Houston’s Future Hinges on Regional Cooperation

The Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) could “rethink how it balances the interests of the urban core with that of the suburbs and rural areas,” writes  Muizz Akhtar in a brief for the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s Urban Edge.

A petition gaining strength in Houston would change the structure of H-GAC to prevent instances where Houston, “the beating heart of the region” according to Fair for Houston organizer Molly Cook, is outvoted by the largely suburban board.

Akhtar explains how regional planning and collaboration was standardized in the 1950s and 1960s, and the conflicts that occur as local governments fight for resources and funding. The debate centers on how much power each local member holds in decisions and funding allocations. According to the brief, “the City of Houston and unincorporated parts of Harris County, which make up more than 57% of the population, have only 11% of the board’s votes, according to a recent analysis by January Advisors, a data science consulting firm based in Houston.”

If the petition, launched by Fair for Houston, gets on the ballot and passes, it would change the structure of H-GAC to give Houston proportional representation or require the city to withdraw from the organization. “While most regional governmental bodies in the US are not proportional, there are a few models, such as the regional council in the Seattle metropolitan area or the association of governments that covers the Phoenix area, which has a system that gives each member one vote based on population and another based on jurisdiction.”