Land-Use Financing is Studied / Authority Trying to Get Va. Closer to Its Goal of Preserving Open Land

By GREG EDWARDS

A $10 million state investment could provide $100 million in loans for Virginia land-conservation projects over five years, a state official says.

“I believe $100 million … is possible,” Sheryl D. Bailey, executive director of the Virginia Resources Authority, told a General Assembly committee. The panel is studying ways to finance land conservation and help

Virginia meet its commitment to keep 20 percent of the Chesapeake Bay watershed in farmland or other open land.

The financing authority was created in 1984 to sell bonds and use the proceeds to provide low-interest loans to localities for water and sewer projects. Since then, its lending authority has been extended to other areas including, just this year, land conservation.

State Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, questioned whether lending for conservation, a nonrevenue producing activity, might hurt the rating on the authority’s bonds.

Bailey, however, said rating agencies base their decisions on the credit history of the localities borrowing the money.

The committee, which will make recommendations to the upcoming session of the General Assembly, looked at other funding sources as well. Staff lawyer Mark Vucci outlined possible existing and new sources, including recordation taxes on deeds, taxes on insurance premiums, tipping fees at landfills, cigarette taxes and water and sewer bill surcharges.

If the $100 million annual allotment of tax credits for land conservation is not used, some of that money could be diverted for such things as local programs to buy development rights on land, Vucci said.

Contact Greg Edwards at (804) or gedwards@timesdispatch.com.

ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO

Originally published by Times-Dispatch Staff Writer.

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