A metropolitan planning organization (MPO) merger consolidating Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties is inching closer to reality. The move would increase the region’s leverage when competing for federal and state transportation funding, particularly for large-scale projects that individual counties might struggle to secure on their own.
There is precedent for cooperation yielding results. Funding secured for the Howard Frankland Bridge, for example, could have gone elsewhere – to a larger metro like Miami – but the roughly $785 million investment was made possible through regional coordination.
Dave Eggers, chair of the Pinellas County Commission and a longtime advocate of a merger, pointed to the arbitrariness of county lines: “Businesses don’t care about county lines, only politicians do,” he told Catalyst…