Firing shots at the shadows

There Tracy Pyles goes again, standing with crossed arms, chin jutted skyward and his back to Augusta County supervisors, his fellows in name only. The Pastures District representative, who seldom has seen a clash into which he did not leap, recently tangled to no avail over the creation of a county economic development office.

Spending $166,000 of the county’s $73 million on that office strikes Pyles as frivolous given the times. The Democrat’s frugality stirs to mind Waynesboro Vice Mayor Frank Lucente, a conservative similarly unperturbed by the prospect of riling elected brethren. Lucente wonders over the city’s role in economic development – which he considers best left to entrepreneurs – but concedes, grudgingly, the need for a development director.

As modern government kicks expansionism into overdrive and partisan players shed semblances of fiscal responsibility and statesmanship, Pyles, like Lucente, persists in bucking trends. The feisty supe long will be remembered for his lonely war with supervisors over the reassessment. Pyles rightly opposed the increased values as excessive and based on procedural flaws.

Benumbed to the moment’s economic tremors, the other six supervisors blithely ignored Pyles and property owners and pushed through the higher values, albeit with a mitigating pledge to offset the increases with a reduced tax rate.

Just as we praised Pyles’ persistence in opposing the reassessment we see the need for the meticulous scrutiny he brings to the supervisors board at a time when elected officials shrink from spending only when necessity requires. Like Lucente, Pyles provides what looks like reasonable assurance that there are representatives eager to guard against government’s proclivity for waste.

But Pyles also has cultivated, whether by intention or not, a reputation for standing in isolation for the mere sake of it, as one whose sparring is as much based on personality as principle. We neither know nor care particularly whether that’s the case, but his resistance to opening an economic development office is at least a trifle troubling.

Has Pyles considered, for example, what help such an office, led by a savvy director, might have provided several years ago when Toyota was mulling the so-called megasite, a manufacturing plant proposed for farmland west of the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport. That deal, which Pyles ardently supported and would concede was badly botched by the county, could have used the steady hand of a local economic development director to shepherd it to fruition. Instead, the plan wound up in ruins.

An administrator capable of leading the charge to reel in business, snip red tape, set plain guidelines, open communication and serve as a liaison between government and private enterprise would be worth far more than the $69,000 salary the county has budgeted for the job. In fact, there’s reason to wonder whether that salary will be sufficient.

Tightening spending on agencies that drain resources is something we wish every government official would consider a requisite. But economic development augments rather than drains, spurring growth that provides additional tax revenues, eases the temptation to raise rates and provides jobs, which everyone recognizes are badly needed.

Opposition to the reassessment and support of the megasite appeared to us to demonstrate in Pyles a pragmatic spirit that transcended partisanship. The county, like all government, cries out for that kind of approach, and especially brought by one of Pyles’ intellect and business acumen. Also needed is such a one who knows not all fights are good. Like blind sows rooting out ears of corn, the other side happens sometimes to stumble onto right ideas. That means Pyles can afford the occasional luxury of laying down swords.