BATTLE COMING TO AN END IN ST. ALBANS, VT?

Squeezing Wal-Mart [Bennington Banner (Vt.)]

The long regulatory battle over the proposed Wal-Mart in St. Albans Town may at last be nearing its conclusion. On July 7, the Environmental Court will hear appeals of six permits that together will allow Wal-Mart’s developer, JLD Properties of Burlington, to build the long-awaited new superstore.

St. Albans Town planners had anticipated commercial development at Exit 20 since 1972. In 1993 Wal-Mart first proposed a 100,000-square-foot store at that location. The town issued a zoning permit. Wal-Mart agreed to pay for water and sewer line extensions. The District Environmental Commission issued an Act 250 permit.

But at the time the Vermont Natural Resources Council and its enviro-allies were determined that Vermont would continue to be the only state in the union not to have a Wal-Mart. The National Trust for Historic Preservation helpfully declared the entire state of Vermont to be one of “America’s Most Endangered Places.”

The enviros appealed the Act 250 permit to the now-abolished Environmental Board. That board was then chaired by Arthur Gibb of Weybridge, who had been the chief promoter of Act 250 in the 1970 legislature. Gibb’s board rejected the permit with a ruling that was both ridiculous and dishonest.

For instance, Gibb invoked the authority of a 1973 session law that the Legislature had specifically stated could not be used as permit criteria. Gibb declared that an increase of six students would force St. Albans to build a costly new school. And Gibb hinted that the board might look more favorably on the rejected permit if Wal-Mart agreed to pay an unlegislated tax ("impact fee") to various local towns.

Wal-Mart appealed Gibb’s ruling to the Vermont Supreme Court. In December 1994 that Court upheld all of the board’s determinations. Now, 14 years later, Arthur Gibb’s veiled offer to sell development permission for cash has materialized.

In approving the current Wal-Mart permit in April, the District Environmental Commission imposed a long list of conditions. Some, dealing with stormwater management, traffic control, and water and sewer, are certainly within the bounds of law and reason. Others, like mandating the flush volume of toilets, type of store lighting, compensating purchase of agricultural land, and architecture “articulated with earth tone brown walls and forest green roofs,” push the envelope but are bearable.

The real stinker is the District Environmental Commission’s requirement that to get its permit, Wal-Mart must donate as much as $500,000 to a group called “St. Albans for the Future,” located in St. Albans City. This “public and private entity” will “advocate to increase the economic vitality and civic pride” in the City of St. Albans.

Now, it’s dubious enough that a permit applicant can be forced to “mitigate” its use of disused agricultural land by giving money to an approved organization to pay someone else to “preserve” agricultural lands somewhere else in the state. But now the commission baldly takes the position that if an applicant wants a permit, it will have to pay off those who object to the development because it threatens their economic interests.

There’s a name for this practice that any student of religious history will recognize: simony. A major part of Martin Luther’s indictment of the Roman Catholic Church was its practice of selling spiritual benefits for cash. For the past 400 years the church has strictly forbidden simony as immoral and corrupt.

But our environmental enforcers have not risen to that level of sensitivity. Their rule, in the Wal-Mart and other cases, has become “If you want your development badly enough to pay through the nose to buy our permission, show us the money.”

Note that this is not “you must spend extra money to make things nice — fancy architecture, acceptable shrubbery, low-flush toilets, etc.” Such requirements are what society now expects from developers as civilized behavior.

Simony is simply the government requiring an applicant to buy its permit with a forced contribution — an unlegislated tax — payable to some public or private organization designated by the government. This is as politically corrupt now as the church’s practice was ecclesiastically corrupt in the 16th century.

“St. Albans for the Future” is doubtless a worthy civic enterprise. And Wal-Mart can undoubtedly scrounge up half a million more dollars to cross this final hurdle to building its St. Albans store, now 46 percent larger than the one rejected in 1994.

But once the simony principle wins general acceptance, Vermont government will become as corrupt as the church had become before Luther’s challenge forced reform.