Title:Advancing APA’s Legislative Priorities in 2018
تأثیر بالقوه‌ای را که پیشنهاد بودجه رئیس‌جمهور ترامپ برای سال مالی ۲۰۱۹، بحث کنگره درباره سطوح هزینه‌های جاری سال مالی ۲۰۱۸ و طرح زیرساخت‌های دولت بر برنامه‌ریزان و جوامع سراسر کشور خواهد داشت، کشف کنید. درباره اولویت های قانونی APA بیشتر بدانید: https://www.planning.org/policy/priorities/
درباره تلاش های حمایتی APA بیشتر بدانید: https://www.planning.org/policy/ (برچسب‌ها به ترجمه
قسمتی از متن فیلم: Hello everyone thank you for joining us for today’s webinar advancing a piays legislative priorities in 2018 I’m Jason Jordan ap A’s director of policy here in our Washington DC office thanks for joining us for the first webinar of 2018 for our APA planners advocacy Network these regular webinars
Are a benefit of being part of our grassroots network of the pan as we call it planet I’ve seen Network to give you some special insights into legislative happenings regulatory activity here in Washington we also try to regularly provide updates on things happening around the states as well as some
Training so we’re glad you could be with us for this webinar where we’re going to focus on setting the table really for advocacy in 2018 by taking a deeper look at the organization’s legislative priorities and how those are shaping up for the year and then we have
Quite a lot of sort of recently breaking news to discuss in terms of the status of federal spending for the current fiscal year 2018 a look at the Trump administration’s budget and the appropriations process for FY 2019 of course along with the release of the budget the administration released their
Infrastructure proposal so we’ll break that down a little bit and throughout will talk a little bit about advocacy options for you as a member of the network and of course we’ll give you an opportunity to discuss any questions or comments that you have I am happy to be
Joined by the the whole policy and advocacy team and you’ll be hearing from them as we go through today’s program if you do have questions there’s a section on the webinar toolbar where you can go ahead and submit those at any point during the webinar today we’ll hold
Those and answer them all at the end and we’re also recording today’s webinar so it will be available if you need to revisit the slide at a later point let’s dive right in and talk a little bit about APA 2018 legislative priorities for those of you who may be
Relatively new to the advocacy program it’s probably worth noting what we mean when we talk about legislative priorities these are key goals for our policy agenda that are stablished by the board of directors working in partnership with the legislative and policy committee these are adopted on a
Regular basis in January of this year the board gave final approval to our slate of 2018 priorities which you see listed in front of you this material is available on the APA website if you go to the policy section you can have access to the full priorities document that goes into much
Greater detail on each of these four elements and gives you some very specific ideas of individual pieces of legislation or individual policy ideas that we’ll be working on in these four categories there is a unifying theme uniting these four separate categories of legislative activity and you see that
On the left-hand side of your screen that really the goal for 2018 for us is to advance policies aimed at creating stronger and more just communities through access to opportunity strategic investments and innovation and broadly shared prosperity so those are concepts embedded in each of the four kind of key
Priority areas and those areas are investing in infrastructure is number one the second one is focusing on housing choice and affordability the third is ensuring good federal data resources and the last is promoting healthy communities I’ll take these just briefly one by one not going into a ton of detail but just
To give you a sense of some of the things that we expect to be happening in each one of the categories so for infrastructure a big part of our work in this category we’re going to talk about a lot on the webinar today principally that’s about ensuring robust
And sustainable funding for key programs everything from community about my blog grants to the tiger program to New Starts transit grants and many things beyond but really looking at existing programs and ensuring that those resources continue to be there for communities of course the second bullet there in terms of the white house
Initiative is is a big part of the reason why infrastructure are so prominent on our list of priorities again this year which is it is a priority of the administration I’ll talk more about some of the challenges of moving it forward legislatively in 2018 but nevertheless this is going to be a
Critical topic on the agenda for for the Congress and so we want to be thoroughly engaged in that discussion and helping influence those decision-makers we know that Community Development and Parks while not often considered infrastructure in some conversations you know many times that’s that conversations focus more on transportation or energy or
Telecommunications infrastructure part of our infrastructure agenda certainly includes the fact that the whole suite of community development programs as well as our work on urban community parks the Lena Water Conservation Fund and deferred maintenance at national parks are all part of our approach to infrastructure and I’ll mention one
Other things on the topic of infrastructure which is back in 2017 the board of directors adopted a set of policy principles for what effective infrastructure policy at the federal level should look like we continue to be promoting those and to use those concepts in in shaping our response to
The budget our response to the White House’s proposal and the legislative work on that topic going forward in the category of housing affordability much like infrastructure a big focus in today’s environment is simply on funding and ensuring that the resources for affordable housing are and public housing remain available and sustainable
