Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 21, 1993 TAG: 9306210330
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What can be done to encourage a regional approach to economic development?
A crisis helps.
That's what it took for three quarreling jurisdictions in northern Ohio - Lorain County and the cities of Lorain and Elyria - to drop their rivalries and form a single economic development agency to stanch the loss of industrial jobs. "Everybody suffered so much in the middle and early 1980s," says Mark Kidder, who heads the region's new joint Chamber of Commerce. "We admitted we were in the same boat."
There's not such an obvious crisis here, though. Instead, the Roanoke Valley's crisis - Virginia's crisis - is more one of lost opportunity. That's made it almost impossible to sell a complete overhaul of Virginia's system of independent cities and counties, which many believe inhibits economic growth in the state. "A lot of people say `you're trying to fix something that's not broken,'" says Del. George Grayson, D-Williamsburg, who headed a commission in the late 1980s that tried to come up with new ways to promote regional cooperation.
Some other markers along the way toward a regional outlook:
People must see the big picture. To create a regional approach, says Bill McCoy, who heads UNC-Charlotte's Urban Institute, a region needs a clear understanding of how one locality's economy is connected to its neighbors - and its neighbors' neighbors.
Around Charlotte, often cited as the nation's best example of regional cooperation, that understanding has taken nearly two decades to develop. Its evolution, McCoy says, has been spurred by a series of events - beginning with a landmark 1972 report that documented commuting and shopping patterns that routinely crossed the region's jurisdictional lines - as well as elections that have brought regional-minded politicians into office.
The breakthrough, McCoy says, was a 1989 report by his colleague, Michael Gallis, that demonstrated once and for all just how interdependent the region's economy really is - and how the region's real economic competition is elsewhere in the country, or in other countries.
Gallis transformed his report into a slide show. He took it on the road, speaking to civic groups and anyone else who would listen. Over the next two years, he spoke to more than 300 groups. "Gallis' presentation helped immensely," McCoy says, "because people understood why regional cooperation is important in a global economy."
No identity crisis. Around Charlotte, McCoy says, it was relatively easy to inspire regional cooperation because there's a single, large city - and outlying communities understand how they benefit from it. "Charlotte is the engine that drives the car," he says.
Charlotte's importance to the region is so clear that outlying communities objected to the initial marketing campaign drawn up by the new regional economic development group - too much about the "Carolinas Partnership" and not enough about Charlotte.
"So we had to change our focus to say we're selling Charlotte," says partnership director Mark Heath. "Charlotte is the most recognizable name in the region."
In Western Virginia, the economic connections between communities are less clear. Identity is murky, too. To get around jurisdictional jealousies between Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem, the three are usually covered by the non-threatening geographical label, "the Roanoke Valley." The Roanoke metro area's economy extends beyond the mountains, though. But there's no agreed-upon name that takes in everything between Smith Mountain Lake and the New River Valley. To remedy that, a few years ago a group of business leaders proposed that the area market itself as "the Blue Ridge Region." But that name hasn't caught on the way "Research Triangle" substitutes for Raleigh-Durham.
Peace in the valley. The rise of suburbs that dwarf their city scrambles the dynamics within a metro region, and complicates regional cooperation.
In the Richmond area, Henrico County supervisors openly say that's one source of their battles with Richmond. "The city is used to calling the shots, and that's not the case anymore, and they're finally realizing it," one Henrico supervisor told a Richmond newspaper.
In the Roanoke Valley, Roanoke Mayor David Bowers openly complains that the city must now share regional leadership with the county. Meanwhile, Roanoke County officials privately grumble that the city treats them as "second-class citizens" and gloat that someday the county will surpass the city in size.
Gallis says the presence of jurisdictions of equal size - effectively, twin cities - almost always makes regional cooperation difficult. "You can't get anybody to join when your cities are fussing," he says. To put it in local terms, why should Montgomery County feel its economic health depends on the future of the Roanoke Valley when Roanoke and Roanoke County can't agree themselves that their economies are interwined?
Outside help. McCoy says a neutral, third party is often helpful in resolving regional issues. In the Charlotte region, his Urban Institute has fulfilled that function. "If we can get everybody in a meeting, where we're in charge and not one of them, we can get the issue on the table." Invariably, he says, when the institute invites government leaders to a meeting, they're quick to show up.
