In yesterday’s N&R, UNCG economics professor Andrew Brod examines the complexities behind regionalism, which is the big buzz word here in the Triad. Brod’s an academic, so his writing doesn’t reach out and grab you. So you have to read carefully to figure out exactly what he’s saying. Once you do that, you might not like it.
For starters, Brod discusses the obstacles to regional cooperation:
The obstacles to regional cooperation include a distrust of regional initiatives, a desire for local autonomy and a focus on the tangible (if short-run) benefits of going it alone. As long as communities have their own tax bases, their objectives will often differ from the region’s.
But local autonomy breeds competition, especially among three approximately evenly situated cities as in the Triad. Research has shown that the greater the sense of competition among cities in a given metropolitan area, the less those cities spend on redistributive programs such as affordable housing and the more they spend on economic-development policies such as fiscal incentives.
Brod makes it sound like cities’ inability to spend money on “redistributive programs” sound like a bad thing, even if the money is going toward (gasp) fiscal incentives. At any rate, it shows us a little bit about the mindset of both local and state government these days: Spend, spend, spend.
In lieu of local autonomy and voluntary cooperation, Brod presents a third option, which is the scariest of all:
Local autonomy is inefficient, but regional cooperation is problematic. A 2003 article in Urban Studies argues that the only way out is to appeal to a higher power: “The future of regionalism [is] an authority with the power to mandate regional co-operation or with the resources to provide incentives.” (In this context, “incentives” refers to, for example, a grant program that makes awards only to regional initiatives.) For the Triad, such an authority would have to be established by the state, but the author reverses field almost immediately to explain why, politically, this is unlikely ever to happen.
Brod doesn’t elaborate, on why such an entity will never be established, but I’ll argue we already have an authority that’s mandating regional cooperation: the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation, which is overseeing the Heart of the Triad initiative. Think about what PART’s already doing: going around the Triad convincing local governments to sign off on taxes to help pay for regional bus service to largely rural areas. If that’s not mandating regional cooperation, I don’t know what is, never mind the fact that commissioners buy into that stuff. It’ll only get worse as should HOT continue to gain steam, and we might end up with another layer of taxes covering the taxes we already pay.
Greensboro’s city government broke even in the last election regarding this issue. District 5 voters rejected PART board member Sandy Carmany, but at-large voters brought in HOT advocate Robbie Perkins. I’ll settle for breaking even, knowing that this situation needs to be watched very carefully.
