Fairfax County Springfield Supervisor Pat Herrity’s chutzpah and hypocrisy clearly know no bounds. So what else is new, you ask? What makes me bring this up now?
Simple. Because this past Saturday, Herrity showed up to stand, front and center, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony to dedicate the new Wiehle Road multi-modal facility attached to the new Wiehle Reston Metro station. What’s the hypocrisy here? Again, simple. The same Pat Herrity was one of the leaders in a lawsuit aimed at killing the Metro to Dulles project.
A lawsuit was filed in Circuit Court Fairfax VA in December 2003 seeking injunctions to stop a $4 billion Dulles Corridor rail project. Support for the high stakes suit comes primarily from landowners threatened with higher property taxes to help finance the project which they feel offers them negligible benefits. The rail line is also a major threat to the Dulles Toll Road (VDOT) and the Dulles Greenway (investor-owned) since it would occupy median land that otherwise could be used for road widening with all the tracks and paraphernalia of trains. At the same time the finances of the tollroads are threatened by proposals for siphoning off toll revenues to subsidize the lossmaking trains.
The legal case is being handled by Gil Davis a colorful local lawyer who knows how to gain maximum attention for his cause. Davis achieved fame during the Clinton Administration representing Paula Jones in her successful Supreme Court case against the President.
The Davis law suit is being funded by LOWER (Landowners Opposing Wasteful Expenditures on Rail), led by Patrick Herrity, Chris Walker, Tom Hirst, and Ken Reid, among others.
And you can be sure, like a fly drawn to honey, the same Pat Herrity who filed the lawsuit to stop the Silver Line will be front and center again this coming Saturday, eager to take credit for something he opposed, at ceremonies marking the beginning of the new Metrorail service.
To see Pat Herrity joining his pro-transit Democratic colleagues at the multi-modal terminal dedication was both galling and ironic. Note that this facility will handle bicycles along with buses, personal vehicles, and pedestrians. Why would Herrity – the man who wanted to do away with Fairfax County’s bicycle coordinator and who doesn’t apparently feel that bike/pedestrian improvement should receive any funding – participate in a ribbon cutting for a facility that promotes bicycling as a transportation mode? Again, because he is a hypocrite. And has a great deal of chutzpah, apparently. All the more reason to call him out for his preening and posturing to the cameras, pretending to be a big fan of stuff that he’s consistently fought against and disparaged over the years. The question is, how does someone like this get elected in an increasingly “blue” place like Fairfax County? Whatever the reason, it needs to end in November 2015, the next time he’s up for reelection.
P.S. Braddock Supervisor John Cook was at the Wiehle Road multi-modal facility ribbon cutting as well. He’s never been big on biking either, for instance saying he doesn’t “believe a bicycle is a transportation device.” He’s also a huge hypocrite and grandstander, possibly rivaling Herrity for his chutzpah. It’s very unfortunate he wasn’t defeated by Janet Oleszek in 2011 (she lost by around 100 votes, if I remember correctly).
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
