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58–493PDF 2010

RECOVERY ACT TRANSPORTATION 

AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

PROJECTS: IMPACTS ON LOCAL 

COMMUNITIES AND BUSINESS 

(111–138) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

September 29, 2010 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Vice 

Chair 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas 

PHIL HARE, Illinois 

JOHN A. BOCCIERI, Ohio 

MARK H. SCHAUER, Michigan 

BETSY MARKEY, Colorado 

MICHAEL E. MCMAHON, New York 

THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

(II) 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... v 

TESTIMONY 

Barnes, Doran, Executive Director, Foothill Transit ............................................ 12 

Cohen, Lauren, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard 

Business School .................................................................................................... 38 

Cox, Bill, President, Corman Construction, Inc., Representing the American 

Road & Transportation Builders Association .................................................... 38 

Eleanor, Joyce, Chief Executive Officer, Community Transit ............................. 12 

Foxx, Alfred H., Director, Baltimore Department of Public Works ..................... 12 

Johnson, Kelly, A.A.E., Airport Director, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport Authority, Representing the American Association of Airport Executives ....................................................................................................................... 12

McCullough, James E., President, Case Construction Equipment/CNH, Representing the Association of Equipment Manufacturers .................................. 38 

Mobley, Gregory, Columbus, Indiana Construction Laborer, Laborers International Union of North America Local 741 ...................................................... 12 

Rock, Dave, Electrician, New Flyer of America, Inc. ............................................ 12 

Theerman, Jeff, Executive Director, Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, 

Representing the National Association of Clean Water Agencies .................... 12 

Wright, Yancy, Sustainability Director, Sellen Construction Co., Inc., Representing the U.S. Green Building Council ....................................................... 38 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Hare, Hon. Phil, of Illinois ...................................................................................... 55 

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 59 

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 60 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Barnes, Doran .......................................................................................................... 66 

Cohen, Lauren .......................................................................................................... 71 

Cox, Bill .................................................................................................................... 77 

Eleanor, Joyce .......................................................................................................... 89 

Foxx, Alfred H. ......................................................................................................... 100 

Johnson, Kelly .......................................................................................................... 105 

McCullough, James E. ............................................................................................. 113 

Mobley, Gregory ....................................................................................................... 120 

Rock, Dave ................................................................................................................ 123 

Theerman, Jeff ......................................................................................................... 126 

Wright, Yancy .......................................................................................................... 132 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Majority Staff: .....................

Chart entitled, ‘‘Bridges Improved by Recovery Act Highway and 

Bridge Funds’’ ............................................................................................ cxiv 

Chart entitled, ‘‘Buses, Vehicles and Rail Cars Purchased or Rehabilitated by Recovery Act Transit Funds’’ ..................................................... cxv 

Chart entitled, ‘‘Miles Improved by Recovery Act Highway and Bridge 

Funds’’ ........................................................................................................ cxiii 

Chart entitled, ‘‘T&I Committee Transparency and Accountability Information by State and Formula Funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) (Recovery Act) Submissions Received by T&I Committee (Data Reported as of August 

31, 2010)’’ ................................................................................................... civ 

Page

IV 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Majority Staff—Continued 

Chart entitled, ‘‘T&I Committee Transparency and Accountability Information by State under the American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) (Recovery Act) Submissions Received by 

T&I Committee (Data Reported as of August 31, 2010), Percentage 

of Allocated Funds Associated with Project Stages, Clean Water State 

Revolving Fund’’ ........................................................................................ cxii 

Chart entitled, ‘‘T&I Committee Transparency and Accountability Information by State under the American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) (Recovery Act) Submissions Received by 

T&I Committee (Data Reported as of August 31, 2010), Percentage 

of Allocated Funds Associated with Project Stages, Highways and 

Bridges’’ ...................................................................................................... cxi 

Report entitled, ‘‘The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 

Transportation and Infrastructure Provisions Implementation Status 

as of September 10, 2010’’ ........................................................................ xxiii 

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(1) 

HEARING ON RECOVERY ACT TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS: 

IMPACTS ON LOCAL COMMUNITIES 

Wednesday, September 29, 2010 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, WASHINGTON, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable James Oberstar [Chairman of the Full Committee] presiding. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure will come to order. 

We meet this morning again to review the progress on the stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and 

the effect on that stimulus program of the programs under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 

This is the twenty-first in our series of hearings. I committed at 

the outset of the development in our Committee of stimulus initiatives to overseeing the progress, holding Federal agencies accountable, State and local government agencies accountable. I am requiring them to report periodically on the use of funds, and that process has been tremendously successful. I recall at one of our earliest 

hearings, when I had said I would hold up each month those States 

that had done well and those that had done poorly, and there were 

a few States in the initial going that, within six, eight weeks, had 

not obligated their funds. It didn’t take very long before sunshine 

applied to the process and caused State DOTs to move those 

projects forward. 

Overall, the stimulus program has had a very positive effect in 

turning the Country around from the worst recession the Nation 

has experienced since the Great Depression. We have stemmed the 

tide of job losses from 750,000 jobs lost in January of 2009, 650,000 

jobs lost in February 2009, when the President signed the stimulus 

into law, to 290,000 jobs created in the subsequent month. Across 

the Nation since then, this past year and almost year and a half 

since the bill was signed into law, 18,365 highway transit and 

wastewater infrastructure projects have broken ground; $33.9 billion, 89 percent of the total available formula funds. Forty-five 

States have started construction on 100 percent of their Recovery 

Act wastewater projects; 40 States have begun work on 90 percent 

of their Recovery Act highway projects. 

During the first year, these formula projects created 350,000 direct onsite, on-project jobs. Total employment from direct jobs, 

those in the supply chain, including sand and gravel operations, ceVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:17 Dec 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58493.0 KAYLA
2 

ment producers, Ready Mix operators, asphalt, rebar, fencing, Ibeams, guardrail, all have reached the total of 1.2 million obs. In 

August these projects created and sustained 71,000 direct jobs and 

total employment, that is, direct, indirect, and induced jobs, was 

225,000 jobs for the month of August. A payroll of $3.8 billion. Workers on those construction projects have paid Federal taxes totaling $780 million. We have avoided 

$644 million in unemployment compensation checks because you 

have people being paid to work and not being paid for not working. 

Earlier this month, the President, in fact on Labor Day, unveiled 

a plan to build on the achievements of the Recovery Act by furthering the National Transportation Infrastructure Investments. 

The principles he outlined are consistent with those that the Committee, we have set forth in our blueprint for investment and reform, and in our Surface Transportation Authorization Act. We go 

at it differently than does the President, but I welcome his initiative and we will build on it. 

During the entire process of allocating these funds and obligating 

and getting projects underway, the Congressional Budget Office 

has been reviewing the process and concluded that, as a whole, the 

Stimulus Act has had far-reaching effect. CBO estimated that in its 

entirety the Recovery Act has lowered unemployment by between 

0.7 of a point and 1.8 percentage points. It increased the number 

of people employed, according to CBO, by between 1.4 and 3.3 million. Nearly half of those jobs, though, come from our Committee’s 

8 percent portion of the overall stimulus funding. 

Against this backdrop of these positive reports from the Congressional Budget Office, which also said that the Recovery Act has 

raised inflation-adjusted gross domestic product by between 1.7 

percent and 4.5 percent. Those are very significant numbers. 

So today we bring together witnesses that include workers, community leaders, business persons, all who can talk to us about 

projects on the ground that have had a positive impact on the livelihood of people and communities. 

