February 2003

BY ANY OTHER NAME...

But perhaps even more important than voters’ pocketbooks is the whole issue of identity and name. In Philadelphia and San Francisco it was an easy choice because the city and county shared the same name. Locally, what would the green city sign say? Welcome to Poquoson?

“It’s a matter of civic pride,” says Don Kettl, professor of public affairs and political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and chairman of the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on State-Local Partnerships for the 21st Century. “The question of what the little decal says on the side of the police car. Communities with the deepest roots like those in Tidewater have a hard time of giving that up.”

Says Poquoson Mayor Gordon Helsel, “More important than cost, to strip people of their identity is wrong. There’s something to say, ‘I live in Poquoson. I live in Hampton, in Newport News, or York County.’ A lot of people say that with pride.”

A bigger city doesn’t necessarily become a better city.

“Bigger government, to me, is not always a good thing,” Helsel says. “I’m almost convinced the less politicians meet, the better off people are. We’re out there doing what we think is best for our 12,000 people. If we united with Hampton or Newport News, that’s going to be gone. I don’t think it would be cost effective.”

But Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim says that while a regionwide merger is not on the horizon, smaller consolidations could work.

“The notion of merging the entire Hampton Roads region is not doable,” Fraim says simply. “I don’t know anywhere in the country where they’ve been able to get 16, 17 jurisdictions to submit to a consolidation. There are just too many differences between the localities. Something like this, you’re going to have to take on in much smaller bites. It’s something we should talk about. We should never be afraid to talk about the future and what’s in the best interest of the citizens of our communities.”

If Joannou resurrects his bill in the future, he’ll suggest that Norfolk, Portsmouth and Suffolk study merger. He had hoped to get all five Southside cities to look at the idea, but ran into problems. He introduced a bill last year that would have established a joint subcommittee to study whether all five Southside cities should consolidate, creating a city of about one million people.

“If the cities of Southside were to merge, we would become the 10th largest city in the United States. Can you imagine the clout we would have in bringing business, a regional airport?” he muses. “Imagine the clout we’d have in the General Assembly if all our legislators were from one city.”

But the General Assembly is where the bill stopped last year. The bill passed the house, but stalled in the Senate Committee on Rules because lawmakers and leaders from Virginia Beach and Chesapeake weren’t interested.

At the state level lies another problem: the Dillon Rule. It grants power to localities very narrowly. That means even if they wanted to, Hampton Roads localities could not unite as one city without a go-ahead from state lawmakers.

“The system in Virginia, the Dillon Rule works against [consolidation],” says Art Collins, executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. “It would take a real sea change in the General Assembly. The General Assembly is adverse to aggregations of local power. They see that as a threat. Getting critical mass in the General Assembly on something like that would be very difficult.”

Says Fraim, “Ask yourself, where are the great Virginia cities? What is the state policy that keeps its localities small and fractured? The state tells each city council how often it can meet. That’s just one example. Each locality has its own charter, and to change, you have to go to the state government. The regions that are moving ahead are the ones that have learned to cooperate and work together as an economic unit. In Virginia, that is very hard to accomplish.”

But the region has seen mergers before. Names of cities have become names of streets or areas within cities. The city of Hampton, the town of Phoebus and Elizabeth City County consolidated as the city of Hampton in 1952 with an 88 percent vote in favor. You drive through Phoebus now on the way to Buckroe Beach in Hampton.

An earlier merger effort, which also included the city of Newport News, failed. Newport News found the right partner in 1958 and the cities of Warwick and Newport News consolidated into the Corporation of Newport News with a 67 percent yes vote. The city of Warwick, which began as one of the original eight shires in Virginia in 1634, is now only a memory and a street name.

In 1962, South Norfolk and Norfolk County consolidated to form the city of Norfolk with a 66 percent yes vote. That same year, Virginia Beach and Princess Anne County consolidated too, with 82 percent in favor. Princess Anne lives on only as a major thoroughfare.

Just because localities worked together half a century ago to make mergers work doesn’t mean that success can be duplicated. The reasons for merger were different 50 years ago, Collins says.

“Most of the reasons for doing that were defensive—to keep from being annexed,” Collins says. “A city could go before a state board and make the case for annexation. The counties hated that. Now all we have is cities around here. The wave of those sorts of things is over with. I don’t think we’ll see consolidation in our lifetime.”

Continued...