Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 20, 1993 TAG: 9306220346
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
You know what's to blame: the global economic pressures that are accelerating interstate banking mergers, the social trends that have doomed mass-market catalogs, the political factors that brought the Cold War to a peaceful close.
But let's also say you can't find another job within driving distance that pays the same as your old one. Who or what is to blame for that?
Is it dumb luck? Is it one of the hazards of living in a community this size? Is it because local leaders haven't moved aggressively to attract new jobs? Is it the geography that rings Roanoke with mountains, depriving it of large, flat industrial tracts? Is it the fault of a global economy whose tectonic plates are shifting, sending well-paying manufacturing jobs overseas or eliminating them altogether?
Or is it because Virginia still operates a system of local government devised by its Reconstruction-era constitution writers in 1869, a system many believe is antiquated?
General Assembly gutted the Hahn Commission's recommendations in 1968 and left the state saddled with what many believe is an antiquated system of local government?
The odds are, there are lots of reasons the Roanoke Valley hasn't been able to create well-paying jobs at the rate of other Sunbelt cities.
But this story deals with just one of them: The contention that Virginia's unique system of local governments tends to encourage localities to fight rather than unite - especially when it comes to promoting economic growth.
"Of course it's a problem for Virginia," says Mark Heath, who headed the Roanoke Valley's main economic development group and now runs a similar organization in Charlotte, N.C. "It's just everybody in Virginia is afraid to talk about it. Fortunately, we don't have independent cities and counties, and that's a great advantage for us."
This has been a perennial argument in Virginia, but one supported only by anecdotal evidence. That has made it a difficult point to sell to skeptical citizens who cling to jurisdictional lines as if they were ordained from above, not from Richmond.
But now a new book making the rounds of urban policy planners - "Cities Without Suburbs," by David Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, N.M. - comes close. Rusk crunches census and economic data and lays out the contention that metro areas in which the central cities can regularly expand have faster rates of job creation than comparable metro areas where the central cities' borders are frozen.
In plain English, he's saying that Virginia's system of local government makes it harder to attract jobs.
To phrase the matter more bluntly still, he's saying your next job may be in North Carolina because Roanoke Valley governments are too busy squabbling with one another to concentrate on the big issue - building a new economic base for the region.
This is about the dreaded C-words of local government:
Consolidation and cooperation.
But first, we must deal with the other awful C-word:
Charlotte.
`We're a city-state'
The Roanoke Valley isn't the only place that has trouble getting its economic development act together.
In Richmond, the headlines these days are much the same: The city and the counties - Richmond is surrounded by two, not one - fight over just about everything, from water to crime.
Henrico County refuses to attend a local government "summit" to iron out differences. Business leaders fret that the community doesn't market itself well and is being eclipsed by other Southern cities once considered its equal. In response, the business community starts flexing its muscle and tries to conjure up a new economic "vision" that will unite the region.
Some believe this is symptomatic of not just local problems, but a state problem. "That's the key to the whole problem between cities and counties," Roanoke Councilman Jimmy Harvey insists. "It's Virginia's archaic system of local government."
Academics who have studied economic development and Virginia's local government agree. "Virginia is at a disadvantage because of the independent-city system," contends John Accordino, an urban policy analyst at Virginia Commonwealth University.
How, precisely, does the form of local government allegedly influence the function of economic development?
This can be mind-numbing stuff, so let's illustrate by way of example.
The example is Charlotte.
Not because Charlotte's big. Not because there's a hidden agenda to turn Roanoke into "another Charlotte," shorthand in the Roanoke Valley for unrestrained hypergrowth. But because Charlotte is increasingly being held up as an example of being good at something the Roanoke Valley isn't - getting local governments to work together to promote economic development for an entire region.
Financial World magazine, in its annual review of state and local government, recently singled out Charlotte as a model for regional cooperation. Michael Gallis, an urban policy consultant who just happens to teach at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, says such acclaim hasn't come to Charlotte by accident. "It is the best in the country," he says.
The cornerstone of Charlotte's regional movement is its lead economic development agency, the Carolinas Partnership, which promotes not only Charlotte but 12 localities within a 30-mile radius as a single entity. It works, Gallis says, because government leaders in the region have come to see themselves not as separate entities but as pieces of a larger economic unit.
Sure, Charlotte leaders say, their localities still knock heads with each other to get a new business that's headed their way - witness the current scramble for the Mercedes plant that many believe has put the Carolinas at the top of its list.
But Gallis says they also recognize that even if a company chooses a neighboring jurisdiction, a business development in that locality will have a ripple effect in theirs. That's because the counties around Charlotte understand that their primary competition isn't so much each other as it is other regions around the country and the world. "We regard ourselves as a city-state," Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot proclaims.
And in the Roanoke Valley? Well, there's a similar economic development group, the Regional Partnership of Roanoke Valley. But it's underfunded, some of the key localities on Roanoke's doorstep - such as Bedford County and Montgomery County - don't belong; and, by some accounts, relations in the past between the partnership's leadership and city officials have been icy.
