The Politics and Promise of a Growing Region

Tim Fulton 00:00Welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week: regional planning isn't just about roads and rails, it's about building the future of a place, one decision, one partnership, and one policy at a time. In this week's episode, I sat down with Joe Garrity, senior director of government affairs and community relations at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission. We talked about how MORPC helps shape the long-term trajectory of central Ohio through strategic collaboration with local governments, state legislators, and congressional partners. Joe shared how the region's rapid growth is both a challenge and an opportunity, and why he believes the clay is still wet when it comes to defining what central Ohio can become. We explored the region's push for better transit, the unique nature of Columbus as a non-legacy city, and why now might be the moment to finally close the gap on passenger rail. Joe also gave us a window into the next generation of public service, and why solving big issues like housing and infrastructure will require new voices at the table. This conversation is part civics lesson, part love letter to the region, and part challenge to think bigger. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Joe Garrity, senior director of government affairs and community relations at MORPC. Joe, how are you?

Joe Garrity 01:55I am just fine today. It's a beautiful Wednesday morning.

Tim Fulton 01:58It is lovely. Tell us about your background, how long you've been here, and what your role entails.

Joe Garrity 02:03Yeah. So I've worked at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or MORPC, for the past 10 years. Of those 10 years, the past five I have served as our senior director of government affairs and community relations. And so in that capacity, I wear about three different hats. One is, we are a membership-driven organization—90 different local governments, a 15-county region, from Logan city and Hocking County to Logan County up north. And it's a very diverse region with 90 different local governments. You have rural, urban, suburban, exurban. And so, how are we effectively advocating on behalf of those diverse interests to make central Ohio a better place? So a lot of my time is spent working in partnership with our state legislators at the Statehouse, and then also advocating in our interest in Washington, D.C., working in partnership with our congressional delegation.

Tim Fulton 03:05In terms of community relations, what is the audience that you tend to be reaching? Are you helping your partners talk to their citizens? Or what does that look like?

Joe Garrity 03:17Yeah. So, again, being a member-driven organization, it's helping our local governments be more informed on issues and actively advocating, and being a resource to them to make our region a better place. So we have a strategic framework, and there's four key pillars with that. One is being a resource to our members. A lot of that work is housed in my team. And in that effort, we also want to create an environment for prosperity. We want to make our region a better place. We want to grow better as we get bigger. And then we have "pay it forward"—we want to inspire public servants and get that next generation of public servants here in central Ohio. And then also driving investment. And that's another key role in my work, because we can't do the things that we want to do in our region—whether that's passenger rail, whether that's LinkUS, or whether that's just helping a local mayor or a township administrator find the funding to make their community a little bit of a better place. And so those are the four items that we really try to focus our work on here at the agency.

Tim Fulton 04:37You talk sort of about how you are managing expectations at the city, the county, and then conversely the state and federal level. Can you talk sort of about how your approach may be changing right now, given the current environment?

Joe Garrity 04:56So one thing that's unique—first, let's talk about central Ohio and the environment before we talk about the environment in Washington, D.C. We have a unique set of tools at our disposal. We're very familiar with the term "the Columbus Way." Some folks may find that an empty platitude, but there's definitely some truth to that work. And so one thing that we really focus on is we work with our external partners in a coalition called the Columbus Region Coalition. And so partners are like the City of Columbus, or Franklin County, or Ohio State, or Columbus State. And so when there are these big competitive grants or congressionally directed spending—better known as earmarks—we try to prioritize these projects, and rather than competing against one another, we're saying, "Hey, here's a list of five or 10 projects that these 16 regional stakeholders are saying are the top priorities." And then we will actively advocate and work in partnership with our congressional delegation to bring that investment home. And then—I think you may be talking to one of my colleagues, Padmini Roy-Dixon—her team leads an effort called Competitive Advantage Projects, where we help prioritize and work with economic development directors and county engineers to help prioritize projects that impact economic development. We like to say it's the intersection of jobs and transportation, these competitive advantage projects. And so we're trying to help our congressional delegation get a good understanding of what projects are in their district, so we can bring that investment back to the region and central Ohio. Back to the environment in Washington, D.C.—we were out in D.C. last month for infrastructure week, and we were proactive in reaching out to DOT and saying, "Hey, here's a tool that has been helpful in the past. How can we partner to work together to bring this investment back to the region?" And so it's, no doubt, a different environment in Washington, D.C., but when we work together, we can still prioritize projects, like funds for a discretionary grant like the Linden green line, or the industrial complex in Lancaster, to bring those dollars back to us.

