Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 7, 1994 TAG: 9405090125
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We pushed for it in 1990 and earlier. But we're well aware that a city-county merger plan was thoroughly trounced by county voters in November of that year, and isn't about to be revived anytime soon. We believe that, in the absence of consolidation, cooperation among local governments is preferable to confrontation.
This out of the way, let's move on to the bigger point: The consolidation proposal's rejection did not alter the underlying conditions that had inspired the effort in the first place, nor render moot now and forevermore any effort at any local-government reform of any kind whatsoever. To reject one proposed treatment is not to cure the malady, nor is it to require that the search stop for other possible remedies.
Since 1990, Roanoke Valley jurisdictions have made cooperative strides in some areas, such as the new regional landfill and agreement on plans to upgrade the regional sewage-treatment plant. But serious difficulties remain - and economic competition from other, better-organized metro areas has only grown keener.
In his article, Eddy himself offers a cogent summary of some of those difficulties as they currently face the valley. Why, then, is he so hostile to the idea of reforms - not necessarily, to repeat the point, city-county consolidation - that might make the structure of Virginia local government less dysfunctional?
Blinkered vision is part of it. The supervisors' chairman may have the sharpest eye in the valley for examining local-government trees - one at a time. It's the bigger picture, the forest, that seems to escape his view.
Nowhere in an article discussing annexation, for example, is mentioned Virginia's quaint practice of having cities independent of the counties around them (and, of course, vice versa). Yet this attribute of Virginia local government - an attribute, in its breadth, shared by local government in no other state - is precisely what made annexation proceedings in Virginia so volatile, and what makes the current annexation ban in metro areas so perverse.
Too, Eddy seems to confuse local government with local community, a frequent mistake among governmental officials. "Community" is the sum of a web of economic and social relationships, with which the boundaries of governmental units may or may not coincide. In the Roanoke Valley, as a rule, they don't. Thus, the assets and problems of Roanoke city and Roanoke County are bound up with each other; residents of each have strong economic and social self-interests in the well-being of the other.
A third flaw in Eddy's reasoning is his resort to crying poor on behalf of the county. Note that he argues as if from the city's point of view: Why would the city want to take over poor little us? Now consider the condition he describes from county taxpayers' viewpoint. The county's overreliance on a residential tax base, cut off from the city's commercial and industrial tax base while service demands in the county are rapidly rising, is in fact one reason why the county should have consolidated with the city, and why it retains an interest in cooperation today.
Finally, Eddy's criticism of Bowers for overlooking the valley's p.r. needs is more than a little out of tune. Bowers' joking comparison, on national radio, of the Roanoke Valley to Bosnia wasn't good for the valley's image, Eddy says. Then he proceeds to affirm the accuracy of the point that Bowers, albeit with humor-intending exaggeration, was making.
Local government in this valley has problems. The answer isn't to cover up their existence, but to go to work fixing them. Such work would be aided mightily if pride and ego - on all sides - could be distinguished more from public policy, and the volume on bickering and posturing could be turned down.
by CNB