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Connecticut
Responsible Growth Task Force to Chart Smart Growth for Connecticut
''We are charting a new, anti-sprawl course for Connecticut,'' said Republican Governor M. Jodi Rell at the Windsor train station, near an old factory being converted into housing, as she signed a bill that establishes a Responsible Growth Task Force and gives it six months to submit guidelines for investment of bond dollars, state and federal grants and other public funds according to ''real'' economic planning, which ensures coordinated efforts of state agencies ''in the areas of transportation, housing, public health and work force development,'' with a Hartford Courant editorial calling it a good day for Smart Growth.
''Demolishing beautiful green fields and flattening hillsides while nearby land well-suited for development sits abandoned does irrevocable harm to Connecticut's natural beauty and quality of life,'' the governor stressed. ''Imagine what the future of Connecticut will look like with new neighborhoods and people walking and biking to our train or bus stations. My goal is to create more attractive, livable, economically strong communities while protecting our natural resources.''
The newly created 19-member Responsible Growth Task Force, notes the governor's press release, includes 11 agency heads or their representatives, along with six legislative and two gubernatorial appointees.
The law also sets up a $5 million ''regional performance incentive program, which encourages regional planning to incorporate compact, transit-accessible, pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use development patterns.''
What's more, it requires consistency with the state Plan of Conservation and Development for any state agency spending of ''more than $200,000 in state or federal funds on a grant for acquisitions or developments.''
The Hartford Courant considers this requirement perhaps the most important in the bill, since it means ''the state will no longer pay to pave farmland in the middle of nowhere and otherwise subsidize sprawl.'' -- Hartford Courant 8/13/2007
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