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I think many here will find this article to be interesting.
Columbus, Ohio is a very successful city that has benefited from a lot of great policy over the years. But I'm seeing some ominous signs that the city of Columbus is setting itself up for trouble down the road by pursuing revenue from outside its borders at the expense of internal and especially core development. There are lessons here for any city struggling with regional finance, so let's take a look.Columbus is by far the strongest big city in Ohio. One reason for this is that city leaders long ago had the foresight to require that anyplace that wanted to get water from the city had to agree to be annexed. Ohio law is very favorable to annexation when a city is supplying utility service. So while geographically small Cleveland and Cincinnati became encircled by suburbs, Columbus was able to keep expanding. Columbus does not have a city-county merger in effect, but has annexed the majority of Franklin County and even parts of several other counties, taking any number of major "suburban" malls and office developments inside its borders.
Now, however, annexation has slowed to a crawl. According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, the city has only annexed 14 acres this year. As recently as 2002, it annexed 2,123 acres. Suburban development hasn't stopped. The city has just stopped annexing. Instead, it is pursuing a strategy of allowing surrounding suburbs to annex land, but using the lever of its water utility to get tax sharing and compensation if jobs move to the new development from the city.
In effect, Columbus has decided it is no longer worth directly developing and administering new territory. Instead, it is adopting the strategy of empire...
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