Dive Brief:
- Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg faced questions about the deployment and use of funds from the 2021 infrastructure bill from members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee during a Department of Transportation oversight hearing Wednesday.
- “Many stakeholders have already expressed concerns about this administration’s implementation of the infrastructure law, including the pace of implementation and whether it is following the intent of the law,” said committee Chairman Sam Graves, R -Mo., in the opening statements.
- Concerns expressed about the pace of the rollout contrast with reports earlier this year of growth in the number and size of infrastructure contracts and revenue growth attributed to the infrastructure law and other federal initiatives.
Diving knowledge:
While Democratic members of the committee largely praised the Biden administration’s actions to implement the Jobs and Infrastructure Investments Act, Republican members raised issues with the climate and equity funding requirements of the grant “As far as I can see, your office is simply writing blank checks to comply with Mr. Biden’s climate initiatives while leaving the average Joe in the dust,” said Texas Rep. Brian Babin.
“And the only concern I have is, with all this focus on equity, how do we make sure that American taxpayer dollars go to the most important projects that support everybody, that support the whole of society, including obviously disadvantaged communities and it doesn’t matter how you define that?” asked David Rouzer, RN.C.
Graves asked the transportation secretary about the rate at which funds are distributed to projects in the U.S. “A 2023 Associated General Contractors survey of its member firms found that only 5 percent of responding firms. [said] who have worked on IIJA-funded projects to date, and only 6% of respondents indicated that they had even successfully bid on projects for which work had yet to start,” he said.
“We must ensure that regulatory burdens and confusion about guidance are removed in order to efficiently administer infrastructure programs,” Graves said.
Buttigieg responded, stating that “The Biden administration has more than 37,000 infrastructure projects moving forward in every state and territory.” He added that there is a gap between when a project is authorized or approved and when construction begins. “But you have my commitment that anything that comes under the control of our department we will do as quickly as possible,” he told the committee.
Earlier this year, the American Association of Highway and Transportation Builders found that the dollar value of all transportation project contract awards grew 25% from 2021 to 2022, and the number of contracts increase by 12.4%, up to 39,500. ARTBA Chief Economist Alison Premo Black told Smart Cities Dive in a March interview that she saw this as “a very positive sign that federal investment money is starting to flow into the project.”
Major engineering, design and construction firms reported strong revenue growth in the most recent quarter. AECOM CEO Troy Rudd said on the company’s Aug. 7 earnings call that “funding for key infrastructure initiatives is progressing,” reflecting “increased activity for the IIJA, the Inflation Reduction Act, and robust investment in state and local infrastructure.”
