On formation in 1969, the RMOC was a Council of members selected by the municipal councils, who elected among themselves a Regional Chairman. In 1991, the Regional chairman was for the first time directly elected by the people of the Region, which municipal mayors earlier resisted, fearing the chairman would effectively become a "super mayor". In 1994, Regional councillors were directly elected to represent Regional wards, rather than being appointed from the lower-tier municipal councils. Many of the new Regional wards crossed municipal boundaries, which in the eyes of many local residents undermined local or historical differences. Generally in Ontario regional government reforms of the 1990s were sometimes mistrusted as preparation for eventual creation of unified "mega-cities", but this was not before 1999 a topic of local political anxiety in Ottawa-Carleton, (see discussion in.)