Work has begun on 18,365 projects in 50 States, 5 territories, 

and the District of Columbia. A total of $33.9 billion, that is 89 percent of the highway, transit, and wastewater funding. There are 

8,965 projects, totaling $7.1 billion, in 50 States on which work has 

been completed. Now, highway and bridge investments total 35,399 

miles of highway improvement, that is equal to three-fourths of the 

entire mileage of the U.S. interstate highway system; 1264 bridge 

improvements; and that has, in turn, led to production of 10 million metric tons of cement, cement and ready mix, $950 million for 

the cement industry. 

I cite that because I spent at least two summers of my college 

years working on ready mix projects, pouring concrete for streets, 

for the wastewater treatment plant in my hometown of Chisholm, 

and building concrete blocks in a ready mix concrete block factory 

in our hometown. I know what it means to carry a 42 pound block 

and a 48 pound corner block, and to hold a 94 pound sack of cement and pour it into a mixer, and to pour out sand and gravel 

and run it through the mixer, pour it down the chute, and then go 

down and make the blocks and put them on the racks and haul 

them into the kilns. I have done that. It is good formative work. 

3 

The transit investments have resulted in 12,234 buses, vehicles, 

and railcars purchased or rehabilitated; 4,870 passenger facilities 

built or rehabilitated; 324 maintenance facilities built or rebuilt; 

and Amtrak is in the process of replacing 1.3 million wood ties with 

prestressed concrete ties, 326,000 already completed; 60 Amfleet 

cars, 21 Superliners, 15 locomotives restored to service; and 270 

station improvements. Work is underway on 185 Amtrak projects, 

totaling $1.3 billion, that is 100 percent of their Stimulus Act 

funds. 

Aviation, 155 runway improvements at 139 airports, those airports accommodate 11 million annual takeoffs and landings; 83 

taxiway improvements at 78 airports that have 8.1 million annual 

takeoffs and landings; and 25 projects to modernize air route traffic 

control centers. Work is underway or completed on 757 aviation 

projects, totaling $1.3 billion, and that is 100 percent of the funding 

allocated to aviation. 

All 50 States have met the requirement that 100 percent of their 

Clean Water State Revolving Fund be under contract within one 

year of enactment, February 17, 2010. So the result is 1,946 

projects are under construction, 100 percent of available funds, 

$3.8 billion. 

Work is underway or is completed on 59 Superfund projects. We 

had a huge backlog of Superfund projects because that fund was 

allowed to expire, and work is underway to clean up those 165 of 

185 planned Brownfields projects. 

The Corps of Engineers has improved or repaired 155 lock chambers, 1,132 flood risk management projects to improve dam safety 

and levy safety, 1,034 projects to maintain and upgrade their recreation areas and maintain or improve harbors and waterways that 

serve 2400 commercial ports. 

The General Services Administration is underway on 536 

projects totaling $4.6 billion; 78 roofs installed, 68 photovoltaic rays 

on roofs. That is 33 years after I introduced the first legislation to 

retrofit Federal office buildings with photovoltaic systems and save 

cost, save electricity costs, which we are doing right in this Committee room. One hundred forty lighting systems have been put in 

place, 78 roofs installed, and 68 photovoltaic systems. 

The Economic Development Administration has broken ground 

on 57 of 68 projects, 88 percent of its allocation, that is $130 million. 

The Coast Guard Bridge Alteration Program has started work on 

all four of its planned bridge repair and replacement projects. 

And the Maritime Administration has work underway on small 

shipyard projects. A hundred percent of their $123 million committed for that program is underway. 

All in all it is a very commendable record. I just wish we had 

had $100 billion instead of the $64 billion our Committee was allocated. We have made it work, we have held States and local agencies accountable, and, as far as I can see, my view is that our Committee’s stewardship of the program has been successful. 

I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica. 

Mr. MICA. Well, thank you, Mr. Oberstar. Thank you for your efforts in trying to get folks back to work and also highlight our inVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:17 Dec 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00119 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58493.0 KAYLA
4 

volvement from this Committee in trying to move dollars for improving our Nation’s infrastructure forward. 

Let me start where you left off. Let me say that this has been 

a bipartisan effort. We came back early. We were asked to put a 

package together. We held hearings long before the February passage of the stimulus legislation. We advocated a package which 

was I think in the range of $120 billion, which would have been 

about half of a $250 billion stimulus bill. Some had talked $250 to 

$300 billion, but history provided a different course; it ended up 

being $787 billion, of which we got 7 percent, $63 billion. 

I also argued at that time, and we had heard at that time from 

the Congressional Budget Office and others who looked at our proposal, one of the reasons we got our legs cut out from underneath 

us is they said there was so much red tape, paperwork, requirements to get transportation money out there that it would be impossible in the time that you set forth and the goals you established in the legislation to in fact get that money out. So we were 

axed down to $63 billion of that total, less than 7 percent. 

I had argued that we needed to speed things up. Some of you 

have heard my 437-day plan. I have given speeches. I stood on the 

bridge that collapsed in Mr. Oberstar’s backyard. We were on the 

Floor together the day that it collapsed, a tragic event. Lives were 

lost, but an older bridge, not properly designed, did collapse, and 

we pledged together on the Floor to get that bridge rebuilt that 

connects an important leg of our interstate. 

And I stood, two weeks before the bridge opened, with some of 

my colleagues and I held up three numbers, 4–3-7, and I said this 

is the number of days it took to replace this bridge. It normally 

would have taken seven or eight years. And that was an emergency 

situation, and there is no reason why, in an emergency national 

economic situation, we couldn’t do many projects across the Country putting people to work. 

So I have advocated, and if we get to do transportation long-term 

authorization, that would be one of the cornerstones, because we 

can get people to work. We can do projects quicker. That bridge 

was brought in seven to eight years ahead of schedule. That is the 

time the paperwork would have taken, and under budget. So it is 

a shining example of what we can do and what we should be doing. 

So I am disappointed in the fact that we didn’t allow in that legislation, and it wasn’t our side; I went over to the Senate and 

begged, pleaded, asked, requested that they look at measures to 

speed things up. And they have done it in the past, and some of 

those who were opposed were from California and said we were 

going to do this and that, which we weren’t going to do. 

But even in California, when they have had earthquakes and 

emergencies, they move projects forward on an expedited basis. So 

we have plenty of examples. When we can and want to do things, 

we can get them done. So I am very disappointed that wasn’t 

adopted. 

I am disappointed that the President came out a week or two ago 

and offered another $50 billion in spending and, unfortunately, also 

in taxing, and then talked about a six-year plan infrastructure 

bank, some of the things that we have also advocated. But one of 

the chief reasons we haven’t been able to get people working in 

5 

construction is that we can’t get the money, again, out there, and 

also unbeknownst to Mr. Oberstar or myself, we had worked hard, 

he came up with a proposal for a six-year long-term and robust investment, and we got deep-sixed the day before we were planning 

to make our announcement to opt for 18-month. 

I thought back. Again, you guys know I come from a family that 

has a bipartisan history, but your side of the aisle would be in 

much better shape right now if they had first focused on getting 

the stimulus money out. 

Over 60 percent of the stimulus money is still sitting in the 

Treasury. That is the report I got, 61 percent still sitting in the 

Treasury. And then some of the decisions that were made on 

TIGER grants, they spent $3.3 million, which is .22 percent of $1.5 

billion. States like my State, in the first round, got no TIGER 

grant. We have over the national unemployment, and some that 

had under the national unemployment got some of those grants. 

But the bad news is even that money isn’t spent yet. 

