COLUMBUS, Ohio — Some Republican lawmakers are preparing legislation to seek the most significant state reforms ever to the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, which has enormous influence over transportation projects in the region, and 16 other metropolitan planning organizations.
Their proposed legislation, if passed, would transfer significant power over highway projects in Northeast Ohio from the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County to four surrounding suburban counties.
The bill would also force NOACA to end DEI and anti-global warming initiatives that conflict with Trump administration policy, as well as target NOACA CEO/executive director Grace Gallucci for simultaneously holding an out-of-state adjunct teaching job.
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State Rep. Mike Dovilla, a Strongsville Republican and the main proponent of the bill, says the legislation is intended to rein in NOACA and other non-elected metropolitan planning organizations.
Dovilla, in an interview, asserted that NOACA has, among other things, stifled economic development in suburban areas and bullied suburban officials into sharing tax money with Cleveland.
Gallucci countered that while Dovilla’s proposals “may be well-intentioned,” they’re either based on misinformation, unnecessary, redundant with existing law, or would result in loss of local control.
The state’s Legislative Service Commission has drawn up a draft of the bill. The GOP sponsors of the legislation say they intend to introduce it soon.
Why is NOACA important?
NOACA, which covers Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties, determines which highway, bikeway, and public transit proposals in those counties should get federal money – usually an essential part of how large transportation projects are paid for.
NOACA also conducts long-term transportation plans, as well as studies and forecasts about traffic patterns, population shifts, and pollution levels, that federal, state, and local officials rely on to make decisions about transportation and development projects.
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Like other metropolitan planning organizations, NOACA was created under a federal law that was passed in the early 1960s in response to state engineers deciding on the path of highways without coordinating with local officials, often resulting in large swaths of poor urban neighborhoods being razed.
What would the new bill change?
Dovilla said his bill would make four reforms for NOACA and other organizations like it:
1) No one county could hold a majority of seats on a metropolitan planning organization’s board of directors
Right now, just over half of NOACA’s 45 board members come from Cuyahoga County, including 15 members representing Cuyahoga County, six named by the city of Cleveland, and the heads of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority and Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.
That accounts for 51% of the seats.
But it should be noted that of the nearly 2.1 million people who live in the five counties covered by NOACA, more than 60% of them — 1.24 million people — live in Cuyahoga County, and about 18% of them — about 366,000 — live in Cleveland.
But Dovilla said that Cleveland and Cuyahoga County’s board majority gives them “a veto on everything” NOACA does, leaving the other four counties “on the short end of the stick” when it comes to their economic development.
Preventing any one county from having a majority of board seats, he said, would force Cleveland and Cuyahoga County to work more closely with board members from other areas, rather than “dictating terms” to them.
Specifically, Dovilla claims that Lorain lost out to Central Ohio on landing a new $28 billion Intel computer-chip manufacturing complex in part because NOACA requires extensive analysis of proposed new or modified interchanges that would be needed to connect nearby highways to the proposed site.
That view, though, is at odds with what Lorain City Councilwoman Mary Springowski, who was active in efforts to land Intel, told cleveland.com earlier this year. She said that Lorain only lost out because it couldn’t meet Intel’s requirement to have a 1,000- to 1,500-acre, shovel-ready site with a single owner available within days.
Dovilla also said NOACA’s interchange analysis policy has prevented a resolution to a decades-long fight between Strongsville (in Cuyahoga County) and neighboring Brunswick (in Medina County) over where to build a new Interstate 71 interchange to ease traffic congestion along state Route 82. NOACA is currently conducting a two-year-long study into how to best resolve the problem.
A third issue Dovilla raised was NOACA’s opposition to adding new on- and off-ramps connecting Interstate 77 and Miller Road in Brecksville to accommodate a new Sherwin-Williams research facility unless Brecksville compensated Cleveland and Warrensville Heights for the jobs the new facility would take from those two cities. Dovilla called NOACA’s demand “legalized extortion.”
Gallucci said that Dovilla was “misinformed” about the Brecksville interchange issue, as NOACA has no power to require cities to enter into a tax-sharing agreement with other municipalities.
