THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602230007
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Among the 15 metropolitan areas in the Southeast, Hampton Roads is next to last in employment growth and last in per-capita income growth.
Surely everyone agrees, that is not good enough.
One thing each of those other metropolitan areas has that Hampton Roads lacks is a regional organization in which mayors and county supervisors, business and industrial chief executive officers, and college presidents blend their talents to make their area more competitive.
As staff writer Mylene Mangalindan reported last week, such an organization is being formed here. It will also include the area's senior person from each military branch and two school superintendents.
The organization is aptly named the Hampton Roads Public/Private Partnership. Members include the top elected official from the 10 cities and five counties in this Standard Metropolitan Area of 1.5 million people, stretching from Williamsburg south to North Carolina and East to the sea.
A Who's Who of local business and industry has signed on, including David Goode, CEO of Norfolk Southern Corp.; Daniel A. Hoffler, chairman of the Armada/Hoffler commercial real estate and construction groups; Pat Robertson, CEO and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network; James B. Babcock, chairman of First Virginia Bank of Tidewater; Robert Wilburn, president of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; and Vincent J. Mastracco Jr. of the law firm Kaufman & Canoles.
Adm. William J. Flanagan Jr., commander of the Navy's Atlantic Fleet, is enthusiastically participating in the organization. When he needs to discuss the naval matters with local leaders, he would rather have one body to address.
The Peninsula has long had a similar organization, called The Virginia Peninsula Economic Development Council. It blended the talents of business and government leaders in helping to attract Canon USA and Gateway 2000 plants, among others.
South Hampton Roads and the region as a whole have lacked such an organized blending of government and private brainpower and experience.
``This is no effort toward regional governance or bureaucracy,'' said Norfolk Mayor Paul D. Fraim, one of the partnership's co-chairmen. ``This is an effort to set an agenda, to identify our assets and try to capitalize on them.''
Who knows better what big-business scouts seek in a region than the top officer of a Fortune 500 company like Norfolk Southern or a bank chairman like Babcock? The presidents of area community and four-year colleges will be part of the Partnership, and they have priceless expertise near at hand in the persons of their professors.
The ideas will be implemented by local governments. The Hampton Roads Public/Private Partnership, then, is an umbrella organization of roughly 40 members. It cannot order local governments around. It won't tax but surely will inform the public.
Hampton Roads will never be a region until the people living here want it to be one. Thus, one of the most valuable services the Partnership could perform would be to demonstrate to citizens the advantages of regionalism to them. The short reason is better-paying jobs.
Given the importance of persuading the public to support regionalism, it would seem a good idea to include civic league officers in the Partnership and to do as much of the Partnership's work in public as possible.
The 15 Hampton Roads localities now need to approve funding for the Partnership, which asks for a three-employee staff and an annual budget of $350,000: half from localities and half from private sources. Considering the brainpower and experience that the new organization should tap, the advantages regionalism would bring and Hampton Roads' dire need for jobs that pay well, with full benefits - $350,000 is a bargain.
A great deal of important work will be done for free by normally high-priced folks, and all Hampton Roads should benefit. by CNB