Meet the Obscure Unelected Agencies Strangling Many U.S. Cities

[B' Spokes: Did you know that there is a vacant bicycling advocate position in our MPO? (or was last I checked) the significance of that is hinted at by the quote below. ]
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by Angie Schmitt

Do you know the name of your local Metropolitan Planning Organization or Council of Government? Most Americans don’t. In fact, most people probably have no idea these agencies even exist, let alone what they do. Yet they are surprisingly powerful and play a substantial role in shaping the places where we live and work.

Led by unelected boards, MPOs and COGs, as they’re known, are a special breed among government agencies. They lack the authority to issue taxes or impose laws. As such, they go largely unmentioned in the media and are mostly unknown to local residents, outside of the most wonkish circles. But the low profile of MPOs and COGs belies their considerable power.

Despite their limitations, they represent the strongest form of regional governance we’ve got in the United States, crossing city and county lines. More importantly, they disperse hundreds of millions of federal transportation dollars annually. MPOs and COGs are powerful forces shaping metro regions. While these agencies often distribute transportation funds more fairly than state DOTs, many of them are structured in a way that favors sprawl and undermines cities.
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[B' Spokes: CMAQ is one fund that our MPO has been highlighted as spending a big fat ZERO on bike/ped projects.]

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<a href="http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/07/21/meet-the-obscure-unelected-agencies-strangling-many-u-s-cities/">http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/07/21/meet-the-obscure-unelected-agencies-strangling-many-u-s-cities/</a>;