So if you go across the board—and we can submit that for the 

record—you can see that the money, while some has gotten out and 

we may hear some very nice stories today and some people have 

retained their jobs, the overall picture is not to my satisfaction and, 

obviously, if you ask any American, they want to know where are 

the jobs and how can you spend—now it is scored at what, over 

$800 billion, the stimulus package, and everybody thought that 

was infrastructure. They really thought we would be building 

bridges. And heaven knows we have a $2.2 trillion need in the next six 

years, which the American Society of Civil Engineers has not only 

stated, but documented very well. So the need is out there to address our crumbling infrastructure; our antiquated bridges, our 

highways, our ports, our airports. 

I would say, in closing, that I am prepared—I don’t know what 

the outcome of the election will be; none of us do, but I am prepared to sit down November 3rd, whatever it takes, and work with 

the Administration, work with Mr. Oberstar. We have only had, 

what, one vote in three years in this Committee, but when we sit 

down we can move things forward. But look at how we can move 

the rest of this forward, because there are people who are hurting, 

people who have lost their jobs, their homes, their businesses; and 

it shouldn’t be that way. 

And if you stop and think, if we had taken like Mr. Oberstar just 

ended on if we had done 120, $150 billion, how many jobs that 

would be. It would probably be about 8 or 9 million jobs, simple calculation. And if we had sped the process up and if we had done a 

six-year bill rather than doing sidewalks and paving and shortterm jobs, many of which jobs are already done. 

I just met with a transportation secretary from one of the Dakotas, and he told me what is really bad now, he says, we are going 

to be in our free season, which we in Florida don’t even think of. 

He said even if I got the money now, it is hard for me to spend 

on some of these projects that we could go ahead with because of 

their construction season. 

So we can and we must do better. Heaven knows Mr. Oberstar 

tried and I tried, but we have to, and I pledge to roll up my sleeves. 

6 

We will sit down with the folks and move this puppy forward, and 

I know we can do it. 

I yield back. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for those comments. Again, 

I want to emphasize it was a bipartisan initiative in this Committee to address the impending and growing recession in 2008, actually in December 2007, and this Committee reported, we brought 

to the Floor a bill that was largely this Committee’s infrastructure 

jurisdiction, and that would have been a great start there. We 

couldn’t get the other body to act on it. 

The gentleman is so right about the I-35W bridge. They didn’t 

have to go through an environmental impact statement; they didn’t 

have to do right-of-way acquisition; they didn’t have to go through 

preliminary design and engineering. They did a design build 

project and it was completed in less than a year, as the gentleman 

said. Similarly, these stimulus projects are 100 percent federally 

funded, and we set out those same criteria that the projects had 

to have EIS completed, right-of-way available, completed, final design and engineering, ready to go but for the financing; and that 

is what made all these projects so successful, is that they were 

ready to go. 

In the surface transportation assistance bill for the future, Mr. 

Mica and I, and Mr. Young in the previous Congresses, worked on 

a project expediting process, and we have a robust project expediting provision in the draft bill reported from Subcommittee. We 

can improve upon it and will do because there have been lessons 

learned in the stimulus about how to push these projects further 

ahead. We are going to take those lessons, we are going to apply 

them. 

I spent August of 2009, one day a week with all the interested 

groups looking at various transportation financing plans. Mr. Mica 

unfortunately couldn’t participate, but by conference call in the 

meeting we spent an hour plus in that particular session. We will 

do more of those. We have to find a way to finance the future of 

transportation. That is really the only thing holding this up. So 

after election, to quote Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy said, let 

us begin. I say let us continue. And we will continue with the hand 

of bipartisanship going across this Committee, as we have historically done. 

Just before I called the Committee to order, I met with Mr. 

Horsley, John Horsley, Executive Director of AASHTO. More 

projects and paychecks. A copy of this report is available for all 

persons I think outside the Committee room or it is available online. It is very nicely done using data developed by our Committee, 

and the report, with more details than I cited at the outset, including our spreadsheet on each State has 15 categories of program accountability. AASHTO has used that data plus information they 

independently gathered, and it is a very exciting read and very valuable contribution to this process. 

Now, in the interest of proceeding, I will ask Members to limit 

their opening comments to two minutes and begin with Ms. Norton. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I just want to emphasize that all of 

the projects that have been undertaken are projects that the State 

and local governments or the Federal Government would have had 

7 

to do anyway. What we have done is to make sure they are done 

at a time when they also provide jobs when they are most needed. 

I also, Mr. Chairman, want to commend you for your shovelready jobs, jobs-ready approach because it has worked. Your hearings in full Committee held people accountable. We tried to follow 

your lead in my own Subcommittee; had five tracking hearings. In 

the case of GSA, which does not work through the States, we were 

particularly focused on making sure that they had no excuses, and 

I am pleased that 82 percent of GSA money has been allocated. I 

don’t think any more could have been allocated given the nature 

of some of these massive projects, so they have done well. EDA is 

under our jurisdiction; 88 percent of the money has been allocated. 

FEMA is under our jurisdiction; 95 percent of the money has been 

allocated. 

Mr. Chairman, that translates into jobs, and at some point we 

will know how many jobs have come out, those jobs, and the money 

is still flowing because people get paid on a weekly or biweekly, 

sometimes monthly, basis. So obviously the money has been allocated; the people are earning the money, and I think this Committee has done precisely what you announced we would do, and 

not only held people accountable, held the States accountable, in 

the case of the Federal Government, held the Federal Government 

accountable. And when you hold entities accountable, they produce. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for that positive statement. 

Mr. Cummings, I want to compliment Mr. Cummings, who was 

not able to be on the Floor last night when we passed the Coast 

Guard bill. Mr. Mica acknowledged Mr. Cummings’ leadership, 

along with Mr. LoBiondo. We have had a great team working together to get this first Coast Guard authorization passed in six 

years with remarkable changes in the safety procedures and upgrading the whole safety process of the Coast Guard. 

I know, Chairman Cummings, you worked diligently, put in enormous hours of hearings and meetings and discussions. It was a 

great moment of success and a bipartisan success. We all started 

out with ideas about the future of the Coast Guard, we reshaped 

our ideas as we went along, and at the end we had to overcome 

mystical holds and objections from the other body that were obscure and obscurantist, but at least I think that bill is going to sail 

through the Senate now. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I was 

sorry I wasn’t able to be on the Floor at the passing of the bill, but 

I was in my district in a debate that I needed to be at because I 

knew Mr. Mica would want me to be there. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I am sure your opponent didn’t. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding 

this hearing today. You have been truly diligent in leading our 

oversight of the Recovery Act, and I think that is so important. The 

American people deserve accountability. 

The Recovery Act, as we have highlighted so many times, pro- vided $64.1 billion to fund infrastructure programs under this 

Committee’s jurisdiction. My State of Maryland received more than 

$677 million in formula funds under the Recovery Act, including 

8 

highway funding, transit assistance, and funding under the Clean 

Water State Revolving Fund. The State has $340 projects under 

contract, and the projects that have received Recovery Act funding 

in my State have paid out nearly $35 million in total payroll. The 

Recovery Act has been essential to the State of Maryland. And 

today we have the opportunity to hear how critical the Recovery 

Act has been to my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. 

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time because later I 

will be introducing Mr. Foxx of the DPW in Baltimore. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mrs. Napolitano? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I echo the sentiments of our colleagues in the fact that this hearing is important to listen to where the money is being spent, the 

amount of jobs that are being created, the benefit to our different 

districts. It is important for us to understand and I would implore 

the transit agencies and others to let their people know that it is 

the recovery funds that have helped not only keep the jobs, but 

provide some of the assistance to keep moving people and doing all 

the different things. I just wish, as Mr. Mica and you pointed out, 

that we would have been able to pass the TEA–LU bill, because 

that would have really put people back to work and really invested 

in our U.S. economy. 

I look forward to the testimony and I certainly want to thank Mr. 

Mica for joining us in California; and we will touch on that when 

I introduce our witness. Thank you again so very much for this 

hearing. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Ms. Hirono. 

