century ago, but two decades is still a heck of a head start.

Over the longer term, however, the more important point is that Tysons is planned for much more intense mixed-use development than Reston Town Center or either of Reston's two Metrorail station areas.  That Reston plan was updated last year with much greater commercial and residential density  as part of the Reston Master Plan process.  Indeed, the planned infrastructure to support Reston Town Center's development would choke trying to support the kind of development planned at Tysons.  In fact, we believe its transportation, education, and parks & recreation planning for Reston Town Center is terribly inadequate even for the densities now planned there and well below existing County planning standards and guidelines. As a result, the Town Center area will be less able to handle traffic and meet the recreational needs of its residents, workers, and visitors than Tysons if they both develop as their new plans propose. 

Maybe long term Tysons will turn out to be the better, more walkable, more accessible, more attractive mixed-use urban area than Reston's Town Center.  We certainly hope not, but that is what the two plans currently offer!

 

Actually, Wiehle Station Silver Line ridership already exceeds first-year expectations while Tysons lags

We have seen a number of articles based on a WMATA press release yesterday about the great ridership progress made in the first two months of Silver Line Phase 1 operations.  Here's how WMATA leads off:

Metro today provided updated Silver Line ridership information showing that, less than two months after opening, the new line is already performing at 60 percent of its projected ridership for the end of the first full year of service. As of last week, an average of 15,000 riders are entering the system at the five new Silver Line stations on weekdays for a combined 30,000 trips to or from the new stations.

In the planning process, Silver Line ridership was projected to reach 25,000 boardings at the five new stations after one full year of service.

Metro estimates that the Silver Line is currently adding approximately 6,000 new riders -- making roughly 12,000 trips -- to the Metrorail system each weekday. The balance, approximately 9,000 riders, are primarily former Orange Line riders who have switched to the Silver Line.

Wiehle-Reston East remains the Silver Line’s commuting powerhouse, having already surpassed first-year ridership projections with 8,400 boardings, or 16,800 weekday entries and exits.  With convenient bus transfers, a secure bike room and a large parking garage, Wiehle-Reston East’s commute makes up around half the line’s ridership. . . .

In short, the new Silver Line stations are generating about 60% of the 25,000 boardings WMATA expects by the end of the first year of operations.  That translates into 50,000 trips each way per day on the Silver Line.   Actually, a September 12, 2013, brief by WMATA on marketing the Silver Line puts that total daily trips at a slightly smaller number, 49,000, as shown in this graphic:

 

The important thing to notice here is that this projection indicates our Wiehle-Reston East station should produce 16,400 of those trips each day by the end of the year.  

The good news, according to the WMATA press release, is that Wiehle is already generating 16,800 daily trips, 400 more than WMATA projected by the end of the first year of operations.  

Yes, Restonians like mass transit and are using it more than forecast.

The question then is:  Why aren't more riders using the Silver Line at Tysons?  By the end of the first year of operations, it should be carrying 32,600 people per day according to the graphic above.  Right now, subtracting out Reston's share of the traffic, it is only carrying about 13,200 riders daily or 40% of its year-end forecast traffic. 

We wonder if Tysons lack of "a secure bike room and a large parking garage(s)" might not be the problem even with the free (with Metro transfer) circulator bus service there--which gets mixed reviews because of infrequent service on circuitous routes.  (Sounds like the same reviews of the Reston RIBS bus service, which isn't free and each route is much longer & service less frequent.  Hint for Fairfax DOT:  More buses + more frequency = more riders.  And "free" is good too!)   And the absence of parking garages at Tysons isn't a design flaw, it's a "design feature" no matter how ill-conceived.  

Whatever the reasons, we hope that Tysons joins Reston and lives up to WMATA's expectations by next July.

Why hasn't Fairfax County provided the access infrastructure needed to take advantage of the Silver Line?

Last week, we documented in a post that Fairfax County has completed few of the the projects on its own checklist for creating the transportation infrastructure needed to make access to Reston's Wiehle Silver Line station reasonable.  This week, Tysons' leading commentator, Navid Roshan-Afshar, AKA "The Tysons Corner," makes the same point about Tysons.