Over time we are also beginning to roll out a broader housing campaign looking at everything from local codes and plans to state legislation and federal legislation to try to physician planning as an important resource for people concerned about the availability of housing and the affordability of housing
This is a big part of a policy guide that’s underway that’s focused on social equity and inclusive growth as well as work to update housing policy guide I’m specifically focused on housing so a lot happening in that space for APA and 2018 third categories federal data we know
That the census is coming up in just two years time in 2020 and it’s particularly important in these years leading up to a decennial census that the agency is adequately funded in order to do the preparation work necessary for successful and comprehensive census so we’ve we’ve been heavily involved on
Census issues for a number of years I’m certainly that that work continues in addition to the decennial we also focus a lot on the American Community Survey as many of you know there have been two regular attacks in the Congress on the continuation of ACS whether or not it
Should be mandatory so that is also a significant component of our federal data work APA is a founding member of the Digital Coast partnership which is just one illustrative example of APA working with federal agencies to ensure that federal data is managed and packaged in a way that makes it useful
At the local level in this case this is NOAA’s Digital Coast program specifically focusing on understanding impacts and changes in coastal environments with a particular eye to hazard mitigation and resiliency and then of course we’re we’re broadly concerned about the full array of federal data agencies and data resources
And ensuring that those tools which are so critical for making good decisions at the local level continued to be funded and available lastly in in healthy communities there are two really important programs that are up for legislative reauthorization in 2018 one is the National Flood Insurance Program so hazard mitigation issues
Resiliency issues have long been high on the planning agenda that remains the case and the renewal of NFIP represents an opportunity to advance some of our concerns in areas like mapping hazard and resiliency planning that that need to be addressed in mitigation of course as well and the second item there is the
Farm bill which is due for action in 2018 APA has previously adopted a food policy guide and has a lot of food related components in our newly adopted healthy communities policy guide as well so that’s certainly an area where we see potential for planning to be addressed
At the federal level and it’s part of that key priority so over the course of 2018 you’ll be hearing a lot about these four issues infrastructure housing data and health and we certainly hope we can get you engaged in working with us to advance those those issues and our
Concerns as as legislative and regulatory opportunities present themselves I touched on some of this in the opening on priorities but just to hit a couple points again so we do have a lot of new policy and advocacy tools that have either just come out or right
On the doorstep of coming out that I wanted to highlight for you the first is the new policy guide on healthy communities that was formally ratified by a delegate assembly and the board of directors last fall it’s available on the APA website for for folks to use there’s some additional resources a very
Handy summary version of the Healthy Communities guide that’s particularly valuable for communicating ideas about healthy communities planning and policy issues to local state and federal elected officials staff people stakeholders partners allies all the folks who are interested in potentially working with community to advance help that that’s a resource that’s convenient for unpacking
Some of the important concepts and the larger policy guides I certainly hope you’ll take advantage of that another topic that APA is going to be putting a lot of effort and energy into in 2018 because it’s so important for so many communities is around autonomous vehicle
So you will be seeing a new set of policy principles so it’s not a full-blown policy guide but much like our principles on infrastructure is designed to paint in broad strokes kind of the key principles that we think policymakers should keep in mind when beginning to advance legislation our
Guidance or regulations related to ABS so that’s going to roll out in in not next week but the week after so the very the very last week of February you will see those resources being released you will also see released a new research report that is based in part on a
Partner symposium on ABS that was conducted last fall very much focused on some of the tactical things that communities need to be doing right now to begin planning for the impact of autonomous vehicles you will see AV related resources both from the policy perspective as well as the research and
Education perspective available from APA across the year on the policy side I should just know we’re very focused on both what’s happening at the state level which there’s quite a lot my colleague Catherine Hinshaw had a recent blog for summarizing all the activity in 2018 at the state level our navies were also
Closely monitoring federal legislation that the House passed last year that has moved out of a Senate committee there seems to be a lot of momentum around that so lots happening legislatively in the AV space that these policy principles can speak to and that we’ll
Be engaging that at work in as we as we go forward I mentioned the new policy guides that are in development all of those will be moving forward in 2018 with lots of opportunities for the network to engage in shaping what those policy positions are you can see
The topics listed here we have a group working on the important topic of social equity and inclusive growth and we’re doing comprehensive updates to two parentally important issues for our policy work at APA service transportation and then an update to the housing policy guide so look for those
Opportunities again across 2018 to be engaged in the development of those guides I mentioned Katherine Henshaw just a second ago she is new to our policy team joined us at the beginning of this year her charge is specifically focused on state policy as we’re looking to significantly expand our engagement
