Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 28, 1993 TAG: 9307280087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Don't look now, but Virginia may be on the verge of reopening an old and volatile debate about its system of local government.
These are perennial issues in the Roanoke Valley, where the hydra-headed monster of annexation and consolidation never seems to die.
But now the lid to this Pandora's Box of issues is being lifted statewide by an odd-bedfellows coalition of Richmond business leaders fretting about the state capital's economic future and a Democratic governor perhaps looking to shore up support among blacks before he runs for the U.S. Senate.
Two recent events point to a full-scale revival of the debate over whether Virginia's system of local government needs to be reorganized, a debate which last came to a full boil in the 1960s but has simmered on a back-burner since then:
First, Gov. Douglas Wilder in early July appointed his Advisory Commission on the Revitalization of Virginia's Urban Areas to study the status of Virginia's largest cities, which are coming under increasing financial stress as middle-class residents flee to the suburbs.
Some merely see Wilder's commission as a ploy to line up urban - read, black - support for his 1994 challenge to U.S. Sen. Charles Robb.
After all, Wilder hasn't shown much interest in the state of Virginia's cities during the first 3 1/2 years of his governorship, but now has given the task force a rush-job deadline of Oct. 1 to make its report - just in time to make a big splash during the gubernatorial race.
Moreover, the task force is peppered with key operatives from his aborted presidential campaign, including former campaign manager Joe Johnson and deputy campaign manager Scott Bates.
Whatever Wilder's intentions, the task force has provided a forum for serious discussion. At the first hearing July 19, some city officials around the state suggested that the financial fix that cities find themselves in could be solved by restoring their power to annex their affluent suburban neighbors. That's a proposal calculated to send the blood pressure of suburban representatives soaring.
Secondly, and more surprisingly, George Allen, the Republican candidate for governor, revealed last week that he's asked a group of "farsighted" business leaders to study whether Virginia's system of local government inhibits economic development.
Allen cautioned that he opposes lifting the ban on cities annexing suburban counties, and he won't tinker with the structure of local governments without voters' consent.
Nevertheless, for a conservative Republican, who must rely on a heavy suburban vote to carry him into the governor's mansion, even to broach a subject that frequently causes discomfort to suburbanites has been likened to former President Richard Nixon's opening to China.
It's one thing when Roanoke Mayor David Bowers, who's been beating the consolidation drum since his first race for City Council in 1984, to declare that the Roanoke Valley needs to take yet another look at merger and persuade his colleagues to seek a legal opinion on what would happen if the city tried to give up its charter.
It's quite another for statewide figures as prominent and as diverse as Wilder and Allen to give their imprimatur, however indirectly, to a discussion that inevitably raises the question of what responsibility, if any, suburbs have for their central city.
What's driving this?
The worsening condition of some of Virginia's largest cities, for one thing. A March report by the state's Commission on Local Government documented what it called "ominous" urban trends: Declining populations, stagnant tax revenues, but increasing social problems, from poverty to teen pregnancy to crime.
The epicenter of this debate, as with many in Virginia, is Richmond.
In the past months, two Richmond city councilmen have suggested drastic steps to improve the city's financial health, by merging with the suburbs in one form or another.
But the real impetus for re-examining Virginia's system of local government - at least for Allen - appears to be coming from Richmond's business community, where there's a fairly advanced public discussion under way on the economic future of the capital city and its suburbs.
Many of Richmond's business leaders fear what their counterparts in Roanoke's do: That their city is falling behind others in the Southeast, and that local governments spend so much time bickering among themselves they don't have time to concentrate on the big economic picture.
In Roanoke, the response has been for the Roanoke Valley Business Council - a group of the valley's 50 biggest employers, headed by Carilion Health System President Thomas Robertson - to propose hiring consultants to help draw up an economic "vision" for the region from Rocky Mount to Radford.
In Richmond, the response has been to send delegations of business and political leaders to Nashville, Tenn.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Charlotte, N.C., to see what those cities are doing that Richmond isn't.
In addition, a high-powered group of business and civic leaders has sprung up to cultivate what it calls "grass-roots support" for addressing the Richmond region's long-range economic problems.
