ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 4, 1997 TAG: 9701060109
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: FAIRFAX
SOURCE: Associated Press
State legislators from Northern Virginia have competed for years with their counterparts in the Hampton Roads area for transportation funding and other prizes.
But this year, leaders of the Northern Virginia delegation say they will stress the similarities between the two heavily populated regions.
``We have similar problems which are not replicated in huge areas of Virginia,'' said state Sen. Joseph Gartlan, D-Fairfax, co-chairman of the General Assembly's Northern Virginia Caucus.
Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area both have a higher cost of living than the rest of Virginia, more traffic problems, more federal and military employees, pockets of urban poverty and a large population of immigrants.
``We could do a lot better, and we're going to have to do better in the future, reaching common ground between these two urban and urbanizing areas,'' Gartlan said. ``Put together, those are very strong forces.''
The two regions are the top and bottom of what demographers call Virginia's ``Golden Crescent,'' the thickly populated region in the eastern half of the state.
Many legislative ideas dear to Northern Virginia also would benefit the Hampton Roads area, Gartlan and others said.
For example, Northern Virginia legislators say they will press hard for continued state funding for local programs that help at-risk youth and their families.
Northern Virginia legislators also will ask the state to return some funding for law enforcement that was cut in 1992 and never restored. And they will ask that mental health care for Medicaid patients be excluded, at least for now, from a new managed-care program.
Northern Virginia localities oppose any reduction in local authority over land use and oppose any change in the state Health Department's funding formula that would reduce state aid to local health districts.
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1997by CNB