While doing a little research, I came across this Asheville Citizen-Times interview with House Speaker Joe Hackney. One passage jumped out at me, since I’ve got smart growth on the brain. Key question in bold:

AC-T: Growth is spilling over county boundaries. Should we have regional planning?

HACKNEY: Counties are in the constitution. There are 100 of them. You can’t change it. Some sort of state-mandated, state-level planning and mandated growth strategies, I just don’t see the political stars aligning for that to happen anytime right away. I just don’t see it.

AC-T: So we’re just going to be another Florida?

HACKNEY: We’re never going to be like Florida. There are some fundamental differences.

AC-T: Is there a role for leadership, though, in taking growth and planning as an issue — by leaders I’m talking about the governor, the leaders of the two houses — for taking that issue and educating the public about the need to do things they might not support now, but might support if they really understood the consequences?

HACKNEY: Well, I was the co-chair of the Smart Growth Report, so you can’t accuse me of not doing that.

We’re to assume that, unlike the rest of us, the AC-T knows the consequences of sprawl. Let’s also turn the question around and talk about citizens in Guilford County supporting things now because they don’t understand the consequences later. Like the bonds.