For Henrico, land deals cost plenty

Pssst!

Hey you: Henrico County.

Can I interest you in some swampland?

A story in Sunday's Times-Dispatch described the county's generosity when it comes to purchasing property.

It had planned to pay $26.7 million for about 205 acres off Kain Road before Tuckahoe Supervisor Patricia S. O'Bannon urged the county to appraise the land. After the board learned that the land was worth $8.7 million less than officials proposed to spend, it put the sale on hold. O'Bannon has requested an independent commission to review county land-purchase practices.

The owners of the Kain property paid $12.7 million for it in 2005 and 2006 -- $14 million less than the county's proposed purchase price. If the sale goes through, it would be at least the fourth time since 1999 that the county bought land from a developer for nearly double what the developer had paid, according to The Times-Dispatch's review of land sale records.

That the county would spend tens of millions of dollars on a property before checking its appraisal made my jaw drop. Wouldn't anyone buying a bungalow at a fraction of the price check its value?

Henrico is an affluent locale with a prosperous Short Pump and a growing Glen Allen. But a million here and a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

This sort of loose spending is at odds with Henrico's AAA-rated image as one of the best-managed localities around. It makes the county look cavalier, incompetent or worse.

County residents have not exactly mobilized with torches outside the Parham Road government complex. Either their drinking water has been spiked with opium or they're satisfied with the way their county is being run.

It's hard to blame them. The living's easy in Henrico -- particularly in its affluent western side.

But is the county slipping?

Has its government become too entrenched, its relationship with developers too cozy?

Has its board, after so many years together, become too complacent to keep County Manager Virgil Hazelett on his toes?

Hazelett became county manager in 1992. Current supervisors James B. Donati Jr., Richard W. Glover and David A. Kaechele were there to greet him. The board's junior members, O'Bannon and Frank Thornton, were elected a dozen years ago.

"You can look at that both ways," said Thomas J. Shields, director of The Center for Leadership in Education at the University of Richmond. "That's good for stable government . . . [but] is that really good not to have a change of governance after so many years?"

Shields, who wrote his dissertation on Henrico, said he doesn't think anyone questions Hazelett's management skills. But he questions media scrutiny of Richmond and asks why more questions aren't asked about the counties.

Henrico is changing, he said. It is struggling with crime and urbanization and has become more diverse and less Republican-leaning. The county voted for Democrats Timothy M. Kaine and Mark R. Warner in the past two gubernatorial elections.

Is it instructive that O'Bannon, the first woman to sit on the board, raised the land-purchase issue?

"It could be that she's not part of the old guard and that the guard is changing in Henrico," Shields said. "And who knows where it's heading in the future?"

The land-purchase commission would be a good place to start.