Tim Fulton 07:28I'm going to divert from my previously written questions a little bit here. Why—and this may be a philosophical question, but I do want it to be a personal answer—why are we sort of so far behind in terms of just transit? Let's go there. What boat did we miss at some point, that we said, "Hey, we're not going to invest in this kind of infrastructure"—and I'm talking about Columbus and the region specifically. I have some philosophies from looking at the history of law and how Ohio was founded, but why do you think we are where we are?

Joe Garrity 08:14So I think central Ohio, and Columbus specifically, is unique. Like, we don't have professional sports teams. I always think about, if the country sort of reorganized professional sports teams, I'm pretty sure Columbus would have more than the Crew and the Blue Jackets, and more today.

Tim Fulton 08:33All due credit to the Blue Jackets and the Crew, right.

Joe Garrity 08:39Not being a legacy city—I mean, this region has really transformed in the last 10 years, let alone the last 50 or 100 years. And you look at other legacy cities like a Chicago or St. Louis, or a Cleveland or Cincinnati, they may have more of a built-up infrastructure for transit. But being a growing region—and this is where I will spin off the question a little bit—we'll be a region of over 3.1 million people by 2050. We look at some other regions, maybe like an Austin or a Denver, that grew so quickly but didn't have the advantage of a slower-paced growth. The growth that we're experiencing isn't dramatic, but it is very, very helpful. And the value of LinkUS, there is plenty, but we can get ahead of our growth by having these corridors, these five routes that we're building or looking at, and having transit-oriented development along them. So if you are a family of four making $50,000 a year, you don't have to live an hour and a half away. I don't know if you can do that in Austin. I don't know if you can do that in Denver. We want to make sure that in Columbus, Ohio, that in central Ohio, you don't have to live two hours from the urban core to make a living wage in the future.

Tim Fulton 10:05Yeah. So this is going to sound like an odd comparison. I used to work for the Wexner Center for the Arts, and I had a boss who had a vision of why our donor base was small. And it was, we don't currently have generational wealth, but we're going to—and so how about we go ahead and tap into those folks that seem poised to have generational wealth. Let's solve a 100-year problem 20 years from now, if that makes sense. Could it be some version of that? And how would you define a legacy city?

Joe Garrity 10:46So I think, like, you look at the city of Cleveland and their philanthropic community—precisely, it is much more substantial than in central Ohio. I'm not a historian or expert, but I think a lot of it has to do with what Cleveland once was compared to what it is. I'm a huge Cleveland Browns fan, I'm a Cleveland Guardians fan, so I love me some northeast Ohio. I lived up there for a little bit. But what I love about the Columbus region and about central Ohio is, I always say the clay is still wet. We're still molding ourselves into what we're going to be, and we have an opportunity to shape our region to make it a better place. Again, I love northeast Ohio and southwest Ohio, but I think it's fair to say they're never going to be what they once were. And I think we have a unique opportunity to still continue to get better and figure that out. So, back to your original question about being at the Wexner Center for the Arts—I think some of those benefits of being a legacy city, like a stronger philanthropic community, we just don't have that type of infrastructure yet, but I think we will. We'll get there.

Tim Fulton 12:03Pivoting a bit, you oversee the government summer intern program here at MORPC. Would you say that now is an important time for young people to get involved in programs like that, where they can learn firsthand what type of impact they can have? This is obviously a softball question—tell us about the intern program.

