"A bill that would make Albemarle County a statewide model for the transfer of development rights has cleared the House of Delegates and is being revised in the Virginia Senate.

Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, said his House Bill 991 would help create a pilot project to allow a market for the sale of development rights through a broker. It would allow landowners to sever their rights and sell them for use elsewhere.

Bell held a lengthy meeting Thursday with various interested parties who agreed to a series of revisions of the measure that passed the House by a 97-1 vote Tuesday.

“I think we have to work on some language but I think we’ve got consensus,” Bell said Thursday evening.

The measure is being revised with county input as well as through discussions with the Virginia Farm Bureau, the home-building industry and “the people who are worried about development,” Bell said. “We are trying to get something everybody likes.”

“It’s a new issue,” he said. “How do you value it” and who pays the taxes after a landowner has sold his development rights to a broker?

“It looks like we will tie the taxes to the person who holds it rather than the seller,” Bell said.

“It’s Albemarle specific now,” although the bill had been introduced as a statewide measure, he said.

“If it’s successful, I’m sure it will be made statewide,” Bell said.

Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, said he hopes the measure can make the transfer of development rights more practical.

Toscano, who sponsored bills the past two years to advance the transfer of development rights, said, “This severs the receiver from the sender and makes it easier to create a market.”

“This legislation is designed to empower the county to see if they want to set something up,” said Toscano, who voted for the measure.

“Without the legislation, it would be very difficult to adopt any transfer of development rights program,” he said.

Bell’s bill has been assigned to the Senate Committee on Local Government.

On a separate measure, Bell and Toscano said Thursday it’s too early for them to assess the potential merits or harm of a revised Senate bill favored by the home-building industry that would throw out the state’s 30-year-old proffer system for local governments and change the way developers contribute money for roads, schools and other local services.

Albemarle supervisors are wary of Senate Bill 768, which passed the Senate on a 21-19 vote after cash contributions per home were increased. The prospects for the measure in the House of Delegates are uncertain." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, February 15, 2008)