Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 14, 1994 TAG: 9407140091
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But under helpful pressure from state House Majority Leader Richard "won't-take-no-for-an-answer" Cranwell, and with the inducement of the business community's impatient offer to pay half the $30,000 cost, embrace a study they have.
Well, tolerate it, anyway. Some of them.
This week, Roanoke City Council agreed to put up $7,000; Salem City Council, to put up $3,000. Roanoke County supervisors, though on record in support of the concept, have yet to throw any folding green into the pot.
Judging from their comments Monday night, Salem officials aren't exactly thrilled at the thought of cooperating with neighboring localities to provide some infrastructure and services jointly.
"I'm not supporting the outcome" of the study by voting to help pay for it, said Salem Mayor Jim Taliaferro. "And neither is anybody else on council."
In a valley accustomed to political sandbox squabbling, such negativism is not peculiar, but it is premature. The outcome of a study not yet begun is, obviously, not yet known.
The study, for that matter, is likely to focus on only one of regionalism's benefits: increased service efficiency. Other benefits - such as enhanced awareness that we're all in this together, a more equitable sharing of social responsibilities, and greater coherence in planning, strategizing and pooling of resources for economic development - are harder to quantify.
Even so, the danger that has Salem officials and others quivering and sputtering is presumably that another look will, like common sense and previous studies, show that some local-government functions could be more effective if managed regionally. If that isn't the fear, why pooh-pooh the findings in advance?
If a consultant's study identifies infrastructure and services that could be better provided regionally, prevailing attitudes are still apt to confound implementation.
One locality might be helped less directly than another by a particular change. Even if all benefit directly, the one that perceives the least benefit for itself may see competitive value in retaining the status quo. And because it implies a dimunition of local importance, merely the concept of regionalization can be threatening.
Against such concerns should be weighed the possibility that not regionalizing could prove the greater threat.
Why, for example, would a state lawmaker like Cranwell embroil himself in such seemingly local matters? There are probably many reasons. But one may be that local governments are creatures of a state government in which power is shifting rapidly to other parts of Virginia, as a legislative insider like Cranwell keenly understands.
This could be an opportunity for the valley's local governments to do some streamlining in their own way, before it eventually is done for (or to) them by a state government controlled by Easterners and impatient with petty and expensive local rivalries.
Moreover, Roanoke-area governments are fooling themselves if they think they're in competition with each other. A century ago, sure. Today, regions compete with regions. Consolidation a la Lexington-Fayette County, Kentucky, has proven a nonstarter in the Roanoke Valley, but modest regionalization of some services ought not to be.
Reluctance to provide infrastructure and services as effectively as possible, not regionalizing them, is what in the long run could render the valley's local governments - and local-government officials - increasingly superfluous.
by CNB