Arlington and Alexandria: Maybe they should just merge
The Washington Post reports ("Arlington and Alexandria split in the 1870s. Could Amazon bring them together?") that Arlington and Alexandria are looking to work more closely together on affordable housing and other matters, possibly through the creation of what in California they call "joint powers authorities" or community development corporations to address joint concerns in a substantive way.While I recommended Montgomery and Prince George's County needed to create a joint community development corporation operating in the Purple Line light rail transit line catchment area, to buy, hold, maintain, fund, and develop affordable housing, along with other urban design and economic development issues ("Creating a transportation development authority in Montgomery and Prince George's County to effectuate placemaking, retail development, and housing programs in association with the Purple Line"), probably Arlington and Alexandria should just merge.
I've recommended that Baltimore City and County merge ("Opinion: What Baltimore and D.C. can do to start working better together as a region (Baltimore Business Journal op-ed)," 2016).
I think Detroit should merge with a county, but ideally Oakland County but it's located within Wayne County ("One more idea about Detroit: merging not with Wayne County but Oakland County").
I am familiar with city-county mergers in places like Indianapolis, Kansas City, Kansas, Lexington, Louisville, and Macon. In the mid-1800s Philadelphia and San Francisco merged their city and county functions. In the Boston area, counties as political subdivisions don't really exist.
The advocacy group Better Together calls for a merger of the City and County of St. Louis, and other jurisdictional mergers within the county as well.Whereas these kinds of mergers can be problematic politically, because more conservative outer areas with more population can dominate the core areas which tend to be more politically progressive, Alexandria and Arlington are pretty much the same on the political spectrum, strong Democrat/progressive politics.
But opposition to the idea in St. Louis ("Better Together pulls St. Louis city-county merger proposal," St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Better Together to pull petition on city-county merger," St. Louis Business Journal) has led the group to pull back its quest to have a statewide vote on the matter in November 2020 and makes clear a lot of time is necessary to build support for such a change, which always requires a vote.
(One of the problems of such initiatives is if they require statewide votes, when the matter only concerns people in the affected jurisdictions.)
So it probably makes sense to start working more closely together, to build the foundations for consideration of a merger later.
Labels: City-County mergers, electoral politics and influence, government organization, provision of public services, voting and referendums
posted by Richard Layman @ 7:27 AM&Permanent Link
4 Comments:
There is no chance of this happening. DC has a better chance of retroceding to MD.
Sure. No argument there.
But my writing is about laying out harder core positions on what I call the issue continuum.
Especially because Alexandria is smaller in population and therefore the number of voters, compared to Arlington.
This is an issue in most places. Like with PGH, the Mayor of the city versus the County Executive, etc.
But it probably is the right thing to do.
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Speaking of crazy ideas that I won't bring up because they are totally unrealistic would be to re-join Arlington and Alexandria with DC.
Then we'd be a city with over 1 million population, more growth opportunities, Amazon HQ2 would be in "DC", etc.
But that will never ever happen. It's impossible. One it'd require a statewide vote in Virginia. Two, the State would never give it up. Three, the State would never give it up. Four, the residents of Arlington and Alexandria aren't likely to be favorable. Five, the voters in Alexandria and Arlington would be outvoted in terms of the citywide positions like Mayor, even though they'd have the equivalent of ward representation on the same basis as DC.
The whole "lets take Arlington & DC 'back' " circle jerk comes up reliably on GGW every 4 to 5 months. Its a complete waste of time.
Yep.
Northern Virginia Magazine had a cover story about it many years ago, making the point that then DC would have a great argument for being the 51st State.
... maybe I'm remembering wrong. There is an article about Northern Virgnia seceding, but it doesn't mention DC.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2008/11/01/will-northern-virginia-become-the-51st-state/
It'd be a good combo.
Again. Won't. Happen.
Nice for an occasional thought experiment.
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I found a couple copies of the Coolidge High School newspaper from Nov. 1963. A federal official talked at the school, including about the imminent likelihood of Home Rule.
Which took 10 more years.
The other is on a difficulty scale much more pronounced.
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