Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 24, 1991                   TAG: 9102240256
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium

OFFICIALS URGE COOPERATION

That was the message heard over and over at the winter meeting of the Virginia Local Government Management Association on Thursday and Friday.

"George has said it, and I have said it: It is simply ridiculous for us to have two governments," said Henry County Administrator Lee Lintecum, who has a close relationship with Martinsville City Manager George Brown. But for now at least, the consolidation of Henry County and Martinsville is politically impossible.

So, Lintecum said, he and Brown do the next-best thing: They look for ways the two localities can work together. And he's found that "it's easier for me and George to negotiate an agreement than it is to get it through the City Council and the Board of Supervisors."

Neal Peirce, who writes a nationally syndicated column on issues affecting state and local governments, told the gathering that "sometimes it seems like only the politicians really care about municipal boundaries."

Talk of regional government is "as welcome in most places as a rash." But it's being forced on localities by federal and state budget cuts, problems such as pollution and traffic congestion that don't stop at city-county lines, and the hemorrhage of jobs from inner cities to the suburbs, which results in an "American apartheid," he said.

But because of opposition to the idea of regional government, Peirce said, it might have to "come tip-toeing in, in disguise" - the way Henry County and Martinsville are doing it.

Suburban localities need to realize that the problems of their urban neighbors are their problems, too, he said. "Political boundaries don't, in the long run, seal off social maladies" like crime, poverty and ignorance. And the desire to escape those maladies leads to suburban sprawl - which means traffic jams and demands for costly public improvements such as schools and utility lines.

Regional government does not have to mean a huge bureaucracy that "eats up" all the communities around it. After all, Peirce said, people like to be close to their government.

The solution he likes is creation of tier governments to handle regional problems such as economic development, pollution and transportation. Local governments still would exist and would continue to be responsible for education, for example.

Usually, Peirce said, a crisis of some sort is the impetus for creation of a regional government.

That prompted Roanoke City Manager Bob Herbert to reflect that, in last year's debate over the proposed consolidation of Roanoke and Roanoke County, "I didn't do a very good job of articulating to the public what the problem was" - the lack of growth in the valley and what that portends for the future.

Virginia Tech local government specialist Don Lacy said one of the biggest "potholes" on the road to cooperation is the idea that, in any agreement, one locality must win and the other must lose.

Instead, he said, localities should look at cooperation as a "win-win" situation.

"You've got to stop playing the game of one-upmanship," Lintecum said.

The way we think of local governments gradually is changing, and that bodes well for cooperation, Lacy said. Notions such as "independence," "self-sufficiency," "parochialism" and "isolationism" are being replaced by "inter-dependence," `insufficiency," "cosmopolitan" and "community."

And truisms that keep localities apart, such as "small is better" and "competition lowers cost," are being challenged, too, he said.

The first test of cooperation in the Roanoke Valley in the wake of the defeat of consolidation last November will be an agreement between Roanoke and Roanoke County on use of the new regional landfill. The landfill is to be built at Smith Gap in western Roanoke County.

"It's important that the first effort be successful so we can address the other issues that are coming," such as expansion of the regional sewage treatment plant, Roanoke County Administrator Elmer Hodge said. "If [the city and the county] both come out of that feeling good, that will set the stage for the '90s."