Here is some of what he has to say:

For several years transportation officials, planners, and Fairfax County leaders have known that the Silver Line would be a reality, and that pedestrian improvements would be necessary to make sure people could safely use the transit line. After a nearly 9 month delay, County officials are now telling us there wasn’t enough time?

Residents and commuters aren’t asking for Tysons to magically be transformed into a walkable paradise, but to receive responses like this, when we get any at all, is a slap in our faces. Providing a crosswalk should not be a year long chore when people’s lives are risk. How many must run across 9 lanes of traffic without any signage, striping, or protection before Fairfax County will stop the status quo kowtowing to VDOT? Must someone die at the intersections in question, opening the county to millions in liability, before they will admit that what the state has been feeding them is worthless in terms of urban design?

. . . and so his post goes here. 

Everything he says about Tysons is also true in Reston--and there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for this pathetic County performance.  In Reston, the RMAG gave a large number of sound recommendations for improving access infrastructure in Spring 2008--six years ago.  The Silver Line has been under construction since Spring 2009--and its design absolutely locked down so the County knew what specifically to expect. 

Yet, here we are, with the Silver Line launched 9 months late and work on improving access to the station not even half done--certainly not the more challenging half, including the Soapstone extension.  This is a pathetic and unconscionable performance by our Board of Supervisors in transportation planning and implementation, especially by Supervisor Hudgins--a self-proclaimed public transit advocate--who represents residents and businesses of both Reston and parts of Tysons.  And it is forcing the County Transportation staff to make up stupid--and untrue--excuses for the delays to cover the gross incompetence of the Board of Supervisors.

In all likelihood, the urban development the County so desperately needs to salvage its financial situation will not occur unless the County makes the Silver Line easily and safely accessible to station area residents and businesses.  In the meantime, it is slowly, painfully shooting itself in the fiscal foot.  It is well past time for the Board to put our tax money where its mouth is on the wonders of rail in both Reston and Tysons.

DynCorp to consolidate in Tysons, Michael Neibauer, Washington Business Journal, August 5, 2013

WBJ reports that DynCorp, which has offices in Reston among other northern Virginia locations, will consolidate its Washington-area offices in Tysons.  As reflected in the WBJ article, this means:

• Reston will lose another employer, probably in large part because there is so little vacant space in its Metro station areas, especially Town Center and so much vacant space elsewhere. 
• DynCorp's employees will be "stuffed" into spaces of about ~200 SF per person (80,000 SF building for 400 workers), one-third less than the County's Planning staff is planning for. 
• No new office space development (taking over old Northrop-Grumman space), but probably some retrofitting to to meet the new office design concepts for reduced office space per worker--even in this company whose work is often classified.    

DynCorp will consolidate its regional offices at 1700 Old Meadow Road in Tysons, an 80,000-square-foot office building formerly occupied by Northrop Grumman Corp.

 Here are some excerpts from Michael Neibauer's article:

DynCorp International Inc. will move its corporate headquarters out of Falls Church but not to Alabama or Texas or any other state that sought to lure the contractor away from Virginia.

The company announced Monday it will consolidate its Northern Virginia offices in Tysons, taking all 80,000 square feet at 1700 Old Meadow Road, an office building owned by CityLine Partners LLC and formerly occupied by Northrop Grumman Corp. . .

The consolidation announcement follows a report that officials in Fort Worth, Texas, were trying to lure DynCorp there with a slate of incentives. The company, which employs about 400 in the Washington area, had previously retained CBRE Group Inc. to study its space options. . . .

 Click here for the rest of this article.  

Could Silver Line Cause Tysons (..& Reston!) Parking Problems? NBC4, April 23, 2013

View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.

By Adam Tuss

When the massive Metro Silver Line opens in Northern Virginia in just a matter of months, the vast network of parking lots in and around Tysons Corner could become the center of major controversy.

Here is the problem: there is no parking at the four new Metro stations being built in Tysons Corner. But there is plenty of available, free parking at nearby shopping centers like Tysons Corner Center and the Pike 7 Plaza.