Ms. HIRONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

As this may be the last time before our break that we will be 

able to meet, I would like to thank you, Mr. Mica, and all the Members of this Committee for really being a model for accountability 

of Recovery Act money. All of us have been in our districts, I, myself, have been to the bridges that have been renewed or repaired 

because of Recovery Act money, and even on the little island of 

Molokai, where there was road work being done, hiring people from 

that island who otherwise would not have had jobs, it is truly, truly 

important for us to have these hearings to focus on what the reality is of the Recovery Act. 

Also, Mr. Chairman, Hawaii, for the first time, had, as you know, 

an infrastructure summit. There is so much attention being paid 

to the infrastructure needs throughout our Country, and you participated in that summit, and as I continue to talk with people in 

my district, they are very thankful and mindful of your continual 

focus on the need for Congress to do more to support infrastructure 

renewal in this Country. So mahalo to the Committee. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. It was a 

pleasure to join in that teleconference. 

Mr. Walz. 

Mr. WALZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. 

Again, I will echo what my colleagues said. Your due diligence 

on watching taxpayer dollars, watching how the Recovery Act was 

put out, providing hard data on the number of jobs and the number 

of projects is exactly what my constituents in Southern Minnesota 

9 

want to see. They are not against putting their taxpayer dollars 

into infrastructure projects; they want to know where they go. 

And I have to tell you, since we passed this and we were hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs a week, I see one project in my district, 

Lewis and Clark Rural Water Project, diverting water from the 

Missouri River in South Dakota over into Minnesota and Iowa, 

serving 300,000 rural residents, that residents in my district, some 

of them, have to collect drinking water from cisterns when it rains. 

That is how short it is. 

This project is out there. Fifty-six million dollars went to this, 

creating hundreds of jobs, and it was a bipartisan effort between 

South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota, where the local communities 

paid their tax dollars forward by 10 years to fund their part of it; 

the Federal Government came in with this creating those construction jobs. I have communities that can’t add a single business because of the lack of water. We have had to turn away ethanol 

plants. Swift, one of the largest meat packers in the Country, is not 

able to expand simply on that region, in the heart of an agricultural area. 

So I appreciate this hearing because when I hear the disconnect 

between what happens here and what I see on the ground, when 

I hear Mr. Boehner say not a single job has been created by the 

Recovery Act, I am baffled, because I have walked in the trenches, 

I have talked to the construction workers, I have talked to the city 

manager and the mayor, who talks about the expansion of jobs created by this. 

So everyone wants us to be accountable for the dollars, but there 

has to be some reality in our conversations here, and I am proud 

of the work this Committee has done, and I thank you and look for 

the day when my folks can turn on a drinking fountain instead of 

a cistern to get water; and the Recovery Act is making that happen. 

I yield back. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is a great success story. Thank you for sharing that with us. 

Mr. Hare. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to be very brief 

here. 

For those folks who say that the Recovery Act really hasn’t done 

anything, let me just say that for my State it has directed over $2.8 

billion to my State’s transportation and infrastructure system. And 

as of July 2010, nearly $1.1 billion has been awarded and over 

4,000 direct jobs have been created or retained. 

So I, with my colleague, Mr. Walz, am a little bit miffed when 

I hear it hasn’t created a single job. You might want to talk to 

those 4,000 people that are working had we not done this. This is 

expected to increase by many more as we approach our next quarterly reporting period at the end of September. 

In my district, the stories are plentiful. As we all know from the 

July 27th hearing that was held by this Committee, Railway Company of Burlington in Northern Santa Fe has been working on the 

Burlington Bridge, a major project which crosses the Mississippi 

River, and it was made possible with the help of the Recovery Act. 

10 

Every dollar that we invest in transportation, the Federal Government gets five dollars back. 

My hope is, Mr. Chairman, I know you have been working on 

this incredibly hard, as has the Ranking Member, we have to do 

more. We have bridges and roads and schools and sewer and water 

projects all across this great Nation that need to be completely 

redone. We have locks that are failing. We have a number of things 

to do, and the passage of a bill would have put 6 million Americans 

to work, and we will get it done. 

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say, as this may be our last Committee hearing before the break, I thank you for your leadership on 

this project and all of these, and I am honored to be a freshman 

on this Committee, but I have learned a great deal and this Committee is very, very lucky to have Jim Oberstar as its Chairman, 

and I yield back. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You are very kind. Thank you for those good 

words, but also for your steadfast participation in all of our hearings. You have never missed a hearing or a markup, and I am 

grateful for that. 

Mr. Schauer. You did a great job on the House Floor, managing 

that pipeline legislation last night. Thank you. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It was an honor to do 

that and I am proud to serve on this Committee with you and with 

Mr. Mica. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I might also say, Mr. Mica, that Mr. LoBiondo 

was the journeyman last night; he handled more areas of jurisdiction one evening than I have seen a Member do in a very long time. 

Thank you for designating him. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. I complimented him. He does a great job. 

I am very proud of all of our guys and the teams that we have had. 

Mr. Cummings wasn’t there; I did recognize him, though, for his 

effort. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes, you did indeed. I appreciate that. Just want 

to be sure Mr. LoBiondo gets a little overtime. 

Mr. MICA. We will put a little extra in his salary. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. A little more Starbucks, maybe. 

Excuse me, Mr. Schauer. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you for that. I enjoyed managing a number 

of bills on the Floor and appreciate the chance to have H.R. 6008, 

the Clean Act, dealing with hazardous liquid spill reporting requirements. 

This is an important hearing. We have spoken about accountability of the expenditure of Recovery Act dollars for infrastructure 

projects, and when we look at how far our economy has to go, I 

think we have to acknowledge the fact that infrastructure projects 

have helped pull our economy out of a recession, and we have seen 

eight consecutive months of private sector job growth. We have to 

continue to move the economy forward. I am from Michigan. Need 

I say more? 

I do want to recognize one of our panelists. I haven’t met him 

before, Gregory Mobley, of Construction Laborer of the LIUNA 

union. I work very closely with his counterparts in my State and 

I have to say, Mr. Chairman, we talked about this at our hearing 

11 

the week before last, with this pipeline spill cleanup in my district, 

his counterparts in my district were trying to get work on this 

project and it was very frustrating to me and quite offensive to 

have illegal, undocumented workers bused from Texas to clean up 

the oil in the Kalamazoo River in my district, and we need to address that in every way possible. But I appreciate a hardworking 

individual here who is one of the examples of jobs created with 

ARRA expenditures. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman. 

Ms. Titus. 

Ms. TITUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your leadership as well. This has been a very important part of recovery in 

Nevada, which has the highest unemployment in the Country, 14.8 

percent. It is probably really higher than that. If you look at the 

construction trades, it is probably double that. So the Recovery Act 

has been very important. 

I also want to thank your staff, who has just done a great job 

of putting together all the statistics and the charts that we are 

using in this accountability process. These numbers have helped 

me to help Nevada push ahead. We were at the bottom of the list. 

Having these numbers in front of us gave me ammunition to go to 

State agencies and say let’s get this money out. 

In addition, I want to bring up the point that not only are these 

Recovery Act dollars creating jobs, but they are helping communities invest in innovative projects. Some of these were already 

going on in Nevada under the Regional Transportation Committee, 

but these dollars have certainly sped that up. 

And I hope we will hear from our witnesses about what other 

communities are doing planning on sustainable transportation 

projects. Are people getting more excited about it? Are you changing your way of looking at things to push towards this sustainability with more bus rapid transit and that sort of thing? Because 

not only are we creating jobs, we are improving communities 

through these dollars, and I very much appreciate it. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that report. Good to have that information and your Nevada perspective. 

