6/27/2009
Stoltz unsuccesfully attempted to end-run requirement to help finance highway improvements for congestion caused by its development - www.Delaforum.com

BACK-DOOR APPROACH CHARGED:  County Councilman Robert Weiner said that the Stoltz realty firm and its lawyer, Pam Scott, are trying to "end-run" a requirement that the firm help finance highway improvements related to pending large development projects. According to an email he distributed on June 27, Stoltz is lobbying the Markell administration and the General Assembly for 'epilogue language' in the fiscal 2010 state capital budget to effect a policy change so that "traffic analyses should be regional in scope rather than project specific." Budget epilogues are the state equivalent of the controversial process of inserting provisions favorable to particular interests into federal appropriations legislation without their having been vetted in public prior to enactment of those laws.

In his email Weiner included a letter to state officials from Mark Chura, of Citizens for Responsible Growth in New Castle County, an ad-hoc coalition of civic activists and associations, which said Stoltz wants to "relax or significantly alter the rules and requirements associated with making private developers pay for the impacts [sic] that their new development places on the Delaware taxpayers' infrastructure." Chura argued that any such changes "must be accomplished under the light of a well-publicized public hearing process." Stoltz is seeking New Castle County government approval of major projects at the former Du Pont Co. Barley Mill complex and in Greenville and Brandywine Hundred.

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