THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 14, 1995 TAG: 9512140012
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY ROGER RICHMAN
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
A statewide coalition of business and government leaders, the Urban Partnership, is recommending changes in Virginia law to give powerful incentives for local governments to work together on regional issues. A key recommendation would create a Regional Development Incentive Fund that within a few years would provide $200 million annually for local governments working together on specific regional programs.
The reason for this and other Urban Partnership recommendations: Virginia's urban regions lag in economic competitiveness when compared to other Southern states. Lagging competitiveness means fewer jobs overall and fewer high-income jobs than otherwise might be.
Compared with rapidly growing urban regions in the South, Hampton Roads is behind economically. Even in our most rapidly growing cities we do not attract enough new high-income jobs. Recent studies tell a story of sluggish economic growth. Our region's average employment base increases by less than one percent annually, and our average income rose less quickly than incomes in nine of 10 comparison metropolitan areas. Our challenge is clear. The future quality of life for hundreds of thousands of our residents depends on our response.
We can do something about this situation. Working cooperatively on our economic and social problems we can make our cities and our region a more attractive location for the growth of high-income jobs and greater overall economic growth. We must make some changes, including changes in state law to get us moving forward faster than our local governments' traditional go-it-alone approach on many public issues permits.
The Urban Partnership's members and leaders of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce and some of the state's largest corporations, including Virginia Power, Bell Atlantic and Crestar, and mayors and county supervisors and city and county managers from 18 of Virginia's largest localities have been working for 18 months on ways to spur economic growth. They've studied why Virginia trails economic growth rates in some other Southern states, and why no urban region wholly within Virginia is on the list of most rapidly growing areas in the South.
They concluded that if Virginia is to be economically competitive, we must find new ways to cooperate as neighborhoods, community groups, local governments and businesses sharing the same metropolitan area.
Highly competitive urban regions around the country tear down the barriers to cooperation wherever they exist. The Urban Partnership's proposals call for Virginians to reject old paths leading to adversarial relations among our local governments. They encourage us to work on a larger canvas than we are used to in our individual independent cities, and they call for state government to provide incentives for local governments to cooperate in ways that make a difference.
The proposed Regional Development Incentive Fund will be dedicated to rewarding cooperation among local governments and between the public and private sectors in each of the state's urban regions.
Under the proposed legislation, local governments would share in this new state fund if they join a regional partnership and a strategic planning program for their urban region.
Each regional partnership would address regional concerns. Local government participation would be voluntary, not mandated. The legislation would create financial incentives for localities to engage in long-run regional activities to improve the business climate and the quality of life in urban and suburban communities.
Hampton Roads should have its own regional partnership. Ours is a large metropolitan area, complete with the problems of any area with 1.5 million people, including problems larger than the resources of any individual city, and larger than the public sector itself. We can choose how we will address these problems. We can continue to allow each city to do the best it can and accept the consequences of a widening gap between haves and have nots in society and among our cities.
The widening gap between the relatively well off and those without stable connections to the job market will worsen our social and economic problems. It is not a future likely to lead to large numbers of high-paying jobs in our region.
Alternatively, we can address our large-scale problems as region-wide challenges demanding that our local governments cooperate in common efforts on a regional scale while recognizing that the public sector must find ways to involve the private sector and community organizations. The Urban Partnership's proposal in the General Assembly is a first step toward providing and improving quality of life for ourselves and our region's economic competitiveness. It deserves support. MEMO: Dr. Richman is a professor of public administration at Old Dominion
University. by CNB