Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1957-11-28

NNE HedFS growing TALK JIleSe QdyS--dl-
~ most all of it emanating from down.
town Washington - about the critical need
for creation of Washington metropolitan
area authority which would be able to cope
with the critical needs of the metropolitan
area.
These representatives of and spokesman
for the downtown area-appointed officials
and Washington newspapers--decry the fact
that there are many different political sub
divisions in the Washington area. How mag
nificent it would be, they say with far off
look in their eyes, if there were only one
governmental body that could cope with all
of the area problems. Slums and water short
ages, sewer and sidewalk problems, pollution
predcaments and blight bewiderment would
mySteriously vanish once this supra govern
mental body were created Utopia in. all its
full-blown glory would have, at long last,
arrived.
This week, a six-member House-Senate
committee of the Congress launched its $780,
600 study on metropolitan Washington prob
lens in an attempt to come up with solu-
TONS 1t must submit preliminary report
to the Congress by January 81.
There is no question that the greatest
possible working together by the various
Washington area governments ratified an in
formal agreement which sets up the Wash
ington Metropolitan Regional Conference for
this express purpose-to sit down and try to
solve area or regional problems. This is a
fine thing and there is little doubt that these
area officials working together, can solve
most or all of the area problems insofar as
solutions to them are possible Even without
this body in the past many such area prob
lens have been worked out satisfactorily
through voluntary cooperation. In fact, city
and Maryland planners, highway builders,
water and sewer officials, health and well
fare and other agencies have had little diff
ficulty in working out mutual problems with
their counterparts in the District.
Accordingly, it is a little difficult to un-
derstand the reasoning behind the growing
hue and cry by the downtown spokesman,
as we choose to call them, for serious study
of supra governmental body for the area.
What are their motives? Could it be that the
District itself is a sick animal with all of
its miserable parking and traffic problems,
its declining business and slums, its ancient
school buildings, its inferior fire-fighting
equipment, its multi-milion dollar gambling
racketS that police are unable to cope with?
Could this be, we must ask, concerted eff
fort by the downtown interests to take over
the healthier, virtually crime-free and slum-
free suburbs with their modern buildings,
highways and schools to rejuvenate the more
decadent land voteless) District of Columbia.
Preposterous? Perhaps not!
Everyone should be four square behind
the greatest possible cooperation among the
various political subdivisions in the Washing
ton area. And the recently-created Washing
ton Metropolitan Regional Conference seems
to offer more than adequate machinery to
achieve this.
We submit that the Congressional COM
mittee should resist pressure being applied by
downtown interests to have it include in it's
study possible ways of creating an area gov
ernmental authority. Gov. Theodore R. Nc
Keldin, of Maryland, should be commended
for having said on this subject last week:
Il cannot however, accept the surrender of
autonomy by local jurisdictions to a super
government in region"