Rep. Mike Dovilla Announces Plan for Legislation to Regulate NOACA

BEREA – State Rep. Mike Dovilla (R-Berea) today announced that he will soon file legislation to regulate metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) such as the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA). 

“It has been clear for some time that NOACA is a deeply broken organization,” said Dovilla. “Whether it is the personnel issues with their leader working from Chicago, the highway interchange policy, or their focus on Clean Air Plans and art murals instead of transportation planning, they seem to have lost sight of their core mission. Economic development in our region cannot work if one of our primary development agencies is completely out of sync with the world.” 

Metropolitan planning organizations are organized around Metropolitan Statistical Areas, urban areas designated by the federal Census Bureau. They distribute millions of dollars in federal aid, through programs for transit agencies, highway road projects, and other transportation programs. MPOs can be designated and redesignated through a procedure in federal law; however, the same law also states that MPOs can be designated “in accordance with procedures established by applicable State or local law.” While most states, including Ohio, currently follow the federal Census designations, the state of Florida has passed legislation about how MPO territories can be changed. 

Additionally, certain MPOs in the state, including NOACA, have organized themselves through what is known as the Council of Government (COG) structure. Since the COG form of government is regulated through state law, lawmakers also have the ability to regulate MPOs that have adopted this structure. 

“We’re looking at every tool in the toolbox,” Dovilla stated. 

The issues Rep. Dovilla has identified with the recent operations of NOACA include: 

• A longstanding policy regarding the addition of new interchanges, meant to prevent them from being built in suburban areas. Rep. Dovilla highlighted the impact of this policy on issues like the Boston Road interchange controversy between Strongsville and Brunswick. He stated, “We should have dealt with this decades ago, but NOACA has throttled the development of new interchanges. We’re creating new problems, which will be just as bad as Boston Road, in other places throughout Medina County, because of NOACA’s refusal to build.”
• Personnel turmoil and accusations directed at Executive Director and CEO Grace Gallucci, who occasionally works from Chicago as faculty for Northwestern University while serving as the head of NOACA.
• Requiring the city of Brecksville to create an income tax sharing agreement with the city of Cleveland in order to gain funding for an interchange to support the development of Valor Acres, an agreement that Rep. Dovilla characterized as “legalized extortion.”

Rep. Dovilla also highlighted the failure of NOACA with regard to the Ohio Intel development. Intel’s preferred site for the development was in Lorain County, but that would have required extending highways and interchanges to the location. NOACA’s interchange policy required extensive studies about the alleged impacts of new interchanges on existing infrastructure, which was part of Intel’s decision to go to the Columbus area instead. 

“Every other region in Ohio has figured out that their core urban city can still be successful even when infrastructure and economic development is built in the suburbs,” said Dovilla. “Northeast Ohio still acts like Cleveland is going to disappear into the lake if the city doesn’t get a piece of every single project. Instead, we end up with nothing, and the Intel project is the perfect example.”