Particularly through our chapters with state legislators on important planning issues that occur at the state level so I’m going to ask Catherine who’s on the line with us just to say a quick word of introduction about herself and the program Catherine hi everyone thanks Jason so I just inside my name is Catherine
Henshaw I joined the APA policy team and the DC office at the beginning of this year originally from North Carolina and was previously working the National spanic leadership agenda doing policy and advocacy related to Latino priorities so my role here at APA I’m really happy to be here I really be
Focusing on identifying and analyzing policy trends at the state and local level and supporting advocacy efforts at the state level as well and then working to build those key partnerships and then all sort of doing this while recognizing the connections that these trends have with APA priorities nationally and how
What’s going on at the federal level has an impact on communities within your own States so over the past month I’ve been in touch with chapter leadership and talking to them a little bit about what’s important for their state and also for their chapter it’s been really great
To be in touch with folks learning a little bit more about what you’re looking at this year so I look forward to working with you all feel free to reach out to me with any questions or state-level updates or needs I am here as a resource and happy to
Help in any way I can so with that I will turn it to Trevor Thank You Katherine I’m going to talk hi everyone I’m Trevor Grady a piays government affairs associate focusing on more federal policy and advocacy eight opportunities before we get started with kind of our deep dot into how these
Policy decisions and proposals in Washington are potentially going to impact planning in communities throughout the country just going to make a quick pitch for one of our initiatives for the planners Advocacy Network this year which is establishing leadership positions within each state for the Poynter’s advocacy Network in an
Opera in an effort to further advance smart federal planning policies as many of you know APA relies on folks like you guys members in the planners advocacy network to kind of bolster our policy positions that we take as an organization and calls to action on Capitol Hill there are many ways to
Stand up for planning at the federal level and the leadership positions we’re looking to fill would help their individual states planners ask to see network members kind of respond to a pas call to action and distribute this kind of timely information from us to your chapter leaders and membership as well
Over the past year the planners Advocacy Network grew by more than 4,000 members and with hope for members like you all who have tuned in who are willing to kind of take on a leadership position we could potentially help recruit establish awareness for federal policy measures and encourage members to take action in
A way that we can continue to build out the network membership and continue to grow our influence on policies that are pertinent to planners so our staff who is kind of in the process of discussing how these leadership positions will be fleshed out in your individual States so
If you’re interested in taking on you know leadership role within the planners aptitudes you now work in your state feel free to reach out to me tigré d at Planning org and let me know about your interests and with that I will throw it back over to Jason so we
Can get into kind of the subsets of portions of the webinar Thank You Trevor Thank You Katherine great information from from both of you I want to turn now to three important fiscal policy issues all of which are quite timely we want to spend a little bit of time talking about
The current status of federal funding the the work that’s gone into the most recent continuing resolution a little bit on the the new budget caps and for what to expect in terms of how FY 2018 gets ultimately resolved then we’re going to tip it over and talk a little
Bit about the budget that was released on Monday from the administration what’s in there what the impacts are and and where that process is likely to go from from here forward to give you a sense of what to expect on the advocacy front and how we want you to engage on those
Topics and then thirdly it’s certainly related to both of the previous two topics we’re going to go through that infrastructure I’ll talk a bit about the proposal that was released and give you some sense of how we’re engaging on that issue and then how you can be involved
So let’s start with FY 2018 and I’m going to turn the program over to my colleague test Henry’s who handles a lot of our federal appropriations advocacy work and she’ll walk you through where we are with FY 18 and the President’s budget Tess thanks Jason and before we
Dive into fiscal year 18 I just wanted to step back for a second and talk about the things that we have going on here in Washington because I know it can be pretty confusing to those of you who aren’t here living it every day unfortunately Congress and by proxy us
We’re all working on two different fiscal years at the same time so if you’ll remember a couple shutdowns that happened in the last few months in the drama over government funding all of that is linked to fiscal year 18 that’s the current fiscal year that began in October so they still haven’t finalized
Spending for the current fiscal year on top of that the conversation about the next fiscal year began this week with the President’s budget release on try on Monday and then on top of that making things even more complicated last week as a part of the continuing resolution
That ended the very brief shutdown on Friday morning there is a budget deal that was approved by Congress it touches on both fiscal year 18 and fiscal year 19 so it’s a lot of things going on right now we’re going to focus specifically on 18 and then we’re going
To shift into looking towards the future in fiscal year 19 so just a clarification on what’s happening here so like I said we are still not done with fiscal year 18 we’ve been running the federal government through continuing resolutions since October what that means is simply that Congress
