April 1999

On December 15, 1998, a Joint Review Team of the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration issued a report re-certifying for one year the Transportation Steering Committee (TSC) as the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the Baltimore region. Typically, under the post-ISTEA federal transportation regulations, MPOs are certified for three years; however, the joint review team found significant defects in the planning process used by the TSC. Among the deficiencies reported by the review team is that "the composition of the TSC as the Baltimore MPO policy board is inconsistent with the requirements of ISTEA, TEA-21 and the metropolitan planning regulations. Specifically, the ISTEA requirements state that ‘the metropolitan planning organization designated for a [transportation management area] shall include local elected officials...’" The Baltimore TSC is composed of transportation planners representing each of the member jurisdictions.

At stake in the matter of federal certification of the TSC is the legal authority to receive funds for transportation projects for the Baltimore region. The failure to make reforms required by the Joint Review Team could result in the delay or loss of funds, further contributing to congestion and air quality problems in the Baltimore region.

In January 1999, the Transportation Steering Committee formed a task force to review its membership in light of the Joint Review Team Report. Despite repeated requests to serve on this task force, and in spite of the Joint Review Team’s recommendation of greater public participation, the TSC task force contains only current members and agencies of the MPO. Therefore, the Baltimore Regional Partnership has engaged in an independent review of MPO composition and processes around the nation for the purpose of making recommendations on how the TSC can reform itself to be in compliance with federal law and regulations. This review included phone interviews with staff of other metropolitan planning organizations, materials provided by the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO), and documents of the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, including federal regulations and their underlying federal law.

The Baltimore Regional Partnership is a coalition of organizations including the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, 1000 Friends of Maryland, and the Baltimore Urban League. We subscribe to the following principles of how the Baltimore MPO ought to be structured. Each principle is accompanied by examples from other metropolitan planning organizations and a specific recommendation for Baltimore’s metropolitan planning organization.

The current TSC planning process is handled by members who are primarily technical staff, not policy makers, in their respective jurisdictions. In most other regions, these technical staff constitute the Technical Committee of the MPO, not the MPO itself. We believe that the Long-Range Transportation Plan, Transportation Improvement Program, and Unified Planning Work Program are essentially commitments of public funds that ought to be made by elected officials who can be held accountable. Nearly every other MPO in the nation has as its membership the elected officials of the member jurisdictions. While it is accepted that elected officials will not be able to attend every meeting of the Baltimore MPO, there should be a basic level of participation by elected officials in order to demonstrate their commitment to the transportation planning and funding process.

There are several MPOs that show a strong commitment to including elected officials in the regional transportation planning process. In Colorado, the Denver Regional Council of Governments policy board consists of 49 members, all of whom are elected officials. The Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission has a 38 member policy board, all of whom are elected officials. In Florida, the Miami Urbanized Area MPO consists of county commissioners, a municipal mayor, the director of the expressway authority, and a citizen member.

The current voting method used by the TSC violates the principle of "one-man, one-vote" in important decisions about the uses of public funds for transportation projects, and is possibly in violation of Title VI of the Federal Civil Rights Act. Further, the lack of proportional voting or representation discourages participation in the regional planning processes such as the Long-Range Transportation Plan, Transportation Improvement Program, Unified Planning Work Program, and other decisions made by the TSC. As a result, some jurisdictions bypass the TSC and advocate for funding outside of the regional planning process. Giving each jurisdiction a vote in the MPO process which more accurately reflects its population would legitimate and give a truly regional perspective to its final decisions.

According to AMPO, 73% of all metropolitan planning organizations employ some system of weighted representation. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments allocates an additional seat to each city or county with a population in excess of 400,000. In California, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments gives each member jurisdiction one vote per 100,000 population when weighted votes are taken. The City of Sacramento always has a minimum of six votes. In Texas, the North Front Range Transportation and Air Quality Planning Council use proportional voting based on population from the decennial census and rounded to the closest integer.

The Baltimore Regional Partnership recommends the following:

Each county and the City of Baltimore be allocated two seats on the policy board. For those jurisdictions with population in excess of 300,000, according to the decennial census, an additional seat will be allocated. Those counties which have at least one municipality within its borders shall be required to designate one seat to a municipally elected official. Members representing state agencies and citizen members each will have one vote.

Including citizens as voting members of the Baltimore MPO will be a strong signal to the general public that their substantive engagement in the transportation planning process is welcomed and taken seriously. Numerous metropolitan planning organizations include citizens as part of their voting membership. There are numerous ways to designate citizen representatives, including reserving a seat for the Chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee, having the MPO Board nominate citizen members, and designating certain constituent organizations for membership. All of these methods for citizen selection must be done in a way that is fair and equitable.

Among others, the MPOs noted below demonstrate a strong commitment to public involvement in the MPO process by including citizens on their policy board. The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission includes twenty-one citizens who serve as at-large voting members of the policy board. In Northern California, the Tulare County Association of Governments created three citizen seats (of 16 total members) to ensure that neither the city not county government has a majority of members. In Michigan, the Gennessee County Metropolitan Planning Commission requires that each local government appoint one citizen member as a voting member of the policy board.

The Baltimore Regional Partnership recommends the following:

The Baltimore Metropolitan Planning Organization should create three citizen seats to serve as at-large voting members of the policy board. Members would be appointed as follows:

Three members appointed by the Governor, with consideration given to the racial, gender, ethnic, and geographic diversity of the region; and,

One member appointed by the Chair of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council; and,

One member to be the Chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee, or his/her designee.

A required quality improvement of the Joint Review Team report is that the TSC make greater efforts toward making technical and policy information available to the public in a timely manner. On many occasions, members of the Baltimore Regional Partnership, Citizens Advisory Committee, and other interested parties have had difficulty in obtaining proposed policy documents of the TSC until just moments before final decisions are made. Furthermore, many meetings of the TSC, where a majority of members are present, are held in closed session. These meetings have often been termed as "work sessions" – as if no decisions would be made. Typically, closed meetings of administrative, executive, or legislative bodies are closed only for sensitive discussions of personnel or legal matters. By their own description, the TSC has met many times when, if operating as a normal deliberative body, meetings would be open to the public.

The Baltimore Regional Partnership recommends the following:

The Baltimore MPO should formally adopt the Maryland Public Information Act (State Government Article 10-611) and the Maryland Open Meetings Act (State Government Article 10-501) as their mechanism for providing full public disclosure of MPO actions.