Now we begin with our first panel, with Mr. Mobley, Gregory 

Mobley, Colombus, Indiana constructor laborer; Dave Rock, electrician at New Flyer, a bus manufacturer located in Minnesota and 

elsewhere; Alfred H. Foxx, Director of the Baltimore Department of 

Public Works; Doran Barnes, Executive Director, Foothill Transit; 

Joyce Eleanor, Chief Executive Officer, Community Transit; Jeff 

Theerman, Executive Director of Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District; and Kelly Johnson, Airport Director for Northwest Arkansas 

Regional Airport Authority, representing AAAE. 

Mr. Mobley, welcome. 

12 

TESTIMONY OF GREGORY MOBLEY, COLUMBUS, INDIANA CONSTRUCTION LABORER, LABORERS INTERNATIONAL UNION 

OF NORTH AMERICA LOCAL 741; DAVE ROCK, ELECTRICIAN, 

NEW FLYER OF AMERICA, INC.; ALFRED H. FOXX, DIRECTOR, 

BALTIMORE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS; DORAN 

BARNES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FOOTHILL TRANSIT; JOYCE 

ELEANOR, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, COMMUNITY TRANSIT; JEFF THEERMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS SEWER DISTRICT, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CLEAN WATER AGENCIES; AND 

KELLY JOHNSON, A.A.E., AIRPORT DIRECTOR, NORTHWEST 

ARKANSAS REGIONAL AIRPORT AUTHORITY, REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF AIRPORT EXECUTIVES 

Mr. MOBLEY. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. With those arms and shoulders, I think you could 

just clean this place up pretty fast. 

Mr. MOBLEY. Thank you, sir. 

My name is Greg Mobley. I am a construction laborer from Columbus, Indiana, and I want to tell the Committee today how the 

stimulus bill helped put me back to work and also tell the Committee how much more work is badly needed. 

But first I want to thank Chairman Oberstar, Congressman 

Mica, and other Members of this Committee for inviting me here. 

It is my understanding that this Committee is one of the most important when it comes to making the kinds of investments that create jobs, put men and women like myself to work and helps build 

our Country. I thank you for that. 

In the construction industry, it has been like the Great Depression. At my union, LIUNA Local 741 in Bloomington, the out-ofwork list grew and grew last year to the point that one in five were 

unemployed. Personally, I was out of work for six months, from December of 2008 to June of 2009. My wife and I saw our life savings 

dwindle. 

Every day without work was a day of sitting at home, being 

nervous, unsure, and worried about what would happen in the next 

week, the next month, the next year ahead. We didn’t spend a dime 

that we absolutely didn’t have to. We skipped the movie at the 

local theater. We skipped the drink or dinner with friends. We 

skipped the treat or gifts for our nieces or nephews, who we care 

for like our own. 

Friends of mine had it worse. One told me, after rounding up 

enough cash to make his house payment, he was still unable to afford his property taxes. A lot of us suffered in silence, but the effects of being without a job showed. I and millions of workers like 

me want to get up every day and go to work building roads and 

bridges and other basics in our Country. That is what we are 

ready, willing, and able to do. Without work, you don’t just enjoy 

life a lot less and worry a lot more. You don’t just fear losing a car 

or losing your home; you can lose your purpose. 

Investments in projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped many of us. I have worked on two such 

projects this year, Lafayette Road in Indianapolis and US-27 in 

Union County. My crew and I removed and replaced deteriorated 

13 

and unsafe concrete, sculpted sidewalks, and built curbs. It is good, 

honest work and it put money in our pockets and allowed us to 

support our families. It also improved local transportation, making 

life better for the people who live in Indiana. 

This work did more than give us a paycheck and fix roads. It is 

impossible to overstate how good it feels to have a good job to go 

to every day, to catch up on your bills after months of falling behind. The work we do also helps the mom and pop shops stays in 

business because we can enjoy some of the simple things in life like 

dinner and a movie at the local restaurant and theater, or a drink 

with our friends after a hard day’s work. 

I am proud of the work I have done because of the Recovery Act. 

We help build America and make it better. I can point to the real 

things I build and tell my wife, my nieces, and my nephews I built 

that. 

In my opinion, the Recovery Act was the right medicine, but the 

truth is it was not nearly enough medicine to be a cure. Without 

the stimulus work, there is a possibility I would be out of work 

longer this year than last year. It put me back on the right track, 

but there are 1.5 million men and women in the construction industry today who are still looking for work. Even though there is 

no shortage of potholes or old bridges or highways that need work, 

there aren’t a lot of projects coming down the pipeline. I can see 

trouble ahead for me and others like me. 

I think it is time we invest in America for a change. The investment in roads, bridges, and transportation under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was a great start. Mr. Chairman and 

Members of this Committee, I want to thank you for the work you 

do to invest in the United States. We need to invest more in our 

Country to again be the Country that does what it takes to lead 

the world with the best highways and the most modern transportation systems. I and millions like me are ready to work and we 

are ready to build America. 

Once again, I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity to be here. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I want to thank you for putting a personal face 

as a witness to the stimulus program. You are the visible testimony 

to the success of this program, and that is what we intended to 

have happen, have people like you, American workers, who, 

through no fault of their own, were out of work and now called 

back and given an opportunity. 

We heard similar testimony some weeks ago from Joyce Fisk, a 

truck driver on a construction project on Interstate 35 in the southern end of my district. When I went out to the job site, the foreman 

had pulled the truck over and asked her to come out and say hello, 

and she jumped down, threw her arms around me. I had never met 

her before. 

She said, thank you for my job. Two months ago my husband and 

I were sitting at our dinner table, we had finished dinner, sent our 

10-year-old, Austin, to bed and we just looked at each other. Where 

do we go from here? Our health insurance ran out in December. 

This was August of 2009. We have lost our unemployment compensation, that ran out three months ago. We have enough savings 

to pay the next two months on our mortgage, and are we going to 

14 

be able to send Austin to summer camp. Then we just cried and 

hugged each other and went to bed, and the next morning Knife 

River called and said we won’the bid on I-35, report for work on 

Monday. And if I get my 600 hours in, I will get my health insurance restored, Gene will get his health insurance restored. They 

both work for the same company. We are paying the mortgage and 

Austin is going to summer camp. 

You said it well. When you lose your job and you are out of work 

for that long, you lose your purpose. Powerful testimony. Thank 

you. 

Mr. Rock. 

Mr. ROCK. Hello. My name is David Rock and I am from Mentor, 

Minnesota. I am a CWA Local 734 President and employee of New 

Flyer of America, located in Crookston, Minnesota. 

Welcome, Chairman Oberstar, Minority Representative Mica, 

policymakers, Committeemen. It is a great honor to be speaking before you today. 

A little history on where I work. New Flyer is a company based 

out of Canada, a transit supplier established in 1930 as Western 

Auto and Truck Body Limited. 

In 1941 the company introduced the Western Flyer. The company 

was renamed New Flyer Industries Limited in 1986 and then renamed to New Flyer. 

Over the next 15 years, New Flyer established a solid reputation 

for innovation for design through development of new products. 

In 1996, New Flyer of America opened a plant in Crookston, Minnesota. This allowed them to be a Buy America company. Growth 

was fast and in 1999 opened another assembly plant in St. Cloud, 

Minnesota. This created over 850 direct labor jobs in these two 

communities. 

In 1990, the CNG, which is compressed natural gas, and LNG 

liquid natural gas, propelled buses were built at the Crookston 

plant. Natural gas, being a clean burning fuel technology, to this 

day is still a big part of New Flyer. 

