Thursday, March 25, 1999
Tristate's political parochialism stifles progress, planner says
BY JOHN J. BYCZKOWSKI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Greater Cincinnati's fragmented local government structure is a major impediment to the region's global competitiveness, urban planner Michael Gallis told a crowd at Lakota West High School on Wednesday evening.
“There's a benefit to small units of government,” said Mr. Gallis, hired by the Metropolitan Growth Alliance to analyze the region's patterns of growth. But when the region's many communities have to compete globally as one unit, “and oftentimes within these units we fall into a kind of parochialism ... what we've got here is a noncompetitive unit.”
From the gathering of about 80 people, four people representing local government and economic development agencies stepped to the microphone to offer evidence of existing cooperation among small governments in the region.
Mr. Gallis is developing a “framework,” a set of maps that depict growth and development in the region without regard to political boundaries. The Metropolitan Growth Alliance hopes the framework becomes the basis for discussions of regional planning of everything from transportation to culture. His final report is due in June.
Mr. Gallis spoke in his strongest language yet about the region's fragmentation.
The Metropolitan Growth Alliance, an organization of primarily local business people, has been careful to position itself as not being a proponent of “unigov” or other forms of metropolitan government, but as a catalyst for regional cooperation.
The planner held to that theme, but pointed out that Indianapolis and Columbus — neighboring metro areas in the “super-region” around Cincinnati — both have “unigov” forms of local government.
“We compete against other metropolitan areas that have both integrated local governments and are state capitals and have the ability to invest and do things in rapid and coordinated ways,” he said.
“What we see across the super-
region is that the metropolitan areas around us have heavily begun to develop strategies toward government, toward education, transportation, culture, sports etc. There's been a motivation to develop strategies to compete with Cincinnati and compete in the world.
“The question is: Are we doing that?” he asked. “Are we in a competitive mode?”
Communities that don't plan cooperatively, he said, can't compete economically. “And our communities are so small there's no way that any single community can withstand the large-scale forces of transportation, population change, economic reorganization. They're just not big enough,” Mr. Gallis said.
He said he's not proposing unigov in Greater Cincinnati, “but what we are exponents of is working more effectively in a coordinated way, forming more effective coalitions of local governments and begin to look at some of the big-scale issues that affect all of us.”
Curt Paddock, executive director of the Hamilton County Municipal League, asked for evidence “for your assertion that our government structure hurts our global competitiveness.”
Mr. Gallis responded that many local businesses have expressed their frustrations with dealing with local government. “That has been recited to us over and over again from multiple points of view,” he said.
Hamilton County Commissioner John Dowlin ticked off a list of regional initiatives: Fifty planning commissions in Hamilton County are having a first-ever joint meeting, for instance.
The Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments is heading two programs, one a land-use commission covering eight counties, the second a work-force development initiative.
Sterling Uhler, a Fairfield council member who is also chairman of OKI, said state laws inhibit cooperation among municipalities. He said Fairfield and the city of Hamilton tried to set up a joint economic development program that would help develop industrial properties, and then share in the tax revenues.
It took 10 years to clear all the state hurdles. “That's too slow,” he said.
The Lakota West meeting kicked off the fourth series of meetings Mr. Gallis has conducted in developing his framework. Another meeting takes place at 5 p.m. today at Mason High School Commons, Mason-Montgomery and Tylersville roads.
headONE MORE MEETING
Michael Gallis and the Metropolitan Growth Alliance will offer another presentation on development of a framework for understanding the region's structure today at 5 p.m. in the commons at Mason High School, Mason-Montgomery and Tylersville roads.
Final presentations are being scheduled for late June.
The meetings are free and open to the public.
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