Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412290040
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After that, says the governor, the counties and municipalities will just have to do without. Get more efficient, he advises.
But the two biggest inefficiencies in Virginia local government, by a fair estimation, result from systemic roadblocks that only the state can remedy - and about which Allen says little or nothing.
One is the archaic system of tiny counties and independent cities.
County boundaries were set when a prime concern was enabling farmers to go by horse to the courthouse and back in one day. The internal-combustion engine has pretty much erased that concern - but not county boundaries.
Also rendered obsolete by transportation technology is Virginia's independent-city system, established long before the rise of automobile-based suburbia. Coupled with the virtual ban on city annexations of land in suburban counties, the result has been costly duplication of services, a tragically misplaced sense of competition between cities and their suburbs, and center-city declines that are starting to infect their regions as well.
Granted, these roadblocks to efficiency are sometimes hurdled. Last week, for example, a July 1 date was set for the tiny city of South Boston to revert to town status and thus become part of Halifax County once more. Among the Roanoke Valley's separate governments, such services as solid-waste disposal, sewage treatment and the airport have been to varying degrees regionalized.
But the Roanoke Valley list leaves much yet to do. And like the South Boston reversion, cooperative projects in the Roanoke Valley come only after years of difficult negotiations - the inevitability of which is itself an inefficiency.
A second obstacle is the state's tendency to micromanage the localities. A degree of consistency throughout the state is wise, but too many routine details of local government require state approval. Allen's proposal to end the tax on business and professional fees is itself an example, in a way, of restricting local flexibility, since it would deprive localities of the right to opt for themselves to impose the tax. (Many do; many do not.)
It would constitute a wiser intrusion into local affairs if Allen were to tackle the tough work of making local government genuinely more efficient, by using the powers of the state to encourage regional cooperation and local flexibility.
by CNB