Noting that “even if they vote no, they want the dough,” Mitch Landrieu contends that leaders and officials in states most wary of federal intrusion are still interested in receiving grants coming out of Washington for a variety of infrastructure projects.
Named late last year as the Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator, Landrieu in a press conference said his office is working with state leaders across the country, noting: “The fact of the matter is that most of the building will actually be done by the states, by the cities, by the counties, by the Tribal leaders.”
A former two-term Mayor of New Orleans, Landrieu said he has recently talked to both Democrat and Republican governors and found all of them receptive to working with Washington on infrastructure matters.
“We clearly acknowledged with each other that we may have differences of opinion on other issues,” he remarked. “But on building roads and bridges and airports and clean water and broadband, 75 %, 80% of the people of America want these things to happen. And the governors have committed to work with us to actually get it done.”
Landrieu noted that a good deal of the infrastructure spending will be done through “formula funding that has been set. Every governor has received an indication of what the states are going to receive for the next 5 years.”
The other part of the program will be devoted to competitive grants.
“Some of those are going to take a little bit of time to set up,” said Landrieu. “My expectation is there’s some projects that you’ll see people turning dirt on in, definitely, the spring or the fall.”
What exactly those projects are, however, Landrieu said he could not right now identify.
But in providing an overview of the scope of the infrastructure effort, Landrieu added: “It’s $1.2 trillion. There are fourteen agencies, plus some, that have some level of involvement. In many of these plans and programs, it takes tree to four agencies to coordinate.”
By Garry Boulard
