Audrey Dutton

Municipal infrastructure market participants believe that insufficient funding and the politicization of infrastructure are worse impediments to investments than corruption, earmark abuses, public policy instability, or poor creditworthiness of public authorities, according to a recent survey by KPMG LLP.

WASHINGTON — President Obama in his fiscal 2011 budget yesterday proposed a $4 billion infrastructure bank to fund or finance worthwhile transportation projects.

WASHINGTON - President Obama and Vice President Biden will announce the recipients of $8 billion of high-speed rail funds today, at a stop in Tampa, Fla.

WASHINGTON — President Obama wants to freeze non-military discretionary spending for three years to save $250 billion over the next decade, but market participants in states, transportation, and other infrastructure sectors are not panicking yet.

MINNEAPOLIS — The highway trust fund will face another funding crisis by August, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman James Oberstar warned at a town hall here yesterday.

The U.S. Department of Energy has extended its deadline to Jan. 29 from Jan. 15 for receiving responses to a request for information from state development finance agencies that want to participate in a new federal loan guarantee program.

WASHINGTON — The Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing next month on the creation of a national infrastructure bank, chairman Christopher J. Dodd said yesterday.

WASHINGTON — The Nebraska Supreme Court last week dismissed a lawsuit brought by Falls City against the Nebraska Municipal Power Pool and three of its staff members.

The Obama administration is working with Congress on a multi-year transportation bill that it expects will cost between $400 billion to $500 billion, Transportation Department Secretary Ray LaHood said at a conference here yesterday.

WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters joined a push by House lawmakers yesterday to revamp the federal transportation funding system, which currently has “donor states” such as Texas paying more into the federal highway trust fund than they get back.

WASHINGTON — Persistent declines in tax revenue continued to pummel states for another three months, making the third fiscal quarter the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit declines, according to a Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government report issued yesterday.

WASHINGTON — For cash-strapped state and local governments that have critical transportation infrastructure needs, but no money to pay for them, the coming year will be bittersweet.

WASHINGTON — The coming year could be fertile ground for public-private partnerships, especially in the transportation sector, but states and localities probably will have to go without federal help and enter deals cautiously so as not to kill public support for them, market sources say.

Federal lawmakers will have to become more comfortable with tolling highways, tunnels, and bridges if they want to obtain the revenues needed to create a national infrastructure bank or fund large capital projects in the future, transportation advocates said yesterday.

Public power utilities are facing the prospect of increased costs and riskier credit profiles due to the Environmental Protection Agency's recent movement toward regulation of coal plant and other carbon-based emissions, analysts said yesterday.

The Senate and House have both approved an omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal 2010 that provides funding for high-speed rail projects and grants to states for transportation infrastructure.

WASHINGTON — House Democrats plan to introduce and vote next week on a jobs bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday as the chamber voted 221 to 202 to approve a nearly half-trillion dollar appropriations bill with funding for high-speed rail.

WASHINGTON — Congress is expected as early as this week to take up a $446.8 billion appropriations act for fiscal 2010 that would provide more high-speed rail funds than the Obama administration had requested, along with highway and other transportation infrastructure funds and bond-related community development block grants.

President Obama’s announcement yesterday of his administration’s job-creation plan added momentum to the push by municipal market participants for any forthcoming jobs bill to include infrastructure spending and aid to states.

WASHINGTON — Cities need another dose of recovery aid from the federal government in any forthcoming jobs bill, including extensions of Build America Bonds and other bond-related stimulus programs, global credit ratings for corporate and muni bonds, and more funds for transportation and water infrastructure projects, officials told President Obama this week.