OK, so Charlotte's got its act together and Roanoke doesn't. How come?
This isn't just a matter of better organization; it's an outlook that springs from each region's central city.
Charlotte's world-view is expansive; Roanoke's is often cramped and constrictive.
In Charlotte, Vinroot preaches that "regionalism is a religion here." He says he considers himself as responsible for the territories outside his city limits as those within it. For example, Charlotte recently celebrated its quest to bring a Triple A baseball franchise to town. More precisely, just outside of town in Fort Mill, S.C. No matter: To Charlotte, it's all the same.
In Roanoke, Mayor David Bowers plugs his crusade to bring Amtrak service through the city and his backing of better roads to Blacksburg and Smith Mountain Lake as examples of his regional view.
But he also stresses that he can cooperate with neighboring localities only so much - "up to the point that it does not hurt the city," he says. "I am constrained by my legal obligation to the citizens of Roanoke."
When Salem tried, successfully, to reel in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl - college football's Division III championship game - and asked neighbors to put in a good word, Roanoke didn't even write a letter.
In Charlotte, city leaders hail German car-maker BMW's decision to build a plant near Spartanburg, S.C., as a victory for their city-state, even though some had hoped the company would pick a site closer. "It's 65 miles south of here, but that's good for us," Vinroot says. "We'll sell them parts."
In Roanoke, major business developments the same distance away - in Lynchburg or the New River Valley - tend to be viewed as irrelevant or competition.
Finally, there's the airport. Each city built and paid for its own. In Charlotte, the mayor wants to give up control of the airport to a regional authority - as a gesture to encourage even more regional cooperation, especially on less glamorous issues the city usually winds up paying for, such as jails and social programs.
In Roanoke, the city refused to give up control of the airport to a regional authority until it was forced to in a power-play engineered by Vinton Del. Richard Cranwell as a condition for state funding.
Even then, Roanoke insisted that the authority be set up to guarantee the city a permanent majority. And some council members still grumble that Roanoke County hasn't bothered to thank them. "We agreed to let the county have an interest for a piddling sum of money," Harvey says. "I haven't seen them even begin to reciprocate for that gesture."
Why's it different here?
There are two possibilities.
The first is, Charlotte leaders simply have a better attitude toward cooperation than their Roanoke counterparts do.
"The big difference here is attitude," says Mark Heath. ". . . If somebody puts out an idea, here you get 10 reasons why it can work. Other places, you get 10 reasons why it won't."
Vinroot says his city's regional approach is simply a necessity in a global marketplace.
"We are governing ourselves on a system based 200 years ago," Vinroot says. "If we were doing it today, we would not set up all these local governments and have all these rivalries and worry about who's on whose turf. That doesn't make much sense in today's economy."
You think the Roanoke Valley has it rough trying to get four or five governments to work together? Try to plan for an urban region of 13 counties, 38 cities and towns - and then divide them again between two states, Heath says.
Because Charlotte leaders can't abolish political lines set up in Colonial times, they do the next best thing, Vinroot says: They try to ignore them. "Go out 75 miles, that's how far people travel to go to work. It's silly to say these lines have any meaning."
Yet in the Roanoke Valley, invisible political lines sometimes mean everything.
Remember the 1987 flap over whether the city, which then owned the airport outright, would give its OK for a developer to build the Valleypointe business park in the "clear zone"? City officials insisted they were looking out for airport safety, but many business leaders were convinced the city was simply jealous Valleypointe was going on the "wrong" side of Peters Creek Road - which put it in the county.
Or how about the city's coolness toward the proposal to build a major tourist attraction in the valley? Because the Explore Park is 2 1/2 miles outside the city limits, some city officials have insisted the frontier history park won't benefit Roanoke - although tourists presumably would spend at least some money in the city. Some city officials privately admit that if Explore were in the city, their views would be entirely different.
Which brings us to the second possible reason that Charlotte takes a regional approach to economic development and Roanoke doesn't: North Carolina's system of local government encourages Charlotte to cooperate, while Virginia's discourages Roanoke.
Charlotte can afford to have a more generous attitude toward neighbors because it can annex developable land at will. It doesn't have to be concerned where development within the metro area goes - because most of the metro area is under Charlotte's domain, or soon will be.
But Roanoke's borders are frozen, and most of its land already paved over. When business prospects look at the valley, the neighboring counties with plenty of land to offer are often first in line to reap the tax revenues. Meanwhile, the city's burdened with paying for most of the region's social costs, with a population that is growing older, poorer and smaller. Under this financial gun, the city has to scrap for every dime of revenue it can, neighboring jurisdictions be damned.
No wonder the city sometimes appears skeptical about regional cooperation, viewing economic development in neighboring localities not as something the region is gaining, but something the city lost out on.
As Harvey puts it: "The city has to be very, very protective of what assets it has left. If you could [expand the city's borders], you wouldn't have to be so protective of your own turf. The state is to blame for the whole thing."
Monday: A closer look at how Virginia's system of independent cities and counties is said to inhibit economic growth - and some proposed solutions.
by CNB