Agrees to continue on prior spending levels until a set date we’re on our fifth continuing resolution right now and it will expire on March 23rd so we’re running fiscal year 17 levels for the federal government until March 23rd last week a budget deal was reese reached and that really removes a lot of
The major impediments that Congress has to finalizing spending Congress couldn’t agree on how much it wanted to spend on both defense and non-defense programs so it made it pretty impossible for appropriators to do their job to finalize spending bills luckily that that is now out of the way there’s a
Spending bill that’s been reached and it raises spending in both fiscal year 18 and fiscal year 19 so it’s always easier for appropriators to get bills done quickly when they more money to spend rather than less so non-defense cat for fiscal year 18 went up by sixty three billion dollars in
Non-defense spending and fiscal year nineteen will go up by sixty eight billion dollars and twenty billion of that has been allocated for infrastructure but it hasn’t been defined or detailed exactly how that’s going to be divvied up amongst infrastructure priorities so stay tuned on that so basically at this point from
The appropriators point of view the appropriations process starts all over again right now they’re in the process of giving up the full spending caps for fiscal year 18 so they’re trying to figure out how much money they want to spend on each of the 12 appropriations bills that they have to brave this
Process is called through a 302 a and 302 B process which is not really meaningful to anybody outside of Washington but basically what it means is they’re going to figure out how much does the transportation and HUD programs how much goes to interior and then the
Rest of the other bills once they have that trio to be set the appropriators can go to work redrafting some of the bills that have already been drafted and working with the Senate and House colleagues to try to put together one single bill that can move forward once
All twelve of those bills appropriations total appropriations bills are done and ready to go they’ll likely package them all together and what’s known as an omnibus one single spending bill that encompasses all twelve appropriations bills and they’ll move that on both the house in the full Senate floor and send
It to the president for a signature fingers crossed they can do all of this by March 23rd based on the timeline that I’m hearing right now just with the three or two peas I still think that’s an achievable goals that we’ll see it takes appropriators about three weeks to
Finish those once they have their numbers and it will take a couple of weeks on the floor once once the appropriations bills are done so right now we’re looking we’re looking good but I wouldn’t bet against another continuing resolution and that creates a lot of problems for communities
Especially a program sips lenders rely on programs like CDBG and home this big slot grant programs don’t get divvied up until there’s a final spending bill in place just because you don’t know how much money the formula has to work with for the year so it’s hard to do that
So it really puts communities in a bind as they’re going on months four months five without final spending from the federal government so it’s really not an ideal way to run the federal government but hopefully there’s an end in sight and this is a really great opportunity
For you guys to contact your members of Congress if this is having an impact on the local level now is the time to speak up making sure that members of Congress know that CRS are really putting you guys in a tough bind on top of that it’s a good opportunity for you to
Communicate what your local needs are with your members of Congress programs like CDBG in a home only exists anymore because you guys speak up so I highly recommend in the next probably week or two if you guys haven’t done it already please contact your members of Congress about those funding priorities so pretty
Much where we are for fiscal year 18 moving on to fiscal year 19 the president kicked everything off on Monday with his budget proposal relief it looks in a lot of ways very similar to the proposal that we saw last year deep cuts all over the across the board
For programs that are critical to planners pretty much deja vu but it’s important to remember that this is only one step in the federal appropriations process and this document is purely a political document that does not carry the force of law it’s the common phrase here that the president proposes and
Congress disposes and that’s so far from what we can tell has been true of this president even though we don’t have to pull your 18 numbers finalized and put into law yet Congress about the house in the Senate did reject most of the funding proposals put forward by by the
President last year so that that’s good to remember but at the same time it’s still incredibly important that you guys take these risks seriously because the cuts proposed set a really low mile marker for our advocacy here in Washington and it lets Congress know which programs they can cut without Syrian backlash in
The White House so well this document is unlikely to ever be signed into law as is it’s still something to be concerned about on that level so the the budget itself again it’s been a pretty rough document it increases federal spending by 10 percent over fiscal year 17 but
Despite that increase in spending it makes deep cuts to departments and agencies that are critical to planners in Jason I will get into some of those in a second and it’s important to note that this document as it was written does not consider the new budget caps
That was passed by Congress on Friday realistically they just didn’t have enough time to amend those documents but they did include an addendum that added some information about what the White House would like to see done with that money it doesn’t include full details but it does recommend not spending the full cap
Amount for fiscal year nineteen so just the asterisks on some of the programs and things that we saw in the 19 budget shifting gears focusing more specifically on departments and agencies the head budget is in pretty rough shape and I’ll talk a little bit about it in a
