This month, we are dedicating Ideas to the response from our January cover package "Northern Virginia Secedes," which focused on traffic congestion and suburban sprawl in Northern Virginia. The first letter is a response, written as a letter to AOL-Time Warner chairman Stephen M. Case, from John T. Hazel Jr., a prominent Northern Virginia developer who takes exception to our coverage of the traffic issue and, in particular, a column published in January written by Virginia Business publisher James A. Bacon. Part of Hazel's response to our coverage has already been printed in The Washington Post. Other letters, edited for space, follow.

by John T. Hazel Jr.

Dear Steve:

At least Virginia Business spelled your name right, but that’s all I can say about a thoroughly unfair and fatuous cover story and editorial. The piece by Jim Bacon was particularly loathsome.

Let me suggest what’s going on. This was nothing less than a primal scream from an increasingly pathetic and irrelevant collection of people who have both betrayed Virginia and their own history.

As you may know, Virginia Business is a subsidiary of Media General, which publishes the Richmond Times-Dispatch ("TD"). The TD, long recognized as the voice of Richmond’s "Main Street Business Community," used to be aligned with Virginia’s traditional fiscal conservatism — a point of view that took excessive government spending (particularly when supported by public debt) to be anathema. It goes back to the post-Civil War era, but I won’t bore you with all that.

Suffice it to say, they were at least consistent on matters of fiscal discipline. But not any more. When they aligned themselves with George Allen, they gave up their philosophy and basically adopted a "whatever-it-takes" approach to holding power. Allen, with his populism, represented everything the TD had fought against in the way of bad financial policy and loose thinking. But, apparently, they figured that George was the horse to ride to retain influence in the state.

Now that’s not even working. As Northern Virginia has ascended, the center of Virginia political influence has shifted up I-95 — and "Main Street" can’t stand it. The inconsistencies of Allen and his successor, Jim Gilmore, not to mention their disastrous failure to meet the educational and transportation investment needs of Virginia’s growth over the last decade, have created a huge mess. With the complete disappearance of Virginia’s major banking institutions — the result of Main Street’s parochial thinking and unwillingness to compete — Richmond finds itself increasingly irrelevant.

It all amounts to a cultural divide, with Northern Virginia and Tidewater on one side and the "Lords of Main Street" on the other. You represent in a very unique and undeniable way the things that frustrate and inflame Main Street and the TD the most: vision, success, entrepreneurial skill, risk taking, boldness, national and international business leadership and, particularly, independence without due deference to tradition as defined by Main Street and the TD. Add that to the fact that you, with a few others, are premier world leaders in the technology of the 21st century — the basis for the New Virginia — and you can see why they lash out.

We pay a big price for their obduracy and insularity. You can see it in the refusal of VDOT to construct highways to serve our growing population. To explain the mess away, they have decided to play the theme that Northern Virginia is poorly planned. It’s a gross untruth. The plans have been well done. The missing element is transportation, which was deleted over the years by a combination of local "NIMBY" politicians and lack of state leadership and refusal to fund. You are the chief villain for locating AOL in Loudoun — never mind the economic benefit to Virginia — or that you are adjacent to Dulles Airport now engaged in a $3.2 billion expansion and soon to serve 40-50 million passengers and that AOL is located in a long-planned business area.

Governor Baliles attempted in the ‘80s to initiate and fund a major transportation program. That was cut in half at Main Street insistence citing allegations of the Virginia Road Builders Associations that "there weren’t enough bulldozers to build the roads" needed.

In reality, this was just a device to keep the local road builders in control of VDOT contracts and Main Street from addressing the infrastructure needs of growing and prosperous communities. Recently the Gilmore car tax was enthusiastically endorsed by Main Street and the TD without reference to the enormous loss to infrastructure investment.

As for education, Maryland has steadily gained on Virginia. And now North Carolina, having just passed a $3.2 billion capital investment program for their institutions of higher education, makes us look like fools. The North Carolina referendum was passed on a unanimous vote of the North Carolina General Assembly, the aggressive support of the Governor, and received more than 70 percent of the electorate’s vote. Compare that to the ongoing war that Gilmore has maintained with Virginia’s colleges and universities and his failure to provide for higher education’s capital needs.

