The Bond Buyer: Mayors' infrastructure playbook reboot addresses COVID-19, systemic racism

By Keeley Webster | March 02, 2021

A consortium of U.S. mayors has rebooted an infrastructure playbook filled with policy proposals to overhaul how the federal government funds infrastructure and partners with localities.

The New Partnership for Infrastructure, a group that grew out of the think tank Accelerator for America, released the revised infrastructure playbook Monday as federal lawmakers are expected to begin crafting an infrastructure bill after the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill is approved later this week.

The playbook includes policy suggestions to create federal funding programs flexible enough to target what cities consider their highest priorities, said Aaron Thomas, the think tank's chief executive officer said during an online panel Monday.

“We must help our communities recover from the devastating impact of the coronavirus,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said. (Los Angeles Mayor)

The three-year-old think tank released its original playbook with 18 recommendations in June, but has revised the proposals to take COVID-19 into account and to emphasize efforts to address systemic racial inequality.

Figuring out ways to expand broadband not only in major cities, but also in rural communities and on tribal lands, has become a higher priority as the pandemic has put a spotlight on the poor quality of the nation’s digital infrastructure, said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

“We must help our communities recover from the devastating impact of the coronavirus,” he said. “The lack of access to broadband deepens the digital divide. Class failure rates have skyrocketed in schools across the country. In Washington D.C., the number of kindergarten students who met literacy requirements has plummeted. This is just a glimpse of what is happening in our education system.”

The playbook also recommends expanding the federal government’s Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act to allow state and local governments to refinance debt through the program’s low-cost loans as well as fund new projects. It also wants federal grants programs, like Better Utilizing Infrastructure for Rebuilding America and Community Development Block Grants, to be redesigned to make it easier for localities to create cross-jurisdictional projects and innovative infrastructure projects.

President Biden has called his proposed infrastructure plan, “Build Back Better.” Federal funding has sometimes restricted projects to using existing building methods, rather than allowing for new design methods that are more environmentally friendly, panelists said. The playbook aims to change that.

Accelerator for America was founded in 2017 by Garcetti to develop economic security and share them with cities to create national change starting at the local level.

The playbook was created by the New Partnership on Infrastructure, which includes ACC, WSP USA, City Possible, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Meridiam NA, Mastercard’s City Possible team, the ACEC Research Institute and HNTB.

The idea was to develop policy guidelines that would build on the community-serving infrastructure decisions made at the local level not just give the federal government the usual laundry list of needed projects, Garcetti said.

“Thanks to President Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a founding advisor member, it looks like we will have a real and tangible Infrastructure Week, not one that just talks about issues, but one that provides solutions,” he said.

Morgan Stanley analysts wrote on Feb. 23 the odds of an infrastructure deal being approved are up, but the bank’s analysts were willing to bet that a Moving Forward Act, spending $1.5 trillion in 10 years on fixing existing infrastructure, not building new projects, was the more likely outcome.

“Notably all the mayors involved are not all from the same political party,” Garcetti said. “We are going to seize back infrastructure and make it bipartisan once again.”

Lawmakers and transportation advocates have spent the past decade longing for the days when spending on infrastructure was not so politically fraught. Funding for the San Jose BART extension in California, part of a larger project expected to receive $1.7 billion in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Transit Administration narrowly avoided being squashed by House Republicans last week, who were saying the $141 million was for House Speaker “Nancy Pelosi’s” subway.

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