Second but it really is a dramatic realignment of the mission of had in a couple ways one is the deep cuts to the community development programs much like last year we saw CDBG home and choice neighborhoods all eliminated they claim that that funding hasn’t been used efficiently and those are tasks best
Done at the state and local level in addition to that the public housing capital fund was eliminated and that is a pretty dramatic proposal it completely shifts how the federal government does rental assistance it basically gives housing authorities the option of converting their public housing to the section 8 platform or basically letting
It go away due to attrition and age their concern is a twenty six billion dollar backlog at least in public housing maintenance needs chances are that the state and local governments can’t make up that funding as I suggested so it could pose a huge problem for cities with significant
Aging public housing I just it could create a really bad situation where a lot of blighted properties have no resources last for modernization revitalization and then on top of that there’s a lot of policy implications that come in when you take away the public housing option and a lot of
Cities especially high market areas it’s difficult for people to find apartments to rent with vouchers and high-cost areas so that’s a whole different side of that conversation that it comes up in that kind of a proposal like the administration is proposed for the 1970 school year eighteen has not decided to
Embrace the CDBG and home cuts entirely last year the president proposed slashing the public housing capital fund and they didn’t do that but it’s still important the conversation about CDBG and home probably isn’t going away in the conversation about the appropriate way to deliver rental assistance is certainly one that is coming regardless
Of what Congress decides to do with this proposal so just a heads-up disease are these are conversations that won’t go away just because this budget proposal won’t necessarily be adopted and whole so just keep that keep an eye on that with HUD and definitely contact your members of Congress about these programs
If they’re important to you because your advocacy is really literally the only reason why they exist anymore and then if you want to move on I’m going to turn it over to Jason who’s going to talk a little bit about the I do tea budget Thank You Tess great
Information even if it’s not good news it’s great information so shifting over to the transportation side the story is very similar to the story that test just laid out for HUD overall the budget proposes a 19% reduction for VOT and it’s important I think to note here that this is particularly ironic and
Particularly important in the context of the infrastructure proposal and the legislative conversation that’s about to unfold around infrastructure because what you see in the budget here is that the administration is essentially although they don’t come out and say it exactly this way they’re proposing to offset the cost of their new
Infrastructure proposal with cuts to existing infrastructure programs so when you look at the DoD budget that’s exactly what’s happening here so that 19% reduction at DoD that 18% reduction HUD a lot of that money in would in theory in the administration’s theory be swept into the fund infrastructure it
Has long been a piays position that that’s unacceptable and that at a minimum any new infrastructure program should represent a net increase in federal funding for infrastructure and so the offset here is something that’s that’s a non-starter from from our point of view so worth unpacking exactly what
They’re talking about here exactly like with CDBG and home this budget would once again propose the complete elimination of the tiger program that’s a competitive multimodal a grant program first funded by Congress in the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009 as a response to to the recession
But and been funded every fiscal year since that point the new Sark’s program is the primary grant program for new transit projects around the country there are a lot of communities already in the pipeline forward New Starts projects and this would propose eliminating those it proposes a roughly
۵۰% cut for passenger rail and Amtrak which would make most of the non Northeast Corridor routes unsustainable unviable at that funding level so pretty big reductions across the board there d-o-t and again very similar to the to the narrative at HUD there’s a real burden shift that’s happening with the philosophy behind the
Budget here of pushing a lot of cost to States and to local governments and you’ll see that reflected when we get to a discussion of the infrastructure plan as well a big question here of course is what will the impact of those higher budget caps the tests talked about be in
Terms of not just rejecting the administration’s approach with these very draconian cuts but what is the opportunity to ensure that an adequate and reasonable proportion of the slightly larger non-defense budget cap and goes into both the HUD programs as well as to the d-o-t programs so that’s something we’re going to be watching
Very carefully both as 18 unfolds and then certainly as 19 happens as well there are a lot of other slides for other agencies that could could be inserted here to talk about some of those significant cuts because the story that we just went through for HUD and
EOT is equally true for EPA and interior a lot of other places that the budget overall really targets a lot of the federal programs across the board that have connections to local communities just a couple of things here that I would note again this is very similar if
Not identical to the conversation we were having from the budget was released a year ago but this budget once again renews an attack on climate programs across the government so at the State Department there’s money cut out of USAID there’s money cut out of funding for the implementation of the
