Obama Pushes P3s to Fund Infrastructure Projects
The Obama administration on Jan. 16 announced it would create a municipal bond and approve other proposals to fund big-ticket infrastructure projects, four days before the president’s State of the Union address.
According to background the White House provided, the Qualified Public Infrastructure Bond would extend benefits under municipal bonds to public private partnerships. These would involve long-term leasing and management contracts, lowering borrowing costs and attracting new capital. Additional information about the bond program would be included in the president’s upcoming, set to be released early next month.
The White House also announced Obama would sign an executive memorandum meant to improve the early phases of infrastructure planning and design by aligning federal funding at the departments of Transportation, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, and Agriculture. The agencies will be tasked to work closely in the next few months with state and local agencies, and stakeholders to ensure federal support is provided.
The administration wrote that the proposals “will level the playing field for projects that combine public and private investments so that local and state governments can more easily work with the private sector to advance the public interest.”
The administration then announced plans to focus on infrastructure proposals at the SelectUSA Investment Summit in March, and it touted last year’s launch of DOT’s center that focuses on private investments for transportation programs.
On Jan. 16, Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to promote the administration’s initiative with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency A Administrator Gina McCarthy at the Anacostia River Tunnel project site in Washington, D.C.
