Infrastructure

Lawmakers who vote to raise state gas taxes don't face an irate electorate at the next election, according to an analysis in seven states. Rep. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., introduced a bill to create a National Infrastructure Bank.

All federal transportation payments to states will stop as of June 1 unless Congress extends the short-term fix to the Highway Trust Fund before it expires May 31, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Monday in a letter to state transportation directors.

California has $80 billion of highway needs through 2025 with only $20 billion of available transportation funding.

The tax-exempt financing committee of the American Bar Association's taxation section is working on a paper that will identify for tax regulators modifications to tax rules that could facilitate public-private partnerships.

A radio ad campaign targeting congressional leaders warns that inaction on the restoring the HTF imperils state highway and transit projects.

The authors of a new paper from The Hamilton Project at Brookings propose four short-term and three long-term ways to address the need for infrastructure investment in the United States, including a revival of the Build America Bond program.

Senate Democrats slam Republican leadership over lack of ideas for long-term highway fix.

Attorneys for All Aboard Florida told a federal judge that the private passenger train owners could close on $1.75 billion in tax exempt private activity bonds around June 8.

The Obama administration's proposal to create a new class of tax-exempt debt that is permitted within the context and requirements of public private partnership is a hopeful sign of a way forward in creating a new hybrid infrastructure financing model.

Finance chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch is looking for the $11 billion needed to keep the HTF solvent through 2015.

Lack of action on a long-term transportation funding bill “is a joke,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and John Hoeven, R-N.D., on Monday introduced legislation that would create Move America Bonds, which would generally be treated as exempt-facility, private-activity bonds but would have fewer restrictions and separate state volume caps that could be converted into tax credit allocations.

Average gasoline consumption falls to a 30-year low, threatening revenues from the main source of state and federal transportation funding.

House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan is working on a "limited tax reform" package that could contain revenue for the Highway Trust Fund and extenders and that could be passed this summer.

Dozens of municipal market groups made the case for preserving tax-exempt bond financing and/or easing certain bond restrictions in documents submitted to the Senate Finance Committee’s tax-reform working groups.

Oregon selects the vendors that will collect the vehicle data needed for the nation’s first pay-per-mile road usage program.

House Appropriations subcommittee adopted a fiscal 2016 transportation budget with no increase in highway and transit spending.

The Panama Canal expansion will benefit East Coast local governments near key ports, but West Coast ports will not lose business from the expansion, according to a Moody’s Investors Service report.

A second federal lawsuit has been filed challenging the private activity bond financing for the All Aboard Florida train project; the latest suit comes from Martin County, Fla.

Rep. Rep. Bill Pascrell, who keeps a Lucite encased drinking water pipe in his office as a reminder of the "very serious and urgent" need, has continued to press for his Sustainable Water Infrastructure Investment Act.