Paris climate Accords NOAA would see a substantial reduction in any of their program aimed at client resilience and then at EPA was a longtime target of the administration significant cuts both in staff and in funding but in particular the climate science agencies within EPA would see dramatic reductions as part of
The budget so very much a coordinated approach to the funding climate activities in this budget somewhat surprising area of cuts in this budget Delana water conservation funds which has very strong bipartisan support we’ve been active on this issue for a long time a portion of LW CF funds national
Federal land acquisition national park related issues and then the other portion of it focuses on the states and community parks this this budget makes significant cuts to the allocation for ell WCF similarly the conservation programs at USDA connected to the farm bill and the urban forestry programs at
The Forest Service would come in for a number of outright elimination proposals as well as deep cuts and then the last area and you see these reflect directly back to our legislative priorities for the year in terms of infrastructure housing data and health where we remain concerned that the Census Bureau be
Adequately funded in order to be in a place where the 2020 decennial is is adequately supported so those are just a quick overview of some of the other areas in the budget that do not align with our view in the legislative priorities so clearly this is a moment
Where ata as an organization is taking action and we want to engage our advocates I’m going to ask Trevor to jump back in here and talk a little bit about opportunities for taking action and what we’ve been doing on the advocacy front related to the budget Trevor
Sure thing thanks Jason so as a test and Jason both alluded to earlier when referencing both the budgetary process for FY 2018 2019 and the infrastructure proposal which will be talked about a little later there are a lot of major advocacy opportunities both going on now
And will be going on as the preparations process continues but earlier this week in this instance APA as president put out a statement on behalf of the entirety of APA that sharply rejects the president’s attempt to strip communities of vital federal funding and support robust investments and programs and
Support good planning on both current and upcoming fiscal years this statement was shared with all Capitol Hill offices by APA national via a pas policy advocacy twitter page at APA advocates and sent out to the players advocacy network via e-mail newsletter and we really rely on folks like you within the
Network to bolster our our message tell Congress to close these cuts and since you you are the constituents of these congressional officials your voice definitely carries a great significance we called on members like you to take action through our newsletter that went out yesterday which is kind of the
Primary vehicle for our call to action and thus far more than 40 members I’ve already contacted their legislators to reject the president’s attempt to kind of strip these communities of federal funding you can join in if you haven’t already and advocating for these important planning programs by looking
Out for that bi-weekly or weekly email newsletter that kind of identifies all the opportunities to take action it’s really quick through our legislative Action Center where you can also find these Action Alerts takes less than two minutes to send kind of a pre drafted letter but we definitely encourage you
To customize as well throughout the year a we’ll be using these communication channels both that players advocacy network newsletter and legislative Action Center to push those calls to action the most notable opportunities to advocate on FY 2018 and 2019 budgetary decisions in the short term are coming
Up pretty quickly and are already here in both the national communities development week in infrastructure week in April throughout that month we’ll be ramping up our calls to Congress to invest in these proven existing community development programs and in the meantime you can certainly help us
By taking action on action alert we have available by Wednesday and sharing your stories with our team if your locality is sitting in financial limbo due to either Congress’s inability to finalize federal spending for these community development projects or sitting in financial limbo due to these draconian
Cuts that are proposed by the Trump administration we would definitely like to know so tell us kind of your CDBG Tyger our community development programs through new starts and how this funding has either benefitted your community or how it’s impacting you when it is delayed so those are kind of the
Opportunities to take action now and what to look forward to in the short term and I’ll throw it back over to Jason great Thank You Trevor you’re going to take the time that we have left here to pivot to the infrastructure issue and the proposal just quick
Reminder there will be an opportunity to answer any questions so do feel free to go ahead and submit those if you have any so on the infrastructure plan let me start out by just giving you a sense of what’s in that roughly 60 pages of proposal from the White House we’ve been
Waiting for this for a long time it was talked about in the campaign it was mentioned at the inauguration it was mentioned early on is something that would be a high priority it didn’t happen over the course of last year in terms of the specifics but we
Now have a you know a full plan to evaluate from from the administration in broad strokes what we’re talking about here is a two hundred billion dollar plan of I won’t call it new because it said before it’s offset in this proposal but direct federal spending on a variety
Of infrastructure it outlines exactly how that 200 billion will be divvied up I’ll go into that in just a second with the idea that that two hundred billion dollars would leverage in additional private and state local government investment up to one and a half trillion dollars of a new infrastructure
Investment overall now of course there are a lot of people who dispute that leverage ratio but that’s the operating theory behind this but in addition to proposing how the two hundred billion dollars would be allocated and how that piece of the program would work the document also lays out a series of
