WASHINGTON — State and local officials yesterday urged members of a House Ways and Means Committee panel to create and capitalize a national infrastructure bank, but neither they nor the lawmakers could agree on how to finance or structure the bank.
Public transportation systems need to receive funding in addition to user fees so the infrastructure bank would have to have some kind of external revenue or capital source, said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.
DeFazio, chairman of the House Transportation subcommittee on highways, made the remark while testifying at the hearing held by the Ways and Means select revenue measures panel.
“There is no transit system in the world that makes” enough money to sustain itself, he said.
A gas tax increase has been a mainstay of those seeking a transportation funding solution for years, but has failed to garner enough support among lawmakers or from the White House to advance in Congress.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the committee that he raised public support for a local tax increase to help pay for transit projects simply by doing outreach and assuring voters there would be accountability for how tax revenues are spent.
Villaraigosa has been pushing for federal assistance to help implement his “30/10” initiative, under which the city will accelerate the schedule for completion of a group of transit projects to 10 years from 30 years. He told the committee that the plan would save about $4.5 billion.
That number prompted Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., to suggest that by helping to expedite projects like “30/10,” the federal government also would save money and could use the savings to help capitalize the infrastructure bank.
Witnesses also opined on how to structure the bank, with some saying it should function as a kind of catch-all infrastructure revolving loan fund.
Kentucky Secretary of Finance and Administration Jonathan Miller told the panel that his state’s new Green Bank — capitalized entirely by state energy program funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — is currently functioning as a revolving loan program that will recycle repaid loans into new ones.
“A free-standing national infrastructure bank should be authorized to make long-term, low-interest loans or other forms of deposits to independent state green banks across the country,” Miller said.
State and local agencies could compete for the funds or receive formula allocations from the national bank and the state banks, he said.
California, which began lending from an infrastructure bank in 1997, has provided a total of $31.4 billion in loans, debt issuance, or other financing assistance since then to support water, energy efficiency, school districts, and other sectors, Stanton Hazelroth, executive director of the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, told the lawmakers.
