Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 19, 1995                   TAG: 9511170118
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COUNTIES' VIEW IS HARD TO SWALLOW

Alas, the Virginia Association of Counties' reaction to a plan by state business leaders and major Virginia cities to promote regional cooperation is tiresomely typical. VACO continues to rank regional cooperation high on its legislative wish list, but wants the General Assembly to flush down the garbage disposal a proposal that might actually lead to greater cooperation.

The plan is a product of the Urban Partnership, a coalition of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, officials of Virginia cities, including Roanoke, and prominent business leaders around the commonwealth.

The coalition formed two years ago in response to concerns that the state's vitality and competitiveness in the global marketplace were threatened by problems that are felt most acutely in central cities but that affect the economic prospects of entire regions. These problems include deteriorating infrastructure, shrinking tax bases, rising crime, aging populations, pockets of hard-core poverty, concentrations of social needs and dwindling job opportunities.

Indirectly fingering a local-government structure that has landlocked most cities from growth potential, the coalition stresses the interdependence of cities and their surrounding suburban and rural counties. Not only do urban ills inevitably spread - indeed already are spreading - beyond city boundaries, but economic health increasingly is a regional measure, inconsistent with outmoded, fragmented governmental lines. The group's rallying call is, naturally, for regional solutions to address regional challenges.

Three counties - Roanoke, Fairfax and Chesterfield - wisely joined the coalition to talk about such solutions. Yet these three were among the first to find fault with the plan the coalition put on the table.

To satisfy Roanoke County's concerns, the Urban Partnership stripped a key provision from its legislative recommendations that would allow cities with 125,000 or fewer residents to become part of a surrounding county as a town or new type of city with the right to annex adjacent county lands. OK. Whereupon Fairfax, Chesterfield and other counties weighed in with opposition to another provision - creation of a $200 million annual fund to encourage and reward successful regional-cooperation activities.

The coalition's board made concession after concession, but to no avail. VACO turned up its nose, nixing any hope the coalition might have had for enjoying counties' support when it takes its plan before lawmakers in January. Which, considering counties' clout in the assembly, could well translate into a package dead on arrival.

This is not to endorse all or any of the coalition's particular recommendations. But, surely, many of its ideas at least warrant consideration by the legislature.

The economic costs of inadequate regionalism are real and growing, and won't go away by themselves. If regional cooperation is an apple-pie solution, it's time the General Assembly looked for a recipe.