Joe Garrity 12:24Yeah. So, I mean, public service is important, and it isn't easy, but it can have a huge impact on people's lives. I don't know about you—of course, I started my career in some type of internship. And I wish I had a mentor at times, because I was in Washington, D.C. It was my first day as an intern on Capitol Hill, and it was like 93 degrees in D.C., and it's just so muggy. And I didn't think, when I was taking the metro in, to take off my jacket. I showed up on Capitol Hill my first day of work, and I was just pitting out. I was in no shape to impress, maybe, on that first day as an intern. But back to this program. About 10 years ago, our executive director thought it was critical for us as an agency to sort of invest in the next generation of public servants. We now have 90 different local governments, and so we have a team—Eileen Leuby and Ally Manks—we work and interview students, and they can be anywhere from a rising sophomore to a PhD student who are interested in serving in local government. We live in really polarized times—doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right. And so sometimes when people think about serving in the public sector, they think about going down the street to the Statehouse or going to Washington, D.C. Both of those things are okay—I did them both—but a lot of the times you're not thinking about local government service or working as a region. I truly believe, when you're looking at the issues we face, a lot of them can be solved at the local and regional level. And given this polarization, at MORPC, when we're working with our local governments, most of the time people leave their armor at the door, and they're trying to say, "Okay, how can we get this sidewalk funded? How can I get a trail in my community? I'm 20 minutes outside of Intel—how can we plan for economic development and maybe having a little bit better transit to and from a work site?" Those aren't political issues. And in this time that we live in, we're trying to remind folks and engage them about public service. And we'll do all that work and place these students, and they'll work all summer at a local government doing diverse work, from public administration to planning to engineering.

Tim Fulton 15:09Okay. So as the region continues to grow, you have more diverse audiences, especially as you guys just keep expanding the number of members you have—I think you said it's 90 now, and five years ago it was probably 70. How do you see community relations evolving in that space? And how do you keep it all together with those diverse audiences? Like, do you have to take a more generalist approach in how you communicate with your members, or do you feel like it's just more opportunities to be targeted?

Joe Garrity 15:52So I think—I'll go back to the "more voices that are at the table generally leads to better outcomes." And we have different tools that can maybe be tailored to specific audiences. So as a metropolitan planning organization, there's a transportation policy committee that's really focused on transportation investments; that's primarily in Franklin and Delaware County. We also have something that's called CORPO, the Central Ohio Rural Planning Organization, where you're planning for transportation in seven collar counties that are dealing with similar issues, but they're more rural-focused. And essentially—without nerding out a little bit—we have a diverse amount of committees or outputs that can better assist a community with its specific need. And I think when we come together at a commission meeting, at a regional convening, and we have these different committees reporting out, communities get a better understanding of different opportunities—whether it's a competitive grant, whether it's the work of an economic development district, or maybe it's insight into, "Hey, there's this bill coming up, we really need to advocate on this so we can get some additional funding."

Tim Fulton 17:26Okay. I end every interview with the same two questions. What do you think Columbus or the region is doing well, and what do you think Columbus or the region is not doing so well?

Joe Garrity 17:40Yeah. So I think, as a region, I think we will look back on 2024 and 2025 and see the work that was done by key partners at COTA, at MORPC, and at the City of Columbus on LinkUS and the transit-supportive infrastructure, where you're seeing all these different local governments in COTA's service area being at the outset of something that special—improving transit, improving opportunities for people to get to and from work. You're not seeing—you know, 10 or 20 years ago, you had so many friends that would be like, "I'm going to Chicago, I'm going to Washington, D.C., I'm going to New York." You're starting to see people don't want to leave Columbus and central Ohio. So I'm really, really proud of the work of LinkUS and the transit-supportive infrastructure committee. MORPC won a national award on this just last week, so I'm proud of their team. One thing I think we can do a better job on is—look, we're still the largest city east of the Mississippi that doesn't have intercity passenger rail. Phoenix is larger, but they have light rail; we don't have light rail. I think, as a community, to be competitive and to make our state all the stronger—whether you're a rural community, an urban community, whether you're a Democrat or Republican—Senator Vance at the time, now of course he's the Vice President of the United States, very supportive of passenger rail; Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, very supportive of passenger rail. I think there's a unique opportunity we have right now to make not only our region, but our state, a better place. And I think it's okay for us to be a little bit more competitive. I'm all for being Midwest nice, but if we're not competing for these tools and these resources, they're just going to go to other states. And I guess I'll add one little nugget on here. One thing that we're really focused on is, we're going to red states with blue or diverse growing regions that get big things done. And we're doing some of those big things. So we're looking at places like Florida, we're looking at places like Texas that have passenger rail, that have good transit, that have good airports. We're working on all of those things. But sometimes we feel like, "Oh, we just can't get those things done." And we can. And so we need to lean into that space. And of course, I think the biggest challenge we face as a region is housing right now. And that is interconnected with, I think, all the work that we're trying to do, whether it's transit, whether it's rail, whether it's affordability.

Tim Fulton 20:36Absolutely. Joe, thanks for your time.

Joe Garrity 20:36Happy to be here.

Tim Fulton 20:49Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information about what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite planner. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.