Greater Cleveland struggles to achieve the level of regional cooperation it will take to transform the region’s civic culture and economy. But it is not the only U.S. metro area where such progress is hard to come by
Cleveland and other regions that grew during the heyday of heavy industry — and withered after its fall – often face the same obstacles.
The once-booming metros, commonly found in the Northeast and Midwest, wrestle today with poverty, reduced tax bases, the cost of maintaining old, now oversized infrastructure, and other challenges. These areas are typically fragmented into a multitude of communities and stretched by unmanaged sprawl, leading to fierce infighting for development and the revenue it brings.
Meghan Rubado, an associate professor at Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs, has studied the ways in which severe urban decline complicates collaboration in the regions and threatens their vitality. She is finishing a book, tentatively titled “Legacy City Regionalism,” on the subject and has a publisher lined up.
Cooperation crumbles at the fault lines of race and poverty, Rubado said. Well-off, outlying communities have little motivation to form alliances, and lower-income communities with substantial minority populations often lack resources needed to attract partners. Those in the socioeconomic middle engage, but the results are modest.
A survey that the Levin school and the Cuyahoga County Department of Regional Collaboration conducted in 2024 showed that responding communities were generally satisfied with existing partnerships and interested in exploring others. Their two major concerns: control and cost. See the survey results.
Rubado says that for meaningful collaboration to succeed in these regions, outer, or exurban, communities need to engage and, in some cases, change their behavior in ways that might seem like sacrifices, at least in the short term, so the entire region advances. She said state involvement also is critical, especially in Ohio, given the power of home rule that cities and villages enjoy under the state Constitution.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul region of Minnesota is a rare example of such a combination.
In the 1970s, the Minnesota state legislature approved a tax-sharing program for the region’s 180 cities and townships. Lawmakers took the action with support from the local Metropolitan Council, a seven-county policymaking and planning body and provider of services that include public transportation, wastewater treatment, parks, affordable housing and more.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul plan, which is still going strong, calls for communities to pool a portion of their tax bases. Many receive, others are net contributors, with a goal of reducing fiscal disparity. Meanwhile, benefits are spread across the region, which is home base for many major companies, including Target, Cargill, General Mills, U.S. Bank, UnitedHealthcare and others.
Former Minnesota State Rep. Myron Orfield is on record saying that tax sharing helped clear the path for development of the renowned Mall of America, with state and local officials more willing to pay for infrastructure “because everybody got a piece of the action.” Orfield has served for more than 20 years as director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, part of the University of Minnesota Law School.
Inspired by the Minneapolis-St. Paul example, some Northeast Ohio leaders pushed more than a decade ago for the Regional Prosperity Initiative, a voluntary tax-sharing program.
The program would need approval from the Ohio General Assembly. A study committee made up of legislators, planning experts, state officials and economic development professionals submitted a tax-sharing proposal in late 2019, but no action was taken, said committee co-chair Stephen Hambley, who was then serving as a state representative in Medina County and is now a Medina County commissioner.
William Currin led support for the plan when he was mayor of Hudson and chairman of the Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association. He remains hopeful that communities in the region will someday share tax revenue.
“Cities cannot compete in today’s economic arena,” he said. “Only regions can.”
