CINCINNATI — The Coalition for Transit and Sustainable Development wants to placea charter amendment on the City of Cincinnati’s November 2024 ballotto “advocate for the incorporation of population considerations into the OKI voting framework.”
OKI works on regional transportation, planning, and environmental needs. They work on roads and bridges, pedestrian safety, and land use, to name a few of their initiatives. The board of directors help determine these projects. On their website OKI reports they have 118 board of directors for the eight counties OKI serves.
President of the Devou Good Foundation Matt Butler says the current voting structure isn’t representative, and cities like Cincinnati aren’t getting a fair shake.
“It’s not that Cincinnati needs more voting power. It’s that Cincinnati needs its fair share of voting power,” Butler said.
Butler said the current voting structure doesn’t account for population size, which leads to cities like Cincinnati being underrepresented. Devou Good Foundation did a report on 116 of the board of directors at OKI.
The Coalition for Transit and Sustainable Development published the report that shows the City of Cincinnati represents 14.5% of OKI’s region but has 1.7% of the voting power, while Kenton County represents nearly 2% of the region but has 6% of the voting power.
“What it clearly shows is that the City of Cincinnati has the largest population center but one of the smallest voting power in all of the municipalities in the Greater Cincinnati area,” Butler said.
The Coalition for Transit and Sustainable Development states this “routinely produces bad outcomes for City of Cincinnati residents and the region at large.”
According to OKI’s bylaws, a municipality with a population size over 5,000 people gets one elected public official to represent them on OKI’s board of directors.
“A lot of these little cities are, you know, they have one vote but it’s really over-represented versus the City of Cincinnati which has over 300,000 thousand people and only two votes,” Butler said.
Butler said they’re working to change OKI’s voting framework through the charter amendment.
“We’re starting to organize as well to put this on the ballot in November of 2024 for the Cincinnati voters,” Butler said.
He said they are looking for paid staff, volunteer organizers, a campaign manager, and social media with this campaign.
Butler said they’ll work to collect 5,000 valid signatures starting in February.
WCPO 9 News reached out to OKI and did not get a response.
