Real Solutions, Not Unspoken Benefits

One proposed White's Ferry replacement helps one particular landowner...

Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman Reardon Sullivan has completely lost the plot when it comes to private business and government control.

In a missive sent out by Sullivan this morning, Sullivan is pushing a so-called “solution” to the issue of Whites Ferry in Montgomery County.

For the past five years a 35 mile hole has existed in the region’s transportation network. Since White’s Ferry shut down in December 2020, over a landing rights dispute on the Virginia shore, there has been no Potomac River crossing between the American Legion Bridge and Point of Rocks. That single closure ripped out a low cost, transportation efficient, low-carbon link that once carried 600 to 800 vehicles a day including commuters, service workers, cyclists, and weekenders who stitched together the economies of western Montgomery and Loudoun counties.

What Sullivan fails to point out here is that the “landing rights dispute” is a dispute between the private ferry operator and a local Virginia farm owner awarded damages for trespassing, damage to property, and breach of contract. White’s Ferry is and always has been a privately-operated Potomac crossing. The property owners of the farm have every right to receive compensation from the private company that owns the ferry. That Sullivan says “White’s Ferry failed not because a ferry is obsolete, but because one private easement on the Virginia bank became a veto on a regional lifeline” shows how Republicans have lost the thread on property rights.

Sullivan then goes on to support a ludicrous idea that, for a particular reason, is being pushed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has publicly urged the International Monetary Fund to sell its country club property along River Road, the 285 plus acre Bretton Woods Recreation Center beside the C&O Canal and the Potomac. If the IMF is ready to divest, our region should be ready to negotiate a public- private partnership to provide a public park and to restore a river crossing we control.

Well, I have a pretty good idea why Bessent is pushing this plan. It involves a certain land-owner on the Virginia side.

And while Donald Trump would find a way to financially benefit from this plan, what’s missing from this plan is one obvious fact: it does not in the least solve Montgomery County’s traffic problems.