In general, Gallucci defended NOACA’s policy to require study of proposed interchange projects, saying that it ensures that every interchange project benefits Northeast Ohio as a whole, rather than moving economic development from one part of the area to another.
“We have not had population growth in the region for more than 50 years, probably at this point, 75 years,” Gallucci said. “And so, we just need to be smart about development.”
A spokeswoman for Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, who’s president of the NOACA board of directors, said county officials are aware of the proposed bill and have reached out to Dovilla to learn more about its intent.
“We are concerned with any proposal that could limit fair representation in our region,” said the spokeswoman, Jennifer Ciaccia.
2) NOACA and other planning organizations couldn’t issue policies that conflict with state or federal law
Dovilla said NOACA ‘s continued advocacy of its climate action plan, which aims to make the region carbon-neutral by 2050, is “way outside of the lines of what they’re supposed to be doing under long-standing federal regulation.”
He also said NOACA still has an equity subcommittee that is “out of alignment” with President Donald Trump’s executive orders to roll back federal policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion — better known as DEI.
Gallucci said NOACA developed its climate action plan under a contract with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is not paying for it with federal money either for its own operations or for transportation projects.
“We are simply following the requirements of our contract,” she said.
On Friday, after Dovilla’s interview with The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com, NOACA’s board voted 25-11 to dissolve its equity subcommittee, as well as remove or amend all of its policies related to DEI and environmental justice, in order to comply with Trump’s executive orders and administration policy.
3) Chief executives of regional planning organizations couldn’t simultaneously work out of state
This proposal is aimed squarely at Gallucci, who is an adjunct engineering professor at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago.
Last year, NOACA’s board delayed a vote on extending Gallucci’s $254,000-per-year contract after receiving anonymous complaints that, among other things, Gallucci’s travel to Illinois hurt her job performance at NOACA.
“I think there’s a number of us who are concerned that her time and her loyalties are split between here and where she is originally from,” Dovilla said of Gallucci, a Cleveland native who went to school in Ohio and worked in Cleveland and Florida before spending five years in Chicago as chief financial officer for the Regional Transportation Authority of Northeastern Illinois.
Gallucci, who has been NOACA’s CEO since 2012, responded by saying she teaches one class per year at Northwestern for a maximum of $15,000 per year.
She said she believes it’s a public service to help educate future transportation leaders, and that her position at Northwestern has benefitted NOACA by (for example) getting Northwestern professors to participate in organization studies at no cost.
On Friday, the NOACA board voted to extend Gallucci’s contract as CEO through the end of 2026.
4) Ohio’s governor would be allowed to move a county out of NOACA if at least 25% of the county’s workforce travels to a county in an adjacent regional planning organization
Dovilla said the proposal is specifically aimed at Medina County, where data shows more than a quarter of the workforce commutes to Summit County, which is part of the Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study.
Such a move, he said, would require Medina County to formally ask Gov. Mike DeWine to move their county to a different regional planning organization.
“That’s one way of just trying to get government closer to the people that it impacts, rather than everything running through a centralized regional bureaucracy,” Dovilla said.
Gallucci said federal rules already allow counties to move from one metropolitan planning organization to another with the governor’s approval. Medina County, she said, has considered leaving NOACA in the past but ended up deciding to stay.
What happens now?
Dovilla, the number-two Republican on the powerful House Finance Committee, will introduce the bill with a powerful co-sponsor: Finance Committee Chair Brian Stewart, a Pickaway County Republican who’s unhappy with some of the decisions made by his local planning organization, the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.
While Republicans hold supermajorities in the Ohio House and Senate, it remains to be seen whether Dovilla’s bill will pass, and – if it does – whether DeWine will sign it.
Dovilla admitted that when lawmakers wrap up their summer break later this month, they will have a lot of other priorities, such as drawing new congressional districts for the state.
“But as (former Ohio) Speaker (Bill) Batchelder used to say, we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Dovilla said.
Gallucci, meanwhile, said that while she opposes the reforms that Dovilla is planning to include in his initial bill, she sees the legislation as a chance for organizations like hers to address lawmakers’ concerns and talk about the best way for them to operate.
“It opens up an opportunity for discussion and, certainly, many improvements,” she said.