THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 9, 1995 TAG: 9510070165
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Ted Evanoff
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
Years have passed since the fate of America's old cities was an issue on the forefront of the political agenda.
The issue is being pulled to the surface now, especially in Tidewater, on the heels of the welfare reform measure moving through Congress.
If Republicans in Washington fulfill their promise - hand welfare responsibility to the states and require work from able adults on welfare - it suggests welfare costs will rise for taxpayers.
After all, do you dump the poor on the job market? Or do you train them? And if you train people, who foots the bill?
Virginia taxpayers today may glimpse part of the answer that eventually will emerge. The Virginia Municipal League is in town. It's scheduled a meeting, beginning at 8 a.m. in the Virginia Beach Pavilion, to hear the thoughts of local officials on an array of urban issues.
Listening in will be members of a state government panel headed by Lt. Gov. Donald S. Beyer Jr. Beyer's panel, called the Commission on State and Local Government Responsibility and Taxing Authority, was created by the General Assembly to review Virginia's tax structure.
The panel has been studying what the state does, and what the cities do, and what all this costs. In August, the panel accepted a report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the research arm of the General Assembly.
Linda Bacon Ford, chief legislative analyst at the audit commission, examined a wide variety of public services.
On the subject of social services, she concluded: ``There is an inverse relationship between local need and ability to pay for poverty related programs.''
Ford's notion was simple. In cities where poor people are concentrated the tax base is insufficient to pay for poverty programs. This naturally raised a question.
If cities can't afford poverty programs, who can? She recommended the state.
It's an idea embraced by the Urban Partnership, a coalition of 18 Virginia cities that contends the suburbs should help shoulder urban costs.
Earlier this month, the cities' coalition sent Beyer's panel a number of recommendations, including: ``The imbalance between the services which localities must provide and the revenues available to them must be corrected.''
During the summer, David R. Goode, the chief executive officer of Norfolk Southern Corp., the railroad based in Norfolk, wrote in The Virginian-Pilot: ``There is no region anywhere in the world that is competitive without a strong core city.''
Aimed at the political tension that simmers between old Norfolk and young Virginia Beach, Goode's words were a prelude to the Urban Partnership's gathering in Norfolk in July.
The meeting ushered forth a number of counterpoints. One of the most poignant was made by Beth Barber of The Virginian-Pilot.
Writing in the paper's community publication, the Virginia Beach Beacon, Barber noted suburban residents understand decaying cities drag down surrounding communities.
She then pointed out: What the suburbs ``doubt, resist and resent - a reaction the Partnership must assuage - is the basic remedy it proposes: coaxing, even coercing the 'burbanites into responsibility for fixing the urban miasma they worked so hard to flee.''
What the Urban Partnership has in mind sounds less like revenue sharing with the suburbs and more like team building within the region. At least that's how partnership member Robert J. O'Neill Jr., the Hampton city manager, describes the taxation ideas discussed by coalition members.
The idea boils down to this: Virginia would pool some state tax revenue. The pool would dole cash to regions in the state whenever a particular region scored a certain number of points on a scale established to measure regional cooperation.
For example, if training welfare recipients was a goal in Tidewater, the region would get points for creating training programs that led to jobs. Goals would be set by each region. The state's cash would serve as an incentive to reach the goal.
``What you're trying to do is set up an environment where you have people talking at the table,'' O'Neill said.
And where would the cash for the incentive fund come from? ``That's the billion dollar question,'' O'Neill said. It could be lottery money, or growth in the general fund or even new taxes.
``At this juncture we don't know where the money will come from,'' he said. ``It probably won't be decided until after the election.'' by CNB