THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701230001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SERIES: A VIRGINIA REFORM AGENDA
One of a series
LENGTH: 84 lines
In an irrational act, Virginia harms the cities that are the economic engines driving the state. More than any other state, Virginia makes each city an island and tilts the odds against its success.
In other states, cities surrounded by counties are parts of those counties, with shared revenue and services. Virginia is the sole state with an independent-city system - making each city separate from and in competition with its neighboring or surrounding counties.
When commuters earn a living downtown but pay taxes in suburbs, cities can find themselves left with an ever-increasing percentage of poor residents to care for and educate while revenue declines. In a perfect recipe for urban decline, Virginia cities are asked to do more and more with less and less.
A 1996 report by the state Commission on Local Government listed 20 localities with high fiscal stress in the 1993-94 fiscal year. All but two were cities. Put another way, nearly half of the state's 40 cities had serious money problems. Seventeen of those cities lost population during the 1980s, even though Virginia was the 12th fastest-growing state.
Consider the example of Charlottesville. With 10 square miles and no geographic growth allowed, wealth flees into surrounding Albemarle County's 740 square miles.
Though many Albemarle County residents work in Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, they pay their property taxes and educate their children elsewhere.
One hardly thinks of Charlottesville as a poor city, but the percentage of its public-school students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches has soared from 33 percent in 1990-91 to 50 percent in 1994-95. In 1969, median family income in Charlottesville was higher than in Albemarle County. By 1989, city residents' median income was just 79 percent of county residents' median income.
The causes of city decline include white flight, as residents flee city schools that have ever-increasing percentages of minorities and enter mostly white county schools. Another cause is tax flight, since a relatively prosperous county is able to charge lower property-tax rates than the city. Also, there is a desire for the larger, newer homes that the suburban lifestyle offers.
These causes for flight are not likely to diminish soon. In fact, under the independent-city system, the causes will only increase in potency.
Not all cities have failed, of course. One thing that most successful American cities have shared has been an ability to grow. Nashville, Orlando, Jacksonville, Charlotte - none would have done nearly so well under Virginia's no-growth system.
A way must be found to permit cities either to grow or to share in the wealth that city jobs and infrastructure help create.
South Hampton Roads differs from the rest of the state in this regard: Its cities are hemmed in by other cities, not by counties. Solutions for its unique dilemma will be suggested tomorrow.
But for most Virginia cities, two possibilities exist: Permit annexation or permit cities to revert to the status of towns.
Currently, and for most of the past three decades, cities have been prohibited by the state from annexing land. That's a mistake, but powerful suburban counties would likely block attempts to allow annexation. That leaves the option of cities becoming towns.
In Virginia, towns, unlike cities, are part of counties and share income and services with them.
In other words, cities could escape the disadvantages of the independent-city system if they just stopped being cities. They then could share with surrounding counties such responsibilities as education, social services, health departments, constitutional offices and jails.
Currently only cities with less than 50,000 are permitted by state law to revert to towns. The law should be changed to permit all cities to revert.
With a population of about 40,000, Charlottesville is already eligible to revert to town status. It is considering doing so. University of Virginia Professor William H. Lucy has extensively studied Charlottesville's problems. He favors reversion.
``In the long run,'' he wrote, ``Charlottesville and the region would be better off by having the financial resources of the region available to focus on problems wherever they exist.''
In the long run, it is not in Virginia's interest for any of its cities to decline. Regrettably, the independent-city system, though it arose haphazardly over time, is enshrined in the state constitution. The simplest effective reform is to allow cities of any size to revert to towns.
Although that change would not apply to most of South Hampton Roads, what's good for the state is good for us. Our region will be discussed tomorrow.