Going to bed with the "no growth anti-people people" (the Piedmont Environmen-tal Council and fellow travelers) is preferred to losing control. If the infrastructure needs of Northern Virginia and the state generally can be successfully denied and/or blamed on you, AOL, and others who are leading the way to the New Virginia of the 21st Century, apparently the Main Street/TD crowd thinks they can reestablish preeminence.

In sum, I exceedingly regret that you and AOL have been subjected because of your vision and leadership to such a scurrilous attack. There is a silver lining: It is abundantly clear that Main Street and the TD no longer control the Virginia business agenda and that works to the benefit of Northern Virginia and the entire state.

I am circulating this letter to a number of individuals, some of whom could, and hopefully will, generate an effective response. This is another step in throwing off the burden of denial and refusal to invest in infrastructure that Virginia so desperately needs.

Every once and while I read an article that is dead-on accurate. "Steve Case needs an attitude adjustment" is some of the best reading I’ve come across in a long time. I also read John T. Hazel Jr.’s article in Sunday’s Washington Post, which was the same old "it’s not our fault" piece. Hazel doesn’t seem to realize that excuses are not going to fix our long term transportation needs. If he believes that the Steve Cases of the world are saviors now, well, let’s wait and see. What happens if AOL hits hard times? What if AOL decided that Northern Virginia did not fit in with its "long range vision for success"? Where does that leave Northern Virginia?

In a world not too far from our own many years ago, a big company in a developing area got everything it wanted from the local government. The local developers got most of what they wanted, and what they didn’t get was the government’s fault.The state capital chose not to get too involved in what it saw as "local transportation affairs." ... Everything was great for many years. The companies made huge profits, workers had unprecedented wealth and state and local coffers were in the black, at least until globalization caused downturns.

No disrespect Mr. Hazel, but you always built where nothing exists and that is easy. My friends and I from the "rust belt" have seen the consequences of poor execution of "well done plans." ... I am quite sure the local government and business leaders had some kind words to say about Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and Henry Clay Frick. Trust me, the Steve Cases of our time are going to be remembered as pioneers no matter what happens to Northern Virginia.

— Timothy J. Seery
Fairfax

Shall I presume you are not from nor have ever lived in Northern Virginia?

For many years it has been widely known that Northern Virginians were considered to be persona non grata, but to compare them to "practical conservative Downstaters" by calling them "self-serving!" How dare you! I was born in Northern Virginia, lived and worked there as an adult, went to college in Richmond and have had two "tours" in the Hampton Roads area. I have experienced traffic at various times and places in the Old Dominion. I would suggest you take the opportunity to sit in your car for long wasted hours to go to your work place each morning and return in the evening, not to mention getting around at other times to conduct the necessary duties of life. I hardly think that a road system designed to carry the growing volume of traffic is too much to ask for an affluent area that contributes greatly to the tax base of the state and locality. It is certainly not self-serving! By the way, has any other area of the state had to build a road with private funds lately?

— Lynn Eitelman
Norfolk

I was stunned to read James Bacon’s latest commentary, "Steve Case needs an attitude adjustment". ... He obviously has never had to face the realities of hiring top-notch technical talent in the best economy ever. Bacon alleges that companies like AOL build their campuses where land is cheap — implying that is why they move there. The truth is that these companies move out there specifically, because the traffic is less. Employees want to have shorter commutes, and smart companies like AOL know that going against the traffic means that employees spend more time working or with family than sitting in a car. For Northern Virginia high-tech companies, the length and difficulty of the commute has long been an important issue when hiring top talent.

But Bacon also misses the economic realities. Building a campus isn’t "cheaper" in Loudoun County. With financial incentives and depressed property values, medium-sized companies could easily move to downtown Washington, D.C., and usually save money. Why don’t they do it? Because top high-tech talent doesn’t want to work in D.C. and doesn’t want the commute. Obviously Bacon never had to find a way to hire thousands of employees in a short period of time, or he wouldn’t say that Case "bungled the location" for AOL.

— Dan Elam
Richmond