Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 22, 1993 TAG: 9309050292
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In the '70s, it was said to be cooperation among localities. Linwood Holton, governor in the early years of the decade, promoted the idea. Near the end of the decade, a General Assembly ban on annexations of big suburban counties (Roanoke among them) was supposed to make cooperation easier, or so it was argued, by ending one big source of interlocality disputation.
In the '80s, the focus was on adjustments to Virginia's peculiar independent-city system. In the Roanoke Valley and some other places, proposals surfaced to merge cities with surrounding counties. After four years of study, a legislative commission concluded that most of Virginia's cities, even if retaining their municipal identities, should be encouraged to relinquish independent status.
The magic has failed - or, more accurately, has seldom been tried. The efforts fell victim to local hostility, voter disapproval, bureaucratic entrenchment, legislative timidity.
Today, a new magic carpet is being woven: ending the annexation ban. Roanoke Mayor David Bowers has suggested it, and has won sympathetic words from Councilman James Harvey and the mayors of Richmond and Norfolk. The Virginia Municipal League seems to like the idea. Yet another state task force - the Commission on the Revitalization of Virginia's Urban Areas - heard testimony this week in favor of it.
In other words, the one major local-government change Virginia in the past 25 years f+ihaso managed to make is now seen, and not without reason, as a contributor to the problem.
That problem has worsened.
Where the issue once was how to modernize a 19th-century system of local government to meet 20th-century needs, it is now how to a modernize a 19th-century system to meet the demands of the coming 21st century.
The fact that regionalism can produce efficiencies in local government has long been known, if seldom acted on. Now there is a growing body of evidence that the cost of anachronistically structured local government doesn't stop there; that the general economic fortunes of entire metropolitan areas are linked to how well their local governments can act on a regional basis in the face of regional challenges.
It is easier to say that the annexation ban should never have gone into effect than to say it now should be repealed: In the intervening 14 years, suburban counties have been busily taking on the urban functions (and urban tax rates) previously taken care of by annexation.
In any case, the question of whether the annexation ban should be repealed is almost beside the point. It is so, in part, because it remains an unlikely option, as a political and practical matter. Remember: Suburbs have increased their clout in the legislature since the ban was imposed.
More to the point are questions that go beyond the annexation issue: Are Virginians willing to respond to the challenges of a new economic era? Do suburbanites recognize ties that bind them to the fate of cities? Can a hitherto rabbity legislature muster the courage to take on entrenched interests wedded to the local-government status quo?
When these sorts of questions can be answered in the affirmative, then the particular methods for inducing reorganization - repeal of the annexation ban, an end to independent cities, local-government mergers, regional supergovernments, functional consolidations, tax-sharing schemes, what have you - become technical matters. Public officials then can consult various routes mapped out by a long line of ignored study-commissions.
In the meantime, which ticket you choose doesn't matter a lot if you never board the train.
by CNB