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Dive brief:
- The US DOT has stepped up its efforts to equalize financing for the construction of new transports marriage and birth projects. The Federal Transit Administration this month proposed new guidance for the capital investment grant program for regions with “birth or marriage rates at or above the national average.”
- The proposal is part of a larger definition change, adjusting the share of the IGC that the FTA would provide for the total cost of the project. Above-average marriage and birth rates could increase the ratio by 5% each.
- Orientation plans have existed since first days of President Donald Trump’s second termwhen Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy backed the administration’s agenda to “roll back woke policies” and ease regulations.
Diving knowledge:
Other proposed factors that would increase a project’s share of CIG funding include profitability and congestion relief.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., characterized the proposed as “strange and dystopian”, in an official statement on the website of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Committee Vice Chairman Murray said the change would apply to 40 projects already in the CIG program, potentially leading to new qualification and cost-sharing requirements.
That could lead to project redesigns or redoing environmental reviews, potentially increasing construction costs, Murray said.
In particular, the CIG calculation share can also be negative: for example, a project that is considered to be of low profitability is combined with a CIG adjustment factor of -25%. The proposal does not include negative adjustments for lower birth or birth rates, but positive additions for higher rates.
But Murray said the proposal could reduce CIG funding for major projects below the 40 percent floor set by Congress in annual funding bills, a benchmark in place since 2020.
Murray also noted research of the Urban Institute which found that the practice of tying funding to marriage and birth rates would prioritize white communities. “Residents of areas with high marriage and birth rates are much more likely to be white and much less likely to be black or Hispanic,” according to the research.
“Tying funding for transit projects to marriage rates and the number of babies a woman has is the kind of weird, dystopian idea you’d expect on a TV show, not actual policy put forward by the US government, but here we are,” Murray said in his statement.
Jessica Tillipman, associate dean of public procurement law studies at George Washington University, said she was not aware of any previous federal programs that adjusted infrastructure funding for marriage or birth rates.
He classified the IGC’s proposed change as “guarantee policy,” a practice typically designed to have a direct impact through funding priorities, such as including small, women, veteran or minority businesses in hiring requirements.
“What’s so strange about this is that it’s funding for infrastructure,” Tillipman said. “I think that’s the biggest question mark behind this: What is the policy goal here? Are you rewarding a jurisdiction because it happens to have higher birth rates or higher birth rates?”
He surmised that the reasoning might be tied to population size. But even then, he noted, marriage or birth rates are not a direct indicator of an area’s population.
“For me, I just don’t see a straight line between giving them more money and the birth and marriage rates,” he said. “This feels really collateral. Very, very collateral.”
The FTA did not respond to Construction Dive’s inquiries about the proposal. The public comment period for the proposal is open until November 16.
