Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 19, 1994 TAG: 9407200043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER NOTE: above
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Forged during the past year, the potentially weighty political alliance intends to spend $350,000 over the next 18 months identifying hindrances to business growth in Virginia and recommending steps to abolish them.
And it may take to a statewide level the question of regional cooperation between cities and adjacent counties. The issue has prompted talk in the Roanoke Valley for decades, but little action.
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers, City Manager Bob Herbert and Warner Dalhouse, chairman of First Union National Bank of Virginia, will attend the partnership's initial meeting today.
Bowers said the idea was conceived last year in a meeting he attended with mayors from Richmond and Norfolk. Simultaneously, business leaders from across the state were studying similar topics. This spring, the two groups came together.
He called the partnership a ``historic realliance'' of business and municipal government in the state.
``We need to ask the question whether local government in Virginia is an impediment to economic growth,'' Bowers said before leaving for Richmond.
Besides Roanoke, at least 11 other city governments have committed to joining the partnership: Arlington, Charlottesville, Danville, Hampton, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Newport News, Norfolk, Petersburg, Portsmouth and Richmond.
Also on board is the 1,500-member Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the state's dominant pro-business lobby.
Among the issues the group will likely tackle is a political conundrum that has been debated for at least 15 years: the state's unique system of mutually exclusive city and county governments and the effects that has on the business climate.
A law passed by the Virginia General Assembly in 1979 virtually halted cities' ability to annex. Some experts believe that has left landlocked cities unable to grow economically, a principal element of general urban decline.
Gradually, cities across the state have seen their populations grow older and poorer, while neighboring counties courted new industries and siphoned off high-paying jobs and the residents who fill them.
The result is that ``Virginia's central cities are programmed to fail because ... the General Assembly has denied to them annexing authority,'' said David Rusk, a Washington-based author and urban policy consultant who has studied Virginia's economic climate.
By contrast, other Southern states such as North Carolina have actually encouraged annexation while fostering regional cooperation on costly services such as schools, utilities and waste disposal.
Charlotte has grown from 30 to 174 square miles in the past 45 years. Greensboro has more than quadrupled its boundaries in the same period. And Raleigh's city limits have increased eightfold - from 11 to 88 square miles, Rusk said.
``These are communities in which ... [per capita] incomes in the cities are typically higher than incomes outside them,'' Rusk said. In Virginia, the opposite is happening, he said.
While industries in Virginia have for the past decade tended to locate outside central cities, they still view cities as cultural and business anchors, Dalhouse said. Thus, whole regions may suffer economically if cities deteriorate.
``When a community becomes a Newark or a Detroit ... then there's some reluctance for business to expand in the whole region,'' Rusk said.
One of the partnership's first orders of business will be a request that Gov. George Allen convene an urban economic summit in December, Bowers said.
In the meantime, the organizations will split into study groups that will identify issues to be addressed at the summit and goals to work toward in the future. A draft report is expected by mid-December.
Next year, the partnership expects to lay out legislative initiatives for the General Assembly to act on in 1996. A second summit would be held in May.
Hugh Keogh, president of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, said he has broached the partnership with Robert Skunda, Allen's secretary of commerce and trade.
``He indicated very strong interest and was delighted the partnership was getting off the ground. I would call it a strong feeling of excitement,'' Keogh said. Skunda could not be reached for comment.
Co-chairmen of the partnership are Jean Clary, chairman of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, and Hampton Mayor James Eason. Neal J. Barber, former director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development, has been hired as the partnership's project director.
by CNB