Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 10, 1994 TAG: 9404110173
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Under the compact, police officers throughout the valley could ticket any motorist with an expired decal from any of the other participating localities. This should improve enforcement of personal-property tax laws in each of the localities - Roanoke city, Roanoke County, Salem and Vinton - at virtually no extra cost. Well done.
True, the compact would not have been possible without legislation passed by the 1993 General Assembly. But don't blame the lack of more such compacts on the need for legislative approval.
A not-so-little secret about the assembly's control over local governments, under the oft-cursed Dillon Rule, is that legislators usually will go along with any reasonable request a locality makes. When it comes to authority for regional cooperation, lawmakers should go positively giddy.
Another not-so-little secret is that there are a lot of other areas where valley governments could cooperate without much trouble - perhaps not so many areas for easing the governments' collection of revenues, as with the decal compact; but certainly numerous opportunities for cutting costs and improving services.
Why, for example, is Roanoke city not part of the money-saving central-purchasing system that the other valley governments and every valley school system, including Roanoke city's, belong to?
Some areas of potential cooperation and consolidation of services are genuinely tough cookies. Those involving significant capital outlay, for example, can raise ownership issues, or cost-benefit questions, or both. Emotions, suspicions and prejudices can get in the way in other cases, such as schools.
And on a number of issues, a bargaining advantage is enjoyed by one jurisdiction or another depending on the service in question. In the absence of regional governing, complicated negotiations are required to link disparate issues, affording give and take across a variety of cooperative arrangements.
The city of Roanoke isn't out of bounds, for example, in trying to use what linkage-leverage it can to encourage neighboring localities to start doing their share in the unglamorous provision of social services. But, for the most part, this isn't happening.
And all this, in any case, is Column A on the menu. The real answer to these dilemmas is for the state to reorganize the system of local governments in Virginia. Make no mistake: Decal deals and the like are no substitute for serious structural reform, and never will be.
Meantime, however, until legislators get around to reform, over on Column B are the sorts of noncontroversial compacts and mergers that could be accomplished at low cost and to each party's short- as well as long-range benefit.
Each alone might be, like the decal compact, relatively trivial. But taken together, over time, they could have a big impact on the quality and efficiency of local government in the valley. By fostering the habit of cooperation, they also could ease the way toward more fundamental regionalizing of services.
Taxpayers in the valley, whatever the municipal name on their decals, should be demanding more of this.
by CNB