THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 24, 1997 TAG: 9701240001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SERIES: A VIRGINIA REFORM AGENDA
One of a series
LENGTH: 97 lines
No Law of Nature says older cities must decline. Public policy helps determine whether a city waxes or wanes - state policy more than federal.
In a few states, notably North Carolina, state policy has led to cities that actually outperform their surrounding metropolitan regions economically.
In Virginia, however, cities like Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond have fallen far behind their suburbs in median family income.
Studies have shown that regions do best if both cities and suburbs prosper. By contrast, income disparity between city and suburbs is high in unsuccessful economic regions. Even prosperous suburbs cannot carry a region forward if the older city they surround decays.
The biggest single difference between North Carolina's and Virginia's treatment of cities is that North Carolina lets them expand their boundaries and Virginia doesn't. We're like a coach who prohibits his athletes from growing but asks them to wrestle opponents who have bulked up. In competition with the Charlottes of the world, Virginia cities are outweighed.
In other states, according to University of Virginia Professor William H. Lucy, Chesapeake, Suffolk and Virginia Beach would be counties. But they are cities here, and it's impossible for Norfolk and Portsmouth to expand in the manner of a Charlotte. Norfolk and Portsmouth are forever hemmed in.
The contrasting experience of two Peninsula cities is instructive. When the rush to the suburbs occurred, Newport News had the good fortune of having space for growth. Its northern section, in effect, became the suburb to its older southern section. Thus, Newport News could tax the growth. Hampton had no such luck. Like Portsmouth and Norfolk, it is hemmed in. For Hampton, flight to the suburbs also meant flight of tax dollars beyond reach.
What can such hemmed-in cities do? As much as possible, Hampton Roads must act like an economic entity. In no other way can Hampton Roads compete with the Charlottes. The state, the short-sighted source of so many city problems, can do a lot to help.
Fully fund the Urban Partnership's Incentive Fund. The mechanism for setting up the fund was passed in last year's legislative session. The fund rewards cities that cooperate by paying them. It withholds money from localities that fail to cooperate.
The eventual goal is to have $200 million per biennium to share among cooperating localities, with Hampton Roads getting $50 million of that, assuming its localities cooperate. A point system has been set up to determine what must be done to get a share of the fund. For example, the region would receive points if its localities cooperated on regional transportation or education programs.
Obviously, the Incentive Fund rewards localities for acting in ways that are best for their regions. That makes sense.
Pass a bill introduced this year by Sen. Frederick M. Quayle, R-Chesapeake, to fund a $50,000 study of the feasibility of establishing a regional administrative agency to provide urban services in Hampton Roads. A number of regional agencies already provide regional services in such areas as transportation and waste but don't necessarily talk with each other.
A provision of the bill is that the new umbrella agency collect no new taxes but operate from fees for services. Eventually, the agency might oversee, on a regional basis, wastewater management, a potable water supply, a metropolitan transportation system, solid-waste collection and recycling, and regional development through land-use planning, zoning and urban-growth management.
The national leader in regional cooperation is the Portland, Ore., area, which in 1995 adopted a regional authority with elected officials. Participating localities, including Portland, submit zoning changes to the Metro for approval. In other words, a regional authority makes decisions affecting development of the region.
An overarching authority may be the surest way to bring order to regional development, but it is unlikely to be approved by voters here. Still, an umbrella agency coordinating and encouraging regional services would be helpful.
Find more ways to get tax money to the inner cities, where the poor cluster and needs are greatest. The simplest and best method is for the state to pay a higher share of localities' education costs.
Education is a city's single greatest expense. North Carolina state government pays a far higher share of public-education costs than does Virginia. As a result, less of the financial burden of educating poor children falls on older cities, the jurisdictions least able to pay.
At least that keeps the downward spiral from growing worse. Since inadequate educational resources only spur flight from cities by all who can afford to escape, minimizing the disparity makes sense.
From the early 1970s, 58 municipalities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region have paid part of property taxes into a regional pool. That money is redistributed to municipalities using regionally based formulas intended to reduce the gap in commercial-industrial tax receipts among the wealthier and poorer communities.
Contributors to the income pool recognize that poverty cannot be locked into one jurisdiction, usually the jurisdiction least able to cope with it. Contributors also recognize that large wealth disparities among localities within a region harm the whole region.
Metro planning in Portland and regionally funded education in Minneapolis-St. Paul are extreme approaches to common problems. Virginia may not choose to go so far, but it is not in the interest of Virginia to strangle and starve its cities. Ways must be found to reward cities that cooperate with each other.