Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 2, 1993 TAG: 9305030268
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER EDITORIAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I soon got bored with my little research project and didn't ask Vutext to track down other combinations of words - i.e., "think regionally," "regional planning," etc. - that have been used by our writers and the folks they were quoting.
My point is: You'd think the way "regional cooperation" and its cousins parade through our news of the '90s that it was a hotter "new" concept than "reinventing government."
It's not, of course. As my friend, Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Jeff Schapiro, recently reminded me, Virginia politicians have been calling for regional cooperation to solve local governments' problems for at least 30 years.
The reminder came in a column Schapiro wrote concerning former Gov. Linwood Holton's latest attempts to whip up enthusiasm for regionalism. It recalled Holton's efforts in the 1970s to get local governments to think regionally - and, in the '60s, the efforts of what was known as the Hahn Commission.
Indeed, regional cooperation became a buzzword when former Gov. Mills Godwin named T. Marshall Hahn - then the dynamic young president of Virginia Tech - to head the Virginia Metropolitan Areas Study Commission in 1966.
For months, Hahn traveled all over the state urging localities to band together on a regional basis to provide services, ranging from schools to law enforcement to waste disposal, within a more cost-efficient framework. He preached - as Holton would later preach, and is still preaching - that scores of expensive problems that transcend city-county boundaries would only be solved if local governments ganged up on them.
But Hahn's ideas were not warmly received by either local-government officials or members of the General Assembly. He was branded a troublemaker whose regional notions would lead to the destruction of local government. He was accused of wanting to create regional "super governments" whose powers would rival those of the assembly. One legislator told him to take a hike back to Blacksburg and stop meddling in state and local governments' business.
Eventually, the assembly set up 22 regional planning commissions and the state's Commission on Local Government. But it made them mostly advisory entities with no muscle to restructure local government and implement regional solutions to problems.
So here we are: still stuck - in the Roanoke Valley as in most areas - with a system of costly, go-it-alone, fragmented government. Still waiting for the rhetoric of regionalism to kick in.
And I suspect we'll still be waiting 10 years from now unless the assembly: (1) removes some of the barriers to going it jointly and (2) starts using carrots and sticks.
Numerous studies have cited the need to restructure local governments. Virginia is the only state in which all cities are independent of their surrounding counties. Moreover, cities and counties are treated differently by the state - in terms of state funding and local taxing authority - even though the historical and traditional reasons for distinctions have all but disappeared. In 1988, a report by the Local Government Attorneys of Virginia said this:
"The growth of urban counties over the last 20 years has been nothing short of explosive, and urban counties are now much more like cities in the intensity of their development and the service requirements of their citizens. Similarly, over the same 20 years several rural counties have chosen to become cities to protect themselves from continued annexations . . . . Thus, in the place of the once-pristine divisions between localities . . . we find today a jumble of jurisdictional types: counties that provide city services, cities that have thousands of agricultural acres, and towns that have their own school systems."
But proposals - from the four-year-long Grayson Commission study; from last year's Dillon Rule study - that would put local governments on a more equal footing and facilitate regional cooperation go nowhere.
Meanwhile, report after report emphasizes the widening gap between rich and poor localities. In March, in its latest endorsement of regional cooperation, the Commission on Local Government said that inner cities and rural counties are both struggling with declining tax bases and growing social problems. Wealthier suburban counties are faring better, but see little reason to cooperate on various regional schemes that would help their poorer neighbors.
Go-it-alone is not the universal standard. While outright consolidation of city and county governments is no more popular in other states than it is in Virginia, all manner of regional-cooperation plans have gained a toehold elsewhere. These range from a 20-year-old tax-sharing program in the seven-county Minneapolis-St. Paul area to simple joint-purchasing agreements or service swaps. Some states are also attempting to force regional cooperation - because their budgets are also buckling under the weight of intergovernmental demands.
Last month, Virginia's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission said perhaps the General Assembly should consider more incentives for regional arrangements and more "disincentives" for going it alone. It said: "The state has an obligation to ensure that the funds it provides [to local governments] for services are spent in the most economical manner possible. Indeed, as the state moves out of a decade of high economic growth and into one of potentially slower growth, providing services in the most efficient and economical manner becomes critical. One method to effect such economies is through regional service delivery."
Despite the state's encouragement and some financial incentives, "localities are not pursuing regional solutions to the extent possible and appropriate," said JLARC. For example, many localities resist regional-jail projects even though the state antes up special funds for their construction.
Jails, environmental protection, economic development, education, landfills and water-treatment facilities were all mentioned as areas where localities might be prodded into regional projects by more state "inducement." And in some instances, JLARC said, the General Assembly should consider withholding state funds when localities turn up their noses to regional approaches.
The Schapiro column had this quote from Holton: "If the people who pay the taxes ever found out how much money they're spending to duplicate services, there would be a revolution."
I say that here in the Roanoke Valley - where regional cooperation has been all talk and virtually no action since I was in diapers - let the revolution begin.
by CNB