The following short video of Matt Hart, executive director of the Capitol Region Council of Governments in Hartford, Connecticut, was one of seven we filmed at the National Academy of Public Administration’s annual conference in Washington D.C. between November 2 and November 4. This year, Hart was among a select group of individuals who were elected to be NAPA fellows.

In this video, Hart talks about the significance and utility of councils of governments, like his, which represents 38 municipalities with a residential population of about a million people. “We work in the areas of transportation planning, land use planning and economic development,” he explains. “We also do training for public safety and homeland security, and we provide our towns with a variety of related services such as cooperative purchasing.”

Hart emphasizes that councils of governments vary widely in the work they do, which he says is “one of the beauties of our system.” 

Additionally, “another valuable role that COGS (Councils of Government) play is that they can help address cross-sectional issues.” Housing attainability is an example. Others include the opioid crisis, storm water management, and “any number of things that are multijurisdictional in scope.”

This is the third of seven videos in this series. The first was with Robert Shea, CEO of GovNavigators and former associate director at the US Office of Management and Budget, and the second was with Sue Schwartz, president of the American Planning Association, both of which can be found at the bottom of this page.