Policy suggestions to largely aimed at encouraging additional private sector involvement and infrastructure as well as a suite of changes to the existing environmental review and permitting process designed to speed projects I’ll talk a little bit about both of those I would note too that if you want all of
The the detail and you don’t want to go through all those pages yourself we did post yesterday on the APA website on the blog section a summary of the plan in more detail I’m in terms of the the new direct spending that’s proposed you can see in the chart here it breaks down
Into five broad categories the largest of which 50% of the funding would go to a new incentives program this would essentially be a grant for state and local projects based on the ability to demonstrate the ability to either have locally dedicated funding or to have attracted private probably some
Combination of the two that’s the primary criteria that would drive that particular program one important element note in the incentives program is that unlike the current federal program whether we’re talking about new starts or they talk about highway side the cap on the federal amount that would be
Contributed to a project in the incentives program would be 20% so it really flips on its head the 80/20 split approximate that is the historic level for for highway investments and is even I’m less than the typical 50/50 split for a lot of the New Starts projects so
One of the big issues that I think we would have at APA with the incentives program is that that low level of overall federal investment as well as the fact that the criteria that they outlined in their proposal really doesn’t take very much account at all of
The quality of project or the economic environmental or social impacts of that project really the criteria is largely driven by the ability to have the locals or the states or the are the private side I’m contribute resources the second largest category that you’ll see there 25% of the total would be a grant
Program focused on rural infrastructure and I should note for the incentives program as well as for this program it’s pretty broad in terms of what they mean by infrastructure the eligibility is quite broad water infrastructures included energy infrastructures included of course surface transportation infrastructure is included this rural
Program would essentially go directly to governor’s and it would be a sort of a state-level process driven by federal criteria to allocate those resources for a variety of different rural infrastructure projects the third category is what they’re calling it transformative projects program this is a would be a 20 billion dollar pot of
Resources run through the Commerce Department largely aimed at sort of big high-risk projects that would be unlikely to attract enough either governmental or private capital support to move forward it goes into some detail about the nature of some of this projects but essentially this would be the kind the Hyperloop style there’s the
Potential I think for this to apply to a lot of the AV pilots and rollouts but really is intended to be big projects or projects that are not within the scope of a lot of the traditional programs another major area of emphasis is on bolstering existing federal financing
Programs largely this would come through significant expansions of the tibia program and transportation the with iya program for water infrastructure and the relative relic schemes a railroad rehabilitation and improvement financing program of the RIF program it would expand the amount of federal funding available for those loan and loan
Guarantee programs it would expand the eligibility in those categories the other big piece here is a significant expansion of private activity bonds and the role of private activity bonds in infrastructure investment it would propose removing for instance the state volume cap on on PA B’s and this is an
Interesting proposal in the sense that for those of you who were involved in our advocacy on tax reform you’ll remember that Congress came extremely close to eliminating PA B’s altogether but the House version of tax reform eliminated PA B’s and so this is a real 180 from that point of view
But is necessary frankly if you hope to achieve anywhere close to the leverage that that this plan purports to have but those are those are a suite of different financing options that are would be funded at 20 billion dollars in this plan and then the remainder is sort
Of a consolidation 5% we focus on a variety of federal infrastructure projects focusing on things like the disposition of real federal property and assets as well as some attention to using revenues from energy development on on public on public lands so that’s that’s how the the main funding pieces
Of the plan break down also just a quick word about some of the policy recommendations because they are also quite important here I won’t go through the whole list but some of the highlights include and this has gotten a fair amount of attention in the broader press but it would allow states full
Flexibility to toll interstate highways would allow them full flexibility to privatize interstate rest areas the idea here being to excrete Lee expand the use of tolling would also expand the ability to use toll revenues for a variety of kinds of infrastructure projects it would also create some new requirements
For the New Starts program by requiring value capture financing to be used as a condition of those grants would also change some of the law related to a pilot program that’s in place for expediting project delivery for New Starts so one of the themes you will see
Here is that this plan really doesn’t do a whole lot for transit or if it does anything for transit it would be sort of indirect in terms of some of the asset recycling ideas and other things on the private side but in terms of direct investment we really have to come
Through the incentives program which you could argue is not particularly well structured to support those kinds of projects lastly I would say that a big piece of this plan and a controversial piece of this plan relates to regulatory changes in the NEPA process and I won’t I’ll point you