Later in 2002 New Flyer secured an order to build North America’s first fleet of 218 articulated diesel hybrid buses for King County Metro in Seattle, Washington, establishing New Flyer as a leader in the hybrid bus production. These buses were delivered in 

2004. During this time, New Flyer partnered with San Bernardino 

County in California to build the first gasoline electric hybrids. 

In 2004, electric trolley buses were built for Vancouver in British 

Columbia. BC Transit, in 2007, awarded New Flyer the contract to 

build the world’s first fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses. The first of 

these buses were delivered in 2008 and the remainder were built 

in 2009. This fleet was highlighted in the 2010 Winter Olympics at 

Whistler, British Columbia. Ballard fuel cells made in Canada and 

Siemens electric drives were used in these buses. 

Well, enough about New Flyer history. Let’s talk about me. I was 

born a third generation farmer in the French-speaking community 

of Terrebonne, Minnesota. 

I graduated in 1971 and attended technical college for electrical. 

In 1974 I purchased 320 acres of land and 11,000 laying hens, got 

married that same year. I guess I needed help with the chickens. 

Well, in 1978 I expanded to 400 acres and increased the flock to 

15 

20,000 laying hens. Having my first of four children that year, at 

25 years of age, I thought I was on top of the world. 

Well, guess what? My bad experience with a bad economy began 

in the 1980’s with bad commodity prices, and I rented everything 

out in 1992. I found a job at a combustible waste and recycling 

waste center, where I received training for boiler operator and EPA 

licensing for waste combustor operator. In 1998 I accepted a New 

Flyer position in maintenance. Less than a year had passed and I 

applied for an electrical position and I got it. New Flyer technology 

was changing fast and I had to learn to keep up. 

As I stated earlier, in 2002, diesel hybrid buses were introduced 

and I became the first of two electricians ever in the United States 

to build diesel hybrid buses in a production line environment. I 

represent over 800 union employees of these two plants, all which 

have experienced and technology and training needed to move from 

being a farmer, store clerk, waitress, common laborer, etcetera, 

with the ability to have health insurance and the many benefits 

that come with a great company like this in our community. 

In 2009 I met with Vice President Biden and several other cabinet members when they kicked off the Strong Middle Class Initiative at the St. Cloud, Minnesota plant in March. What a difference 

it has made for these two plants with ARRA funding is the fact 

that New Flyer has received orders from over 17 different transit 

agencies, totaling 638 equivalent units that are tied directly to 

ARRA funding. These include Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, 

Washington, Rochester, Milwaukee, Charleston, Detroit, Boston, 

Honolulu, Cincinnati, Miami, New Orleans, Fargo, Moorhead, 

Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Gardena, California. Many of 

these buses would not have been purchased without the availability of ARRA funding, and we appreciate that. 

Just a note. I just found out we are going back into full production the first quarter of 2011, so thank you. 

It has become apparent to me the crisis of financing for city governments have become burdensome and almost crippling, and I believe that maintaining and operating these vehicles all these cities 

can handle. I would encourage that the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure would continue to support financing that 

would alleviate the pressure of the local governments’ limited purchasing abilities. That would in turn create necessary jobs and the 

hope and future of the industry that we as laborers deem so important for our families in rural America. 

Remember, each unit that is added to the production line creates 

nine more jobs, and these are the big time jobs in small town 

America that we have always wished for, so keep the dream alive 

and help us supply everybody with a good means of public transportation. 

I would like to thank Monsieur Oberstar and Mr. Mica for inviting and letting us tell our story. Merci beaucoup. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for that splendid testimony. Your own personal history is very similar to that of many 

of our fellow citizens in central, western, and southern Minnesota, 

who started out on the farm and migrated to the city. It is a great 

personal story and I feel very pleased and honored to have played 

a role in bringing New Flyer to St. Cloud and authorizing the fundVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:17 Dec 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00131 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58493.0 KAYLA
16 

ing of the access road into the place and preventing those who 

wanted to squeeze it out of the market from doing so. It has been 

a great success story. New Flyer is a resounding success. 

Now I am going to ask Mr. Cummings, the Chair of our Coast 

Guard Subcommittee, to introduce our next witness. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I welcome 

to this hearing a very good friend of mine, Mr. Alfred Foxx, currently the Director of the Department of Public Works for the City 

of Baltimore, and previously the Director of the Department of 

Transportation for the City of Baltimore. Mr. Foxx has a long list 

of accomplishments in developing and overseeing transportation 

and infrastructure projects at the local, State, national, and international levels. 

Mr. Foxx retired as a colonel from the United States Army Corps 

of Engineers and his last post with the Corps was Executive Director of Civil Works. During his tenure with the Corps, he coordinated the construction of locks, dams, hydropower facilities, recreational sites, and flood control works, and he oversaw regulatory 

permitting, environmental compliance, and administrative responsibilities. He has also guided the Corps’ responses to natural disasters across the Country. 

Most recently, as Director of the Department of Transportation 

for the City of Baltimore, Mr. Foxx managed 1500 employees and 

presided over highway and road design, construction, and maintenance projects, including those made possible by a $35.1 million investment from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Mr. 

Foxx was confirmed in his new position as Director of the Department of Public Works for the City on September 20th, 2010, and 

I am pleased to say he is, Mr. Chairman, an outstanding public 

servant who uses the people’s tax dollars in an effective and efficient manner, and we are very, very pleased to have him with us. 

With that, I yield back. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, thank you for bringing this splendid witness to our Committee. The Corps of Engineers is always welcome 

at this witness table. In whatever shape or title you have, you are 

always a Corps of Engineers person. 

Mr. FOXX. Thank you very much, sir. 

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and honorable Members of the 

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. And I would like to 

specifically acknowledge my Congressman over my district, Congressman Cummings, and all of the hard work that he has done 

for the great State of Maryland. 

As Congressman Cummings pointed out, I am the former Director of Transportation and had the honor to lead that organization 

for about nine years. I have a working career of 35 years and am 

very proud of my service in the United States Army Corps of Engineers. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you 

today about the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act and its 

positive impact on Baltimore, the transportation infrastructure, the 

lives of our working people, and the improved quality of life of our 

neighborhoods. 

Baltimore is one of 24 jurisdictions in the State of Maryland, but 

it is the only jurisdiction in the State of Maryland where we are 

responsible for the entire transportation infrastructure. As an older 

17 

city, Baltimore is transitioning from an industrialized to a serviceoriented economy, working to become a more technologically savvy 

city, but an aging infrastructure built to support a much older way 

of life. 

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act came at a time 

when I, as Director of Transportation, was looking at a capital program of zero dollars and non-Federal funds. Even though I had 

Federal dollars, I didn’t have enough money to put up the match. 

So we welcomed the $35.1 million that we received from the Reinvestment and Recovery Act. 

We were able to put together a diverse package of projects to 

reach across as much of our local economy as possible. The great 

thing about it, the competitive bids that we received for these 

projects was indicative of the economic times we were in, particularly in the construction, professional trades, and supply businesses. Our bids came in well below the engineer estimate, and in 

some cases 30 to 40 percent below the engineer estimate. As a result, we were able to stretch those dollars a little farther and put 

more projects out on the street for our contractors and their businesses. 

The Recovery Act gave us the opportunity to address some of our 

bridges with low safety ratings. Argonne Dry Bridge, for instance, 

over the Herring Run, effectively uses these funds to employ a 

range of craftsmen and purchasing of materials from local suppliers. The project also builds on future long-term investments by 

the Department of Transportation, Recreation and Parks, and Public Works in the rehabilitation of the Herring Run Watershed, and 

the first phase of a greenway in the northeast section of Baltimore. 

