Anybody who’s driven Route 3 through Crofton knows the road, also known as Crain Highway, has a lot of traffic, so residents’ concerns about a redevelopment bill before the Anne Arundel County Council seem reasonable.

More homes must mean more traffic, right?

But some believe the debate’s not really about traffic — it’s about something else: race.

At issue is a bill crafted by County Executive Steuart Pittman’s administration that incentivizes the redevelopment of rundown commercial properties with projects including residences in already built-up areas near public transit identified by the county as “critical corridors.”

It’s meant to encourage new housing as the county struggles with a shortage and to reduce blight, but the seemingly innocuous bill has spawned public outcry ahead of a vote Monday night with some council members amending it to exempt parts of their districts.

Many of the areas trying to get out of the requirements are predominantly white. Some believe people living in these areas want exemptions because more homes will mean more people of different races moving in.

“The message received from those [amendments] are clearly NIMBY and racist, and they are also pushing the historic pattern of segregation housing policies that were once in the county,” testified Linda Hanifin Bonner, of Anne Arundel Connecting Together, a nonpartisan nonprofit group representing about 20,000 county residents.

Republican Councilwoman Shannon Leadbetter amended the bill to remove two and a half miles on the east side of Route 3 from the Prince George’s County line to near Waugh Chapel Towne Centre after hearing concerns about the legislation’s impact on traffic and crowded schools.

“There was still, from my constituents who live in the Crofton area, along that Route 3 corridor, extreme concern about further incentivizing residential development at high density,” said Leadbetter, who could not be reached for comment, at a late February council meeting.

Though some on the other side of Crain Highway voiced similar dismay, others welcomed the prospect of replacing blighted commercial properties with housing, thus avoiding more of the suburban sprawl that has come to define Anne Arundel County.

Democratic Councilwoman Julie Hummer adopted the latter viewpoint and questioned her colleague’s decision.

“It doesn’t stop redevelopment on her side of the street, it just makes it more burdensome,” Hummer said in a phone interview.

She noted that the current zoning allows for a developer to rebuild a commercial space with 15 residences per acre, while the bill incentivizes building 22 units per acre, about another floor of apartments.

“It’s very shortsighted for the future of commercial and residential development in the area,” Hummer said.

“Quite honestly,” she added, “I think it’s segregation.”

Crofton and Severna Park, part of which also was amended out of the bill , once had restrictive covenants barring home buying based on race. They are majority white, as is Edgewater, another community carved out of the bill that has a complicated history with race.

Hummer said “the vast majority” of emails she received about the bill expressed “sincere concern about possible impacts on schools, traffic and the environment,” but a few “were very clearly advocating against this bill because of concerns that certain types of people would move into their communities.”

Carl Snowden, convener of the Anne Arundel County Caucus of African American Leaders, also questioned the motivations for opposing the bill: “Oftentimes traffic concerns are a facade for racism. People use language like ‘neighborhood schools’ and ‘not dividing communities’ as a pretext for what they really want, which is not having African American neighbors or African Americans in their classroom.”

Republican Councilwoman Amanda Fiedler carved out the Route 2 portion of Severna Park, but she rejected any suggestion “that the amendment that I put forward was intended to keep certain types of people outside of Severna Park.”

She noted in an interview that she kept the part of Severna Park around Veterans Highway in the bill because of some older buildings and empty commercial lots.

Fiedler did echo constituent concerns about traffic and water runoff.

“The way that the administration and some of my colleagues on the council describe the intent of the bill was for blighted, vacant properties that were eyesores, that could become something useful,” Fiedler told The Banner. “You can drive by here any time of the day and know that this is neither vacant nor blighted nor an eyesore.”

Maureen Carr York, president of the Greater Severna Park Council, told the County Council that people move to and stay in the area “because of the small-town atmosphere.”

“It really is a place where the commercial members of our community, the residential members of our community, those who work there, come together in a wonderfully supportive atmosphere that we don’t want to see changed by a bill that would allow commercial areas to be redeveloped with nothing but residential units,” York testified.

In an interview, Pittman said he was perplexed by the carve-outs. He believes that “those council members hurt their own residents.”

“Developers, environmental advocates, everybody agreed that the best place to do development is where we already have impervious surface, you’ve already had development and you want to modernize,” Pittman said. “There was red tape that made it harder, and we came up with a bill to remove a lot of that red tape.”

Among those supporting the bill was the Growth Action Network, a coalition of community, civic and environmental groups in Anne Arundel County.

“It’s desperately needed,” Matt Minahan, the network’s chair, said in an interview. “We have areas all over the county where there is underutilized or abandoned commercial development for which there’s been no economic option to improve them. … At the same time we have this huge critical need for affordable housing."

The bill eases regulations on redevelopment by exempting builders from grading permits and some environmental review, but projects would still be subject to modern environmental and stormwater oversight.

“If you’re rebuilding an abandoned gas station or an underutilized strip mall, there’s already impervious surface there,” Minahan said.

The Anne Arundel County Association of Realtors also supports the bill, with its government affairs director, Max Gross, testifying about a “dearth of housing” and describing concerns about traffic as misplaced.

“When you put housing closer to jobs, it reduces vehicle miles traveled,” Gross said.

Yet traffic appeared to be the primary concern raised in written testimony about the bill, particularly from residents of Leadbetter’s district.

“Our roads are already overwhelmed with traffic, making daily commutes a nightmare,” wrote Sarah Shaffer, of Edgewater. “Adding more housing will only make congestion worse. Traffic is so bad we cannot get to sporting and school events in a timely manner. My children’s classrooms are already overcrowded.”

Added David Cooke, of Crofton: “The over development is out of control. No one asked for all of this development. The politicians and greedy developers took it upon themselves. It was build first, then try to fix the problems with overcrowded roads and schools after. … Allowing more high-density housing will only increase traffic.”

Route 3 is slated for improvements that state traffic engineers expect to ease congestion that Pittman attributed to poor land-use planning.

Across the thoroughfare, Odenton resident Brian Cook saw it differently, pointing to an abandoned gas station nearby that’s been “an eyesore as long as I can remember.”

“It is not the sort of property that is likely to be redeveloped without incentives to do so,” he wrote. “If developed into housing, it would be within walking distance of grocery shopping, USPS, banking, restaurants, and entertainment. ... It would also be within short driving distance of the MARC train station.”