Cincinnati Regional Office: In Search of the Acorn

This article appeared in the GAO Review, Vol. 15, Issue 2, Spring 1980. The Cincinnati region is an area of great diversity, with growth and vitality a keystone of the regional office. As well as the Cincinnati office, GAO has suboffices located in Dayton at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and in Indianapolis at the Army Finance Center. The region includes major industrial cities with urban populations and problems, rural areas with large agricultural production, and the heart of remote impoverished Appalachia. It has responsibilites for states in three separate federal regions, providing a unique opportunity to assess the differences in the way federal programs are administered. The different problems and programs of heavily industrialized Ohio and rural Kentucky, with the fourth lowest median income in the Nation lie within the regional office's jurisdiction. Both Indiana and Ohio have a heavy emphasis on local government control, and Indiana has the lowest per capita share of federal funds in the Nation. It offers an excellent contrast to the rest of the nation because of its more traditional and conservative state and local government policies. The region also includes West Virginia, one of the smallest states in terms of population and participation in federal programs. Environmental problems of the development of the Ohio River and Basin, the auditing of two major Air Force procurement activities which demands highly technical expertise, blend with the poverty programs and energy development programs of the rural areas to make the regional office responsibilities highly diversified.