A typical council is defined to serve an area of several counties, and addresses issues such as regional and municipal planning, economic, and community development, pollution control, transit administration, transportation planning, human services, and water use.
[1] Councils of governments also play a role in regional hazard mitigation and emergency planning[4] and in the collection, analysis, distribution of demographic[5][6] and cartographic/GIS data.
Though RTPOs existed for decades, they were only formally recognized by on a federal level by the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) of 2012.
[2] At present, the National Association of Regional Councils estimates that currently "of the 39,000 local, general purpose governments in the United States (counties, cities, townships, towns, villages, boroughs) a total of more than 35,000 are served by [CoGs]".
[1] There are some U.S. states with many councils of government: Several national organizations exist to serve the needs (and lobby for the interests of) regional CoGs.