The establishment of the Commission on City-County Relations is the latest attempt by the Commonwealth of Virginia to address itself to the problems of local government in this era of marked social, political, and technological change. That this Commission is the successor to at least four other study groups created by the General Assembly since 1950 to consider the impact of these changes on localities, does not suggest the inadequacy of the previous efforts, but rather the intractable nature of the problems confronted.(*1) Each of the earlier studies has made contributions from which this Commission will benefit.

The Commission on City-County Relations was created by the 1971 General Assembly to investigate the status of city-county relations in the Commonwealth. The General Assembly instructed the Commission to consider these-four questions:

(a) whether annexation is the appropriate method to use for the addition of territory to cities and towns, and, if not, what methods are available and might be employed;

(b) what changes in the annexation statutes should be made and with what purpose in mind;

(c) whether counties should be authorized to become incorporated as cities as they attain certain characteristics, and by what method and criteria should such characteristics be evaluated and determined; and

(d) whether the system of independent cities which exists in this Commonwealth should be modified or abolished and, if so, how such could be accomplished.(*2)
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(*1) The four other study groups were: the Commission to Study Urban Growth (1950, the Virginia Advisory Legislative Council study of annexation statutes (1962), the Virginia Metropolitan Areas Study Commission (1966), and the Commission to Study Problems of the Expansion of the Boundaries of Richmond (1969).
(*2) Va. Acts, 1971, ch. 234, pp. 466-67.