Some are worried commuters will start leaving their cars in those parking lots and just hop on the train. Shopping center parking lots could effectively be turned into commuter parking lots. . .

Commuter cheaters are nothing new for the D.C. Region. Some drivers along the Dulles Toll Road try to get around the toll by using the Airport Access Road, even though they don't have airport business. Of course, there are the HOV lane cheaters.

And now, the commuter cheating could extend to the parking lots of Tysons.

Click here for the rest of this article.

And so is anyone in the County government thinking about the impact of Metrorail on parking in commercial lots and residential neighborhoods in Reston by "commuter cheaters" rather than pay to park in the newly built parking garage?

We haven't heard a peep from County officials about the near-certain parking problems at Reston's end-of-the-line station.  Its just Tysons, full time, all the time. 

Planning officials see buses at center of transit network serving Tysons Corner, Washington Post, January 12, 2013

This article, by WaPo local reporter Luz Lazo says,

Fairfax plans to revamp bus service in Tysons, adding connections from other parts of the county and a new Circulator bus system, to coincide with this year’s projected Metro Silver Line opening. County officials see better and more bus options, alongside the rail service, as a first step toward acclimating residents to more use of public transit.

The focus on Tysons, not just in this article but in County leadership thinking--BOS Chairman Bulova thinks a new bus line linking Burke with Tysons "is really exciting" and "a big deal"--reflects the continuing lack of attention by County leaders to addressing Reston's Metro-related transportation needs.  

The Silver Line opening at Reston East/Wiehle Avenue station will happen at the same time as the stations open in Tysons, yet County plans for bus service, enhanced or otherwise, in Reston remain in a preliminary state at best--and there are no commitments.   Some Restonians, looking at the information publicly available, have indicated that the proposed bus routes within Reston will actually provide poorer bus service than that already provided.  And bus service to the Wiehle Metro stop will be even more important than bus service in Tysons in the short term because it will be the western terminus for the Silver Line for several years the principal point of embarkation/debarkation.  Moreover, the transit station sits in the middle of the Dulles corridor at one of Reston's busiest toll road access points along an already congested Wiehle Avenue.  

How Restonians will navigate this area has not been addressed well by County officials yet despite a serious analysis and recommendations on the topic by RMAG five years ago--and time is running out.  None of the report's many excellent recommendations for improving all kinds of access to the station has yet been implemented fully, not even even simple crosswalk improvements.  And the fixes proposed by RMAG were relatively inexpensive--$105 million in total compared with the $5 billion already committed to Tysons.  The bus transit questions that remain concern whether County leaders will (a) provide reliable, frequent, easily accessible bus service for Restonians to the Metro station, (b) minimize the traffic impact of buses arriving from outside the community, (c) enable safe pedestrian and bicycle access to the station area, and (d) ease the traffic congestion created by those who drive to the station or the toll road access there.    

The good news is that it appears the facilities to handle additional buses will be in place on time.  The question remains whether County leadership will once again drop the ball in providing adequate bus transit for Restonians and others who want to take the Silver Line from Wiehle station. 

Click here to read the full article.

Washington’s Economic Boom, Financed by You, New York Times, January 13, 2013

Washington Bureau writer Annie Lowrey writes an extensive and well-researched article in today's NYT about the decade-long boom in government contract spending in the Washington area and the potential economic impact of a reduction in spending growth.  The article discounts the likelihood of sequestration and a resulting regional recession, but highlights the steady transition to a slower economic growth model over several years.   Here is maybe the key paragraph in the multi-page article:

It is not hard to imagine how this marked decrease in federal spending might ripple through the regional economy. Scant job growth will mean lower wages, meaning slower consumer spending, meaning less demand for new bars and clubs and stores and luxury apartments. But just how deeply this will affect the economy is unclear. It’s possible that federal budgets might never get cut outright, with Congress instead slowing the path of spending growth. That might mean slower growth for Washington, but hardly a contraction or a regional recession of the kind that plagued Detroit after the auto industry shrank. And even if the sequester cuts are more drastic, it might take years before the local economy feels them. “People are saying, ‘We’re going to lose a million jobs here,’ ” says Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University. “That’s not going to happen, and it’s not going to happen because contractors are working on existing contracts financed with prior-year dollars. We’re going to be working through this for some time, and there’s going to be a very slow roll to actual projects. The implications aren’t for current work, but the next round of work.”

