How OKI’s representation bias helps the suburbs and hurts the city
Every quarter, more than 100 board members gather at The Sawyer Point Building to determine the shape of Cincinnati's future. Although this particular meeting place is in the geographic center of the Cincinnati region, the policymakers largely represent the interests of people in the suburbs. This isn't by accident. It's how the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) board is designed.
Despite being relatively anonymous compared to the Mayor of Cincinnati or the Hamilton County Commissioners, OKI is arguably just as powerful. They have one major responsibility – to engage in long-range planning for the Cincinnati region. Planning that outlasts elected officials. Planning with legacy.
Following the construction of the Federal Interstate Highway system in the 1960s, the United States government required cities with more than 50,000 people to coordinate with their neighbors to spend federal infrastructure dollars. These projects often impacted more than just one city or county, so organizations like OKI formed to help regional stakeholders plan together.
Today, OKI handles transportation infrastructure planning as well as planning for a variety of other regional needs, including water quality management planning, land use planning, and groundwater management among others.
OKI gives disproportionate representation to the suburbs
OKI has a 118-member Board of Directors made up of elected officials and other representatives. There's also a 42-member Executive Committee, which includes representatives from member counties, municipalities and townships over 40,000 population, cities under 40,000, planning commissions, and at-large members.
The Board of Directors and Executive Committee make decisions by majority vote. But the composition of these bodies disproportionately benefits people living in the suburbs, at the expense of people living in the City of Cincinnati. To be clear, we are not talking about the race/ethnicity of the board members themselves. We are talking about the populations they serve, and the power they have on the board.
On the Board of Directors, each county in the region receives one vote. Additionally, municipalities with a population of 5,000 or more get one vote each. Townships with a population over 40,000 also receive one vote. The board also includes 20 resident members and 10 other elected officials or special purpose district representatives.
Because of its size, the City of Cincinnati (population 309,513) gets two votes, rather than a single vote like the City of Blue Ash (population 12,000) or the City of Fort Wright (population 5,800). But these additional votes do not confer additional influence or power over decisions. In practice, if a policy benefits the suburbs more than the City of Cincinnati or Hamilton County, it is very easy to get a majority vote of suburban interests.
The result is clear: entities on the OKI Board of Directors represent vastly different populations but effectively share equal voting power on the board. Voters in smaller jurisdictions have a disproportionate amount of voting power relative to their population or even their land area.
Combined, the City of Cincinnati comprises 14.5% of the population, yet only 1.7% of the votes on the Board of Directors.
Mapping the rate of OKI votes per 100,000 residents further illustrates this pattern. When accounting for population, a resident of Indian Hill has approximately 25 times the amount of voting power on OKI's Board of Directors as a resident of the City of Cincinnati.
This voting structure results in decisions that often do not reflect the priorities of major population centers, particularly Cincinnati, and can lead to transportation and infrastructure choices that disproportionately benefit suburban areas at the expense of urban needs.
The Executive Committee, while smaller, mirrors this imbalance. Despite representing the largest population center, Cincinnati has only one representative on this crucial decision-making body, while smaller municipalities and townships collectively wield significant influence.
Black, Hispanic, and Asian people are the ones who lose power
The power inequality on OKI's Board of Directors also manifests in racial and ethnic representation. Areas with a larger voting share by population tend to be more White. Areas with a smaller voting share by population — specifically the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County — are more diverse.
Weighing the race/ethnic populations of OKI's membership by their voting power shows how White people have a disproportionate amount of voting power on the Board of Directors, and that it comes at the expense of the region's Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and Asian populations.
As the graph illustrates, while Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and Asian (BIPOC) individuals make up about 24% of the OKI region's population, they only account for about 18% of the Board of Directors' voting power. Conversely, White individuals, who make up about 76% of the region's population, hold about 82% of the voting power on the Board.
These discrepancies have real consequences.
In 2023, OKI approved an amendment allocating approximately $3.35 billion in federal and state funds across three project segments related to the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor Project. Significant portions of this project are within the City of CIncinnati boundaries. The highway runs through many Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. These communities would bear the majority of harms from the project including increased air, water, and noise pollution plus additional storm-water runoff.
A 2006 study from the Brookings Institute found that metropolitan planning organizations across the country "underrepresent both urbanized areas and racial minorities". In 2021, the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act moved to require all new MPOs to "consider the equitable and proportional representation of the population of the metropolitan planning area". This means that newly formed MPOs will have to find ways to cooperate that hold the voice of each person in the region equally.
While new MPOs are being held to this higher standard of representation, this requirement does not extend retroactively to existing MPOs such as OKI. Any change to OKI's balance of power will have to come from the state, or OKI itself.
The Cincinnati community responds
In response to this imbalance, Fair Share For Cincy has begun circulating a petition for a ballot initiative that would amend the City of Cincinnati charter and compel OKI to adopt a voting structure proportional to population.
If this petition is successful in time for the November 2024 municipal elections, it could significantly reshape how regional transportation and infrastructure decisions are made.
A renegotiation of Cincinnati's position in OKI could finally put Cincinnatians back in the driver's seat for the region's future, ensuring that the voices of all communities, especially those historically underrepresented, are heard in crucial decisions about transportation and infrastructure that affect their daily lives.
