Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is one of the few people, it appears, who is looking ahead to the year 2010 when a state moratorium on annexation expires. Unless the issues that inspired the moratorium years ago are addressed, Virginia could face a wave of bitter conflict between cities and counties. According to Ray Reed with the Media General News Service, Kaine wants to start a discussion with state legislators and city leaders.
A quick primer: When the drafters of the state constitution envisioned a system of independent cities and counties, they gave the municipalities different powers and authorities. The thought was that cities, as urban centers, would require greater fiscal resources to provide urban services to their citizens. Counties, by contrast, were overwhelmingly agricultural, and their citizens did not expect, or want to pay for, the same level of services. However, as growth spilled out of cities into neighboring counties, annexation gave cities a tool to incorporate surrounding urban settlement patterns and provide the citizens the services they desired.
The system worked as planned for decades. Then two things happened. First came the Civil Rights and the rise of the black vote. White-dominated city governments used annexation (or, it was feared they would use it) to annex white-dominated precincts of neighboring counties in order to preserve their white majorities. Clearly, this was a use of annexation not intended by the framers of the state Constitution.
Then came the rise of auto-centric development that hop, skipped and jumped beyond city boundaries. Cities had a nasty habit of annexing those districts with heavier concentrations of tax-paying businesses, leaving the citizens (with their craving for urban services) to the counties. Needless to say, the counties felt victimized by this cherry picking.
Those two trends led to the annexation moratorium. But that created a new set of problems as poverty became concentrated in cities, saddling them with high costs of crime fighting and social services, and new economic growth occurred in the counties. Despite the perceived inequities, counties and cities have lived relatively tranquilly ever since. Well, at least they haven’t been suing each other.
But that could all change. Kaine is not the only one looking down the road. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, says he’s concerned that cities may soon start filing annexation lawsuits.
Also, according to Chris Graham in the New Dominion, Del. Matt Lohr, R-Rockinham, authored a bill this session that would extend the original 15-year moratorium another 10 years to 2020. But Kaine vetoed the bill. Lohr worries that cities and counties may stop collaborating on mutually beneficial projects like water and sewer. Said Lohr: “Waiting until the last minute, as the governor suggests, only brings more harm to the problem. I learned on the farm many years ago that you don’t wait until the last minute to fix a fence.”
Kaine says that annexation is never coming back. Now is the time to think long-term about city-county relations, and that includes the ticklish issue of how to allocate state aid to localities and the idea of revenue sharing between localities. As Ray Reed quotes him, Kaine said:
“If I’m in Wise County and I know that I’m going to get some percentage of the state’s income tax collections, I’m pleading for the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority to be successful,” Kaine said.
“And similarly, if I’m in Norfolk I want Wise County to be successful.
“So, we have to build some mechanisms in place that give everybody a motive to help everybody else be successful,” Kaine said.
These issues won’t be easy to solve. But it’s nice to know that people are actually thinking ahead for a change.
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