Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 8, 1994 TAG: 9409020013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This city-to-town reversion will be the first in Virginia. It may not be the last, unless the General Assembly soon finds ways to reverse the continuing decline of Virginia's cities.
South Boston is a small (population: 7,000) place in rural Southside Virginia. Even so, it has experienced many of the problems of larger cities in metropolitan areas.
Its tax base has shrunk: In 1960, it accounted for 75 percent of sales-tax receipts in the county; today, that's down to 35 percent. Its prospects for economic growth have been hindered by the legislature-imposed ban on city annexations of county territory. Its population is growing older and poorer. All the while, it faces increased demands for government services.
South Boston's laments, in other words, echo Roanoke's, Lynchburg's, Richmond's, Norfolk's and those of many another Virginia city.
The green light for South Boston to tear up its charter and rejoin the county is not likely, for the moment anyway, to cause a stampede by larger cities to do likewise. For one thing, different rules apply for cities with under 50,000 population and those over that mark. The legislature, thus far, has not been inclined to change the rules to accommodate reversions by larger cities. The Grayson Commission's recommendation to up the ceiling to 125,000 population, which would have made Roanoke eligible for the option, went nowhere.
Also, most larger Virginia cities are not in conditions as desperate as was South Boston. Yet.
Officials in a few, Roanoke and Charlottesville being two, have discussed city-to-town reversion in an off-hand way, as a last-ditch action that (a) assumes the legislature would allow it and (b) is predicated on a worst-case scenario under which the assembly continues to resist every other proposal to relieve the cities' predicament.
So far, the legislature - where central cities' power has been waning for years - indeed has stonewalled. Study after study, report after report, have underscored not only disparities in the welfare of Virginia cities and counties but also the needless expense to everyone of the interlocality jealousies encouraged by the existing system. All are routinely ignored.
The most recent, only a few days old, is the annual "fiscal stress" report from the state's Commission on Local Government. Some quibbles can be made with its methodology, but its findings are wearily predictable. Of the 20 most financially strained local governments in Virginia, 17 are cities. (Roanoke ranked No. 10, putting it in the most-stressed category. Roanoke County, in contrast, ranked 94th of 136 local governments, signifying below-average stress.)
The commission has identified virtually the same high-stress level for cities, especially older urban centers, for years - but the legislature pays no heed.
New hope that the worst-case scenario won't come to pass is to be found in the recent coalition formed by 12 cities and the state's leading business lobby, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. The chamber's members are hammering home the point: Economic development and the fiscal health of the entire commonwealth - including the suburbs that surround the cities - are bound to the fiscal health of the cities. If the legislature continues its head-in-the-sand approach, the economy of the entire state is at risk.
The solution might not be a South Boston-style city-to-town reversion in every place. But reversion probably should be an option for larger cities and, like other possibilities, meets with a legislative deaf ear. By adding its powerful voice to cities' pleas for help, Virginia's business community is increasing the odds that the General Assembly will start to listen up.
by CNB