In Virginia, there's no similar institutional help available. The best-known municipal think-tank in Virginia, the Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia, tends to concentrate on analysis and research rather than mediation.
As a result, many in Virginia believe the state government must take the lead in forging regional cooperation between localities.
The closest the state came was in the late 1960s, when an activist Gov. Mills Godwin appointed an equally activist Virginia Tech president, T. Marshall Hahn, to study ways to reform local government and inspire cooperation.
The blue-ribbon Hahn Commission backed away from proposing the state tear up its system of independent cities and counties. For one thing, the commission recognized entrenched political interests when it saw them. It also said that, in the future, economic regions would grow so large that simply consolidating cities and counties wouldn't take care of the problem.
Instead, the commission proposed setting up a new unit of government - the service district, that would operate specific services, such as water and sewer, in an entire metro area. To encourage localities to join such districts, the commission proposed picking up the costs of welfare and transportation for any locality that signed on. To guarantee that service districts were responsive, the commission proposed that they be elected.
But critics complained that such districts constituted "regional governments" and "super governments." Some localities saw elected service districts boards as a threat to their own powers. Other protested that the state couldn't afford such enticements. In the end, the General Assembly authorized service districts, but provided no financial incentives to localities to join, and specified that the district's board be appointed, not elected. The result: None has ever been set up.
Today, the Hahn Commission is often remembered by those plugging regional cooperation as a lost opportunity.
"That Hahn Commission had this vision of regionalism," says Del. Clint Miller, R-Woodstock, who lost the Republican nomination for governor. "I think it was great foresight on the part of the people involved, but the politics weren't ready for it."
Nor have they been since.
Bill Berry, the retired chairman of Richmond-based Dominion Resources, the parent company of Virginia Power, recently served on another commission studying the relationship of Virginia's cities and counties. "I was very disheartened to learn that it's been studied 24 times," he says. "There's been a lot of study without any action."
The more things change, the more they stay the same: In 1968, the Hahn Commission singled out the Roanoke and Richmond areas as the places where regional cooperation was needed most. A quarter-century later, there's once again ferment in both communities about the need for more regional cooperation on economic development.
"Virginia's system of government is exacerbating the problem," Berry says. "In the business community across the state, there's a feeling that we have to quit studying and get on with it."
But get on with what?
In 1991, the Grayson Commission - one of those two dozen studies Berry was referring to - proposed setting aside 25 percent of the state's lottery proceeds to use as incentives to encourage localities to merge various services. But the money wasn't available, so the proposal died. It'll likely stay dead, too, says Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Vinton, who chairs the House Finance Committee.
If carrots aren't available, then the state should try sticks, says John Accordino, an urban policy analyst at Virginia Commonwealth University.
"I don't see any other way to do it," he says. "There's no other authority except the state to say `you're getting state money, you do it this way.' " But he laments, "getting the state to take on the role, that's another question entirely."
Another VCU urban policy specialist, William Heiss, believes the state should revive the spirit of the Hahn Commission. "In the final analysis, there has to be another layer of governmental structure," he says.
A few metro areas around the country have gotten around the consolidation bugaboo by experimenting with overarching regional governments that leave existing governments intact but take over some of their functions.
In Portland, there's an elected regional government that handles trash, transportation, air and water quality, plus the zoo and the new Oregon Convention Center. It's also charged with drawing up a 50-year "vision" to chart the course of growth for Portland's three counties and 24 municipalities.
In Minneapolis, there's a regional authority appointed by the governor that does much the same thing.
Regardless of the approach, "there's no question the state has the power to do something," Berry says. "But the state will have the political will to do something only when the candidates think the voters want something done."
Grayson says the real interest in regional cooperation often comes only from "sophisticated observers of local government, perceptive journalists and the League of Women Voters." That's hardly a fearsome coalition.
But there is one other force - business leaders. Usually, urban analysts say, business leaders are the only force in a community strong enough to overcome jurisdictional lines.
Perhaps that's why groups of business leaders in both Roanoke and Richmond have formed to try to formulate their own economic vision for their communities.
Will it work? Some of Richmond's leaders sound more dire than those in Roanoke. "If we don't do something," Berry says, "we're going to be on the downhill slide."
by CNB