THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 6, 1995 TAG: 9503020013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Norfolk has 244,000 jobs and 245,000 people. How can that be?
The answer, of course, is that more than 110,000 people who work in Norfolk live elsewhere - and pay property taxes elsewhere.
Once upon a time people who worked in a city lived in that city, and city boundaries made economic sense.
But for decades, cities and the economic regions they belong to have had widely different boundaries. That's nowhere more apparent than in the economic region called Hampton Roads.
Norfolk City Manager James Oliver noted recently that if a large plant were built in Newport News, 50 feet from Hampton, Newport News would receive all the property-tax revenue. If a worker with four children moved to Hampton to work at the Newport News plant, Hampton would have the burden of educating the children, without the property-tax revenue to pay for it. Where's the economic sense to that?
A tax plum of an industrial plant moves into Hampton Roads, but tax revenues aren't shared, and Hampton, in fact, suffers financially.
Seeking to impose some sense on our economic and governmental boundaries, 18 localities, including five Hampton Roads cities, have formed an alliance with the State Chamber of Commerce called the Partnership for Urban Virginia. Mr. Oliver wrote about it in a column on Page 4 of Business Weekly last Monday. The partnership aspires to present to the 1996 General Assembly ways to transform Virginia into powerful economic regions, rather than weaker cities and counties competing with one another.
``Our theme,'' Mr. Oliver said, ``is to try to make boundary lines meaningless,'' so the entire economic region would benefit when a large plant moved to it. ``There needs to be a reasonable regional sharing of resources,'' Mr. Oliver said, ``including taxes.'' And a plant, he contends, should not gain a tax advantage by choosing one part of an economic region over another.
Among other things, the new Partnership for Urban Virginia is seeking to document the need to form powerful economic regions in Virginia.
``We are taking on the burden of showing,'' Mr. Oliver said, ``that Virginia in the last few years has not been competitive relative to its previous circumstance and that the trend is likely to continue to be negative.
``Every region in North Carolina is outperforming every region in Virginia.''
The reason: Public policy in North Carolina benefits regions, while Virginia ``Balkanizes'' its localities - pits them against each other.
It stands to reason that a North Carolina region will outperform a Virginia locality, especially a locality warring with neighboring localities.
In modern times, Mr. Oliver said, ``self-sufficiency is a bankrupt idea.'' Still, the new organization is not talking about abolishing government lines. It is talking about breaking down barriers so economic regions can function as economic regions.
Virginia's present system of boundaries as barriers is ``absolutely anachronistic,'' Mr. Oliver said.
More to the point, it's harmful.
The future lies with powerful economic regions. So does the present. by CNB