Cedar Rapids gives up majority hold on Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization

CEDAR RAPIDS - Under pressure from federal and state transportation agencies, Cedar Rapids has agreed to give up its majority voting position on the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization board as a show of cooperation with board members from other jurisdictions.

The move is incorporated into bylaw changes approved this week by the board that will reduce the number of board members from 23 to 14 and require Cedar Rapids to get support from another jurisdiction for projects it wants to fund.

The MPO disperses about $4 million a year in federal transportation dollars to metro area projects.

Cedar Rapids had held 13 of the 23 votes, or 56.5 percent, and now will have seven of 14.

Last summer, Cedar Rapids used its majority to shift about $1 million in federal money to a downtown skywalk project, which angered members from other jurisdictions and prompted them to protest to federal and state transportation officials.

A critical report from the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration with support from the Iowa Department of Transportation arrived in September requiring changes in the MPO's operation at the risk of losing federal funds.

Cedar Rapids City Council member Monica Vernon, who is interim chairwoman of the MPO board, on Friday said it made sense for the sake of cooperation and regional harmony for Cedar Rapids to give up its majority control, which had been based on the city's population.

'This just became such a big deal, and as a board we kind of got to an impasse on it,” Vernon said. 'You could feel that tension (among jurisdictions) for a long time. And I think it's hard to work like that. This is a region. We're better all together.”

Without a majority on the board, Cedar Rapids will have to work to get members from another jurisdiction to support its position. Historically, the city has been able to do that, Vernon said.

'It will make us work harder. It makes us work more as a region,” she said.

In the new board setup, Marion, which will go from four to two members, and Linn County, which will go from two to one, also will give up some strength, moving from 17.4 percent of the vote to 14.3 percent and 8.6 percent to 7.1 percent respectively.

Hiawatha, Robins, Ely and Fairfax each will retain one vote on the 14-member board.

More board members also will be elected officials, which was another of the directives spelled out in September's federal report.

Brent Oleson, the Linn County Board of Supervisors' representative on the MPO board, on Friday said that having more board members who are elected officials will mean more members who are directly accountable to voters. Cedar Rapids had used city employees for most of its 13 votes under the old setup, he said.

Oleson said the Cedar Rapids majority's shift of funds to a downtown skywalk became 'the elephant in the room” and showed what one jurisdiction with a majority could do.

John Bender, a Marion representative and interim board vice chairman, on Friday said the federal and state officials pointed out that few metro planning agencies give one jurisdiction a majority of votes even if a jurisdiction has a majority of the metro area's population.

Bender said federal officials insist that planning agencies that distribute federal transit dollars follow the three Cs: coordination, communication, cooperation.

'They felt the three C process wasn't happening, and we needed to make changes,” he said.

Each of the seven jurisdictions represented on the board has a member on the seven-member MPO executive committee. The committee had not met much, Bender said, and it now will meet monthly. The committee is taking recommendations from MPO board members and will recommend a new board chairman from among the board members in March.