1986: Michael Horsley; Now: Michael Horsley for The New York Times

The corner of N Street and 15th Street, NW Washington.

This is an excellent article for understanding the historic and prospective trends for economic growth in our region, including Reston.  And while the article does not discuss the implications for the massive investment in a future utopian Tysons or Reston downtown along the new Silver Line, it is especially important that local officials take a close, hard, impartial look at the multi-billion tax dollar bets they are placing on growth there related to the new Silver Line.

Remember:  The future will be like the past, only different!

Click here to read the full article.  

As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price, New York Times, December 1, 2012

As the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors takes on the issue of added taxes in Tysons early in the new year, it is useful to put the issue of corporate tax incentives in perspective.  In the Tysons case, the Board is reviewing a proposal by the the County's Reinvestment Board to create a Tysons transportation service tax district to cover the $5 billion needed over the next 40 years to pay for Silver-Line development-linked roads and public transit there.  The tax would add about a eight percent to the tax bills of Tysons homeowners and a similar amount to the bills of landowners/developers there. 

As Reston 2020 and the RCA Board of Directors have stated previously, it is unfair to force residential taxpayers to pay additional taxes from which they will garner no offsetting income while subsidizing corporations.  Developers/landowners can anticipate huge profit increases from tripling or more their development in Tysons--and passing on any added tax costs to their clients, renters, and buyers.  Residents have no such opportunity.    

And this does not include tax incentives routinely provided by Fairfax County and Virginia to induce companies to move to northern Virginia.   And, of course, every inducement given to a company to re-locate here--including Intelsat's recent decision to move to Tysons after receiving a $1.3 million grant from the Governor's Opportunity Fund--means that residents of those jurisdictions must dig more deeply to cover the costs of providing infrastructure and other services for their new corporate neighbors.

In this NYT article, Louise Story reveals the scope of those subsidies and how, in the end,  they are largely feckless on a larger-scale basis.  Here's how her story begins:

In the end, the money that towns across America gave General Motors did not matter.

When the automaker released a list of factories it was closing during bankruptcy three years ago, communities that had considered themselves G.M.’s business partners were among the targets.

For years, mayors and governors anxious about local jobs had agreed to G.M.’s demands for cash rewards, free buildings, worker training and lucrative tax breaks. As late as 2007, the company was telling local officials that these sorts of incentives would “further G.M.’s strong relationship” with them and be a “win/win situation,” according to town council notes from one Michigan community.

Yet at least 50 properties on the 2009 liquidation list were in towns and states that had awarded incentives, adding up to billions in taxpayer dollars, according to data compiled by The New York Times. . . .

Later in her article, she notes the nationwide nature of this ill-advised and unfair tax subsidy policy:

 The Times analyzed more than 150,000 awards and created a searchable database of incentive spending. The survey was supplemented by interviews with more than 100 officials in government and business organizations as well as corporate executives and consultants.

A portrait arises of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs, outmatched by multinational corporations and short on tools to fact-check what companies tell them. Many of the officials said they feared that companies would move jobs overseas if they did not get subsidies in the United States.

Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages. States compete with other states, cities compete with surrounding suburbs, and even small towns have entered the race with the goal of defeating their neighbors. . . .

 . . . For local governments, incentives have become the cost of doing business with almost every business. The Times found that the awards go to companies big and small, those gushing in profits and those sinking in losses, American companies and foreign companies, and every industry imaginable.

Workers are a vital ingredient in any business, yet companies and government officials increasingly view the creation of jobs as an expense that should be subsidized by taxpayers, private consultants and local officials said.

The bottom line:  Local governments give up $9.1 million EVERY HOUR in business incentives, an average of more than $80 billion per year.  

For the rest of this comprehensive article, click here.  

Then ask yourself--and your supervisor--if it's fair for Tysons residents to pay added taxes so the corporations there can make even greater profits.