We were able to add $3 million to an existing project to repair 

the structural elements of our Pennington Avenue Bridge, a major 

corridor over Curtis Creek, located just a few hundred yards north 

of a critical Coast Guard maintenance yard. We invested in resurfacing of some of our major corridors that were in poor shape, with 

plans that had been sitting on the shelf for lack of funds. 

We are resurfacing Northern Parkway, a major east-west arterial 

that interconnects with our I-83 and is heavily used by commuters, 

residents, neighborhoods, major hospitals, and our horse racing 

fans that come to attend the Preakness every year. This project, 

along with resurfacing of the intersection of Park Heights Avenue 

project, is another example of a Recovery Act project that also supports a major neighborhood revitalization project in the Park 

Heights area, creating an attractive gateway into this once neglected community. 

Through the Ferry Boat Discretionary Program, Baltimore is enhancing its water taxi services to residents and commuters attempting to get to jobs and locations along the eastern side of the 

harbor in Downtown Baltimore. Good east-west transit service is 

lacking for these residents, and the water taxi provides an alternative mode of transportation, as well as avoiding the congestion 

on the city streets. Approximately 80,000 passenger trips are provided annually by two water taxis, and with the creation of this 

third route we will add an additional 25,000 to 30,000 trips every 

year. 

18 

For Baltimore, the timing of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, as I can say, could not have been more critical. We 

know that when we do not consistently invest in our infrastructure, 

it grows worse. Not better, it grows worse, and it costs more to fix. 

These investments we are making will compliment our future investment, improve the quality of life of our communities, provide 

meaningful employment, and encourage investment by others in 

our city. 

While we are here today discussing the importance of investing 

in our transportation infrastructure, let me put on my public works 

hat. Let us not forget that unless we make the same type of commitment to and invest in our sewers and storm drains, our underground utilities, our working dollars will be for naught. Let me 

paint this picture for you, sir. I am sure you have seen it over and 

over again. Millions of dollars spent to pave a road, and 30 days 

later you find a backhoe and people out there digging it up to repair a 50-to 60-year-old storm drain or sewer line underneath. 

When they cover that back up, you have just reduced the life of 

that road. 

So as we look at transportation, the transportation infrastructure, let us not forget about the investment in the utilities underneath the road, particularly in the urban areas. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman and the Committee, for your kind attention, and would be happy to answer any questions you have. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that very, very important engineering lesson at the tail end of your testimony. It is something 

that has often occurred to me and a matter that I think we need 

to bring city engineers together with those who devise the 

AASHTO manual and ensure that somewhere in the manual there 

is a directive to attend to the underground utility needs before you 

put in new pavement. You are so right. We see this happening all 

too often. 

For our next witness, Mrs. Napolitano has an introduction. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I couldn’t agree 

with you more on your statement, because I see, as a former city 

elected official, where utilities come in and dig, the road is not the 

same, and, unfortunately, they don’t coordinate, whether it is the 

electricity, the water, or the whatever digging they do, to coordinate it so they can do it all at once, and be able to do it prior to 

any renovations to the roadways. Somewhere along the line we 

need to kind of encourage that. 

But I certainly want to welcome Doran Barnes, Executive Director at Foothill Transit, who is joined today by Roger Chandler, sitting behind him, Councilman from Arcadia, one of the member cities, and who also happens to be Chairman of the Board of Foothill 

Transit. It is a regional transit agency in my district that serves 

the San Gabriel and Pomona Counties of Los Angeles County. You 

heard me say about 12 million people? Well, they serve over 14 million residents annually. 

I am proud to have worked with Foothill Transit continuously for 

over a decade and a half. They make their service more environmentally friendly and efficient for the customers, and are always 

looking for new ways to be able to serve their constituency, which 

19 

happens to be mine. And they, for the past decade, have been replacing their old diesel buses with clean CNG buses. 

Mr. Mica, you were there. I thank you for joining us. He was 

with us last month to kick off Ecoliner. He wrote on it; I wrote on 

it. It is the newest green project, which is the world’s first a fast 

charging electrical bus; 10 minute charge. And it will be replacing 

a lot of the buses that are spewing out a lot of the contaminants 

into the air. We were also joined by Congressman David Dreier. 

I do congratulate Mr. Chandler, Mr. Barnes, the transit board, 

and their staff for their dedication to implementing these new innovative projects and for continuing to make the best use of the taxpayer dollar to present those services. 

I thank the Committee for recognizing Foothill Transit leadership by having them as witnesses testifying today, especially in 

dealing with this new transforming technology, world technology. 

So, Mr. Barnes, thank you for being here, and I yield back. 

Mr. BARNES. Good morning. Thank you. It is very exciting to be 

here with you today to talk about how we are successfully putting 

Recovery Act dollars to work in Los Angeles County to create jobs, 

to reduce our carbon footprint and improve the environment, and 

to make our communities more livable. 

As Representative Napolitano had mentioned, we are the fixed 

route transit operator for the San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys in 

Eastern Los Angeles County. We are a Joint Powers Authority 

made up of 22 cities plus the County of Los Angeles. 

And one of the things that is very unique about Foothill Transit 

is that, unlike most public agencies, Foothill Transit has absolutely 

no employees; all employee activities are contracted out to the private sector. And Congress has designated Foothill Transit as a national public-private model for transit authorities. What that allows 

us to do is blend the best of the public sector, in terms of setting 

policy, with the best of the private sector. 

Part of our mission has always focused on innovation and being 

an innovative transit operator, and our public-private partnership 

was one of the early efforts at innovation. While we were able to 

move forward a number of Recovery Act projects with the funding 

that was provided, the project that we are absolutely the most excited about is our Ecoliner project, which is the first fast charge, 

heavy duty, en route charging transit bus that has been available 

in the marketplace. And we have a short video that will tell you 

a little bit more about the Ecoliner, if we can do that at this point. 

[Video shown.] 

Mr. BARNES. That is part of a slightly longer video that we have 

produced; it is available out on You Tube, if you would like to take 

a look at the entire video. But it gives you a little bit of an idea 

about the bus. 

In addition to being an innovative project, the Ecoliner demonstrated one of the major goals from the ARRA program, which 

is the creation of jobs; and our partner in this project, our vendor 

partner, is Proterra, which is a Golden, Colorado-based company. 

Mark Gottschalk, the Chief Development Officer, is here with 

Proterra, and through this project 40 jobs were created. In addition, over 100 vendors were involved in providing the parts for the 

20 

vehicles. These vendors are located in 33 States, and the multiplier 

effect ultimately created 120 jobs as part of this program. 

But, to me, one of the things that is even more exciting is not 

the 120 jobs that were created immediately, but the jobs that will 

be created as Proterra continues to grow as a company. They are 

establishing a major manufacturing facility in Greenville, South 

Carolina, and they expect to generate over 1300 jobs during the 

next five years. When you combine that with the supplier partners 

that will be involved with the creation of their product, over 4,000 

jobs will be created. So not only is the technology advancing immediate job creation, but long-term job creation with this exciting environmental product. 

On September 3rd we introduced the Ecoliner to the communities that we serve, and we were very pleased that Representative 

Napolitano was there to address the hometown crowd. Congressman Dreier, Congressman Mica also joined us in that great celebration; and Deputy Administrator for the Federal Transit Administration, Therese McMillan, was with us. 

What that event created was the introduction of the product to 

the community, but also generated significant press coverage at the 

local level, at the national level, and internationally. And that is 

not only good for the development of this project, but it is good for 

the transit industry on balance. So we are very exciting about the 

buzz that has been created related to the introduction of the 

Ecoliner. 

So the real question is what is next. And for Foothill Transit we 

have three buses that are currently in service providing daily transit operating programs for our customers. The Foothill Transit 

board has in place funding to purchase an additional nine buses 

and has identified over a dozen additional lines where the Ecoliner 

can be deployed. So we believe this is the beginning and that the 

ARRA program provided the catalyst to be able to move this project 

forward. 

