THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996 TAG: 9602230001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By JAMES L. EASON
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
As Hampton Roads' cities begin to feel their way toward more regional cooperation, and at the same time the General Assembly considers a ``Regional Competitiveness Act,'' there remains a view that the suburban cities have little to gain from regionalism and might have something to lose. Is this true? Three questions can help frame the issue.
What is in the Regional Competitiveness Act? The act sets up a state-funded, regional-development incentive fund available to local governments agreeing to join regional partnerships. Under the act, these partnerships are to develop regional strategic economic plans identifying critical issues of economic competitiveness for their region.
Participation in these regional partnerships is voluntary, and each city council and county board of supervisors will decide whether or not to join. The incentive fund includes a formula distributing state funds according to each region's share of the state's population. Hampton Roads would be eligible for many millions of dollars annually through this program if our region ``earned'' our full share through expanded regional cooperation. Under the legislation, local governments would distribute the funds based on a formula mutually agreed to by all the localities of the region. Thus, no local government would be required to agree to a formula it thought unfair and not in its interest, and each local government's participation is voluntary and must be voted on by its governing body. Our large suburban cities would benefit under the Regional Competitiveness Act.
Why is the region a measure of our suburban cities' economic competitiveness? A measure of economic success is how we compare with our competition. But who are our competitors? Traditionally our local cities have competed over scarce resources and economic development. Despite achievements in regional cooperation, often the underlying relationship among our cities has been competitive, e.g., Norfolk vs. Virginia Beach vs. Chesapeake.
That is the old view. In a new understanding we see our suburban cities are less in competition with one another or with central cities than with their counterparts in other metropolitan regions. The true measure of competition for our suburban cities are the suburban governments surrounding Charlotte, the Research Triangle, Jacksonville and Atlanta, not our neighboring cities in Hampton Roads.
This may be a tough sell to local officials who grew up politically in a world where interlocal regions have been polite in the best of times and downright nasty in times of conflict over resources, contracts and economic development. In the past, suburban leaders thought that local government boundaries within a region could separate winners from losers, older declining cities from growing new suburbs. Today, such comparisons are much less true and, in fact, are self-defeating for suburban cities like Suffolk, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, our local winners over the past 20 years in population and job growth.
Regional performance now counts a great deal more than it used to. Potential employers increasingly select the region in which they locate their investment by looking at issues beyond the scope of control of any single local government. In many cases, the suitability of a region's labor force, highway and airports, water supply and utilities, schools, the mix of housing in a region, the region's entertainment, sports, recreational and cultural amenities, etc., are key determinants of a major employer's location decision.
Regional amenities matter a great deal in economic competitiveness. We live in a world where very mobile capital investment will locate where it finds the best amenities and resources on a national and international scale; increasingly the unit of measurement for corporate locators is the metropolitan region and the resources it offers. Judged by this standard, our region and our suburban cities are not doing as well as we would like.
Would our suburban cities do better if our region did better? When it comes to key measures of economic well-being, our fastest-growing cities - Chesapeake, Suffolk, Virginia Beach and York County - are likely not doing as well as their counterparts in Charlotte, the Research Triangle and Jacksonville. Growth in average household incomes and employment growth is lagging in Hampton Roads compared with other metropolitan areas. This means that residents of our suburban cities will on average have not quite as much disposable income as their counterparts in the suburbs of other metropolitan regions. And there will not be as many jobs, particularly well-paying jobs, available for their children who might otherwise wish to remain in our region.
Thus the answer to the question - What good is regionalism for the suburbs? - is clear. It can provide nationally competitive wages and new job opportunities in the suburbs themselves.
Increasingly, a key to public-sector success in helping make better opportunities for suburban city residents lies in activities that are larger in scale than local governments can control, even governments of large cities like Virginia Beach. Local governments excel at delivering local services and in responding to the local concerns of neighborhoods and communities, but local governments do not have the resources and the reach to address some of the key issues affecting the pace and quality of economic growth within their own borders - issues like the quality of public education in the region, not just in a given city but in the region.
Employers increasingly demand trained work forces, drawing their workers from fairly wide commuting areas, from regional not local labor markets. No matter what a local school system does, it is the perception of the quality of the public schools in the region that will determine the attractiveness of the labor market to mobile capital investors. So, too, the quality of the region's transportation network, cultural amenities, health-care system, network of higher education, and other concerns.
Often the keys to a region's attractiveness for investment in a national and global market are effectively beyond the ability of individual cities to control. The region needs to be the basis for coordinating local government and public-sector/private-sector interactions to improve the quality of life for the residents of our suburban cities just as much as for the residents of the central cities. MEMO: Mr. Eason is mayor of Hampton and co-chair of The Urban Partnership.
by CNB