In the past year, the Caucus for the Future of Central Virginia has sponsored a series of public forums on the problems of urban America. Among the speakers: syndicated columnist William Raspberry and former Albuquerque, N.M., Mayor David Rusk, whose book "Cities Without Suburbs" is stirring national debate over the plight of central cities.
One of the leaders of the Caucus for the Future of Central Virginia is James "Jimmy" Wheat III, a Richmond financier and the son of the Wheat in the Wheat First Securities firm. He's also the treasurer of Allen's gubernatorial campaign.
Wheat doesn't claim to be the only person responsible for getting Allen's ear on the subject of overhauling local government. But he does admit to bending it a great deal over the past year.
"I first started talking to George about it nine to 12 months ago," Wheat says. "I've put this question to Mary Sue Terry [the Democratic candidate for governor] when she spoke last year to a group at Wheat First. She nodded and did absolutely nothing. She said she'd have staff call me and never did. George has been very responsive in terms of listening. I feel George is going to try to address these regional issues."
And just what are the regional issues that Wheat, and other Richmond business leaders, want addressed?
One is the growing income gap between central cities and their suburbs. "You can't have these economic doughnuts, where the suburbs are middle- and upper-class and the central cities are poor," Wheat says. "If nothing is done in Richmond, or in Petersburg, in 10 to 20 years you could be in a very serious process of deterioration, like a Cleveland in the late '70s, or in Detroit. Detroit has enormous wealth around it, but major problems within the city."
To some extent, that's already happening, Rusk warns. Testifying before Wilder's urban commission, Rusk said cities reach a "point of no return" when their median income falls to 70 percent of their suburbs. A decade ago, the ratio in Roanoke, Richmond and Norfolk was near 90 percent. Now it's dropped to about 80 percent, Rusk said, "approaching what my research has identified as my danger zone."
Once the income gap between cities and suburbs widens that far, Rusk said, cities "are caught in a death spiral of middle-class flight, increasing poverty, rising crime, bad schools, declining city services, failing businesses, rising tax rates, and more middle-class flight."
That's obviously bad for the city concerned. But Wheat and other Richmond business leaders worry that it's bad for the suburbs, too. They contend the Richmond suburbs will have trouble attracting new businesses if the central city is a sinkhole of economic and social problems.
The other issue that Wheat and some other Richmond business leaders want addressed is the very structure of local government in Virginia.
Not only do they see their central city starting to rot, they see local governments bickering so much over water, crime and transportation that they've failed to come up with a regional plan for creating new jobs.
"There is so much energy and effort and time being expended on local government issues in the state because of the state's form of city and county government, it is causing us to fall behind other states that don't have such a restrictive form of local government," Wheat says.
He's convinced his business counterparts in Charlotte, for instance, are able to spend more time promoting economic development because they're not so distracted by having to referee among feuding local governments.
Wheat says he and other Richmond business leaders pushing to bring the twin issues of regional cooperation and urban decay to the fore don't have any particular solution in mind. It could be as simple as the state's directing more money to Virginia's cities. It could be as different as setting up elected regional boards to deal with specific services - in effect, mini regional governments. That was something proposed, and rejected, in Virginia in the 1960s.
"In the business community, there's a strong feeling we have to quit studying and get on with it," says Bill Berry, the retired chairman of Virginia Power, another leader in the Richmond scene.
But there's also a consensus that nothing is likely to happen - yet.
John Moeser, who heads Virginia Commonwealth University's department of urban studies and is an adviser to the Richmond group, says a suburban-dominated legislature won't want to tamper with local government unless it has to.
"Unfortunately, what it may take to force the entire issue is a crisis," Wheat says.
That's why he wouldn't mind provoking one. He says some people in Richmond have mused about starting a petition drive to put a referendum on surrendering the city's charter on the ballot. "I'm saying, let's do it this year," Wheat says. If both Richmond and Roanoke were to propose giving up their charters, he says, that would get the legislature's attention.
Perhaps, Wheat says, "We could do away with all county and city lines and start from scratch."
by CNB