I very much appreciate the opportunity to share with you the 

story of the Ecoliner and would certainly be happy to answer any 

questions that you might have. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for your enthusiastic testimony and 

the video. I got so fired up last night reading your testimony, I 

wanted to fly right out there and try one of those buses. I did in 

Santa Barbara, where they had an all-electric bus project, and that 

was quite successful in that hilly country of theirs. They also had 

a hydrogen-fueled bus that was operative for a few years. I don’t 

know the story of its disappearance but, at any rate, these are the 

technologies of the future that we need to stimulate, and I appreciate your testimony. 

Now Mr. Larsen has an introduction for our next witness. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the 

Committee. I am pleased to introduce Joyce Eleanor, CEO of Community Transit. CT is the largest transit agency in my district, in 

Northwest Washington State. And as a former member of CT’s 

board of directors and a former regular rider on the commuter 

service, I know Joyce and Community Transit very well. 

The agency is known locally and in the State as forward-thinking 

and community focused, and that is in large part because of Joyce’s 

21 

leadership. From being the first transit agency in the State to build 

its own Park and Ride lot in 1981 to being the first in the State 

to offer bus rapid transit in 2009, CT is always looking for innovative ways to serve their customers. They are also respected for 

their collaborative approach to meeting community needs and solving problems. 

They have a great story to tell when it comes to the Recovery 

Act. As early as 2008 CT was pushing for economic stimulus funding for transit and highlighting projects that were ready to receive 

funding. And after the Recovery Act passed, the agency immediately went to work identifying those capital projects to fund and 

how much to spend on operating costs. They applied for a TIGGER 

grant and were successful. I don’t want to steal too much of Joyce’s 

thunder, but as a result of the Recovery Act CT has saved or created almost 80 jobs in my district alone. 

It is still struggling in this economy, and I think we have heard 

that from our transit agencies, but thanks to the Recovery Act they 

are better off and, as a result, CT’s customers and employees are 

better off as well. 

This story is repeated across Washington State. Estimates show 

that in my State 67,000 jobs have been saved or created due to the 

Recovery Act, including over 15,000 jobs building transportation infrastructure in the first year of the Act and over 13,000 so far in 

the second year. Recovery Act funds have helped construct a new 

road on Second Avenue and Ferndale that will allow a commercial 

area to develop. This project employed 84 people in a local community and will allow for numerous permanent jobs in the future. 

Bellingham International Airport received over $3 million from 

the Recovery Act for repaving ramps and taxiways, which have created 100 family-waged jobs. 

The Recovery Act is putting money in the pockets of 291,000 

families in Washington State to help them pay for mortgages and 

put food on the table, and it continues to do so. More jobs will be 

created by the Recovery Act; it will continue to improve our Nation’s transportation infrastructure and it will certainly continue to 

help our transit agencies like Community Transit. 

I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting Joyce to testify 

and I look forward to hearing her testimony. Unfortunately, Joyce 

and Todd and Larry, I have to go meet with the Canadian ambassador to talk about Amtrak’s second train, which is another transportation issue that we are all dealing with. 

[Remarks made off microphone.] 

Mr. LARSEN. Well, you might be more successful than us. Thanks 

a lot. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. All right. Thank you. 

Ms. Eleanor, please begin. 

Ms. ELEANOR. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Mica, 

and honored Members. My name is Joyce Eleanor, and I represent 

Community Transit as its CEO. We are a mid-sized transit agency 

providing local and commuter service in Snohomish County, Washington, which is just north of Seattle. 

Since Community Transit was created 34 years ago, our agency 

has grown to serve nearly 12 million passengers annually, includVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:17 Dec 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00137 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58493.0 KAYLA
22 

ing 50 percent of all Snohomish County residents traveling into 

Downtown Seattle each weekday. 

The recession has hit our agency hard. Our agency is primarily 

funded by local sales tax revenues. In 2010, we will receive the 

same level of sales tax revenue as we did in 2005. However, since 

2005, all of our expenses have grown. We estimate the loss of sales 

tax revenue due to this recession will total about $180 million by 

2013. This is money that would have been used for bus service, bus 

replacement, and other needs. We will never see this money. 

For the past three years we have sustained ourselves through 

bridge budgets, moving money around where we could, borrowing 

from our reserves, and, of course, cutting costs. We have cut more 

than $30 million in programs and administration over a three-year 

period, and that is about a third of our annual budget. 

As bad as things are financially, they could have been far, far 

worse. If it were not for the American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act, things would have been much worse. Thanks to Congress, your 

Committee, the efforts of our local representatives, Rick Larsen 

and Jay Inslee, as well as Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Community Transit secured $17.5 million in ARRA Federal 

stimulus funds last year; and this kept us from having to cut service in 2009. 

Specifically, we were able to use about $3.3 million of the FTA 

5307 funds for operating costs, split between our direct operations 

and preventive maintenance. This flexible funding saved 74 jobs at 

our agency that would have potentially been eliminated if we had 

had to cut service last year. On behalf of our employees, I thank 

you. But the benefits don’t stop there. We are also using $10.7 million 

of transit capital assistance funding to purchase 23 replacement 

buses. These funds allowed us to move forward with replacing 

buses that are now 16 years old, four years older than the Federal 

life cycle. The buses we are purchasing are double-decker buses to 

be used in our commuter service to Seattle. Thanks to the ARRA 

funds, we will be launching a fleet of 23 Double Talls, which is 

what we call them, later this year. 

I want to tell you one more thing about our double-deck buses. 

When we first leased this bus in 2007, we leased from Alexander 

Dennis, the world leader in double-deck buses. The company is 

based in Great Britain, and that first bus was entirely built in the 

U.K. As we went out to bid, Alexander Dennis changed its manufacturing process to be Buy America compliant. They have contracted with the El Dorado Bus Building Company in California to 

create a plant here. They have two assembly lines in California 

with about 30 people working to create our 23 buses. 

The Recovery Act also included funds dedicated to clean energy, 

the TIGGER grants. We received $3 million in TIGGER funds for 

hybrid replacement buses. Thanks to the $3 million TIGGER grant, 

15 of 24 buses that we are buying will have hybrid diesel electric 

propulsion engines. Because hybrid buses cost more up front than 

standard clean buses, we would not have purchased these otherwise. 

The buses are being built by New Flyer of America based in St. 

Cloud, and other testimony before this Committee has indicated 

23 

that stimulus funds used for bus purchases have maintained and 

created jobs, and also at many sub-vendors. We also received 

$425,000 in ARRA funds through the Federal Highway Administration for redevelopment of a 30-year parking lot at the Mountlake 

Terrace Transit Center. The parking lot redevelopment was completed this summer, and it created five full-time equivalent construction jobs for the six-month life of the project. 

The route ahead for our agency is uncertain. Retail sales tax 

makes up the majority of our agency’s funding, and sales tax levels 

are 20 percent below what they were when the recession began. As 

I mentioned earlier, we held off service cuts for three years. In 

2009, it was the ARRA funds that saved our service. However, in 

June of this year we had to cut 15 percent of our service to customers. Community Transit is now in the midst of creating our 

2011 budget. We are proposing more staff and program reductions. 

Chairman Oberstar, Representative Mica, you and your Committee have greatly helped our agency and our customers with the 

package of stimulus funds you created last year. Any future action 

along the same lines could have the same positive effect. And, of 

course, we applaud you for working on the surface transportation 

authorization. We need the certainty that such legislation will provide. 

I thank you for your wonderful work and for the opportunity to 

share our experiences about public transit in Snohomish County