To the blog post to get more detail on the specifics of that but there’s quite a lot of streamlining ideas that are proposed in here including creating a two-year hard deadline for completion of NEPA review so 21 months for lead agencies to complete those reviews and then a following three-month deadline
After a fonzie or to complete the permitting process so essentially a shot clock on knee Fez is one of the kind of core components here there are also a lot of changes on more specific areas like section 4f reviews as well as some stuff that a lot of MPs have to deal
With related to you know conforming to the most recent national air quality standard and some other four specific pieces that were created in map 21 and the fast act the last two surface transportation programs which also contains some streamlining provisions this touches on some of that so those
Are really the kind of core components the policy changes largely aimed at increasing Private Finance the environmental review process changes and then the 200 billion dollars in overall spending so where does that leave us well clearly it’s a challenging climate for any sort of action at this scale on
Infrastructure first off you’re going to have a big battle in terms of the amount of direct federal investment in any kind of program with Democrats largely arguing for higher funding levels some not all but some Republicans arguing for for less and also arguing for offsetting any of that money with cuts to other
Programs which would be very difficult I think for for majority of Democrats to support there’s also the looming issue of the fact that the gas tax is not a sustainable source everyone knows that they’ve known it for a long time this point doesn’t address that long-term sustainability issue
Reform took a pass on it as well the president just yesterday hinted in a meeting that he could support a gas tax increase politically in a midterm election year that seems a bit far-fetched but all of those very difficult funding issues are on the table in a sense we find ourselves where
We almost always find ourselves on Infrastructure debates at the federal level which is a fair amount of agreement on what to do and not a lot of agreement on how to do it or how to pay for specifically but there are some important policy differences that are
Going to be at play here particularly in terms of the appropriate role of private funding the level of streamlining of the environmental review process and some of the other changes that really represent again that theme in the budget of shifting burden to states and localities for a much greater proportion of funding
These projects at the same time I think it’s important that the debate move forward we have long called for a thorough conversation on Capitol Hill around infrastructure and at least this begins that process and pushes it forward so what can you look for in terms of next steps well a big important
Piece of this is unrelated specifically to the infrastructure proposal but it goes back to what tests mentioned in terms of the new budget caps and the additional funding that’s available there I think that will be one indication of how infrastructure is likely to be treated and how it’s likely
To be allocated Speaker Ryan actually referred to that 20 billion dollar pledge as a quote down payment unquote on the infrastructure proposal so we’ll see where that goes hearings with secretary Chao start on March 1st and I think we can expect all of the congressional committees of jurisdiction
To be fairly active on this issue whether they can get anything across the finish line I think is far more doubtful APA will be heavily engaged we’re working right now on a more thorough evaluation of this and expect to be issuing a statement and to get you all
Involved via Action Alerts and other sorts of advocacy activities as as event fold on this throughout the spring so what’s happening on the budget and infrastructure front I’ll I’ll bring this to a close here we’re always available for your questions and comments you can see all the different
Ways to reach us to find our resources on the web you see my terrific colleagues and the policy team I’m listed there do feel free to contact any of us directly if you have issues or questions or concerns about any of this stuff happy to work with you do follow
Along on Twitter in particular APA advocates is our primary resource for keeping you apprised of what’s happening in real time and certainly would encourage you to be part of that conversation on social media as a member of pan we look forward to providing you with lots of these kinds of resources
These webinars the newsletters that you get will be drafting some more specific policy briefs on topics so that you can stay particularly well-informed on some of these federal issues across the year and look forward to being engaged with you on moving our legislative priorities forward in 2018 so with that I think our
Formal presentation for the program is is at a close thank you for joining us right now I don’t see any questions queued up certainly if you have them now would be an excellent time to pop them in if not you can certainly reach us at those email addresses later on with your
Questions again I will be we’ve recorded the program will be available for you and we have lots of policy and advocacy related resources for you available on the website if you haven’t checked out our training resources our blog and some of the other tools that Trevor mentioned like the Action Center certainly
Encourage you to do that and I’ll just wrap up by saying thank you to all of you not just for joining us today but for all the work that you’ve put in over the course of the last year 2017 was a record-setting year for APA on a number
Of fronts on the advocacy issue but phenomenal growth of members wanting to be involved in the advocacy program a lot of growth any actions that people were taking so we look forward to building on that momentum as we move across 2018 so thanks everybody for joining us and we’ll look forward to
Working with you and to seeing many of you at the national planning conference in New Orleans in just a couple of months thanks everybody
ID: 9y_WBJsWRAY
Time: 1519323107
Date: 2018-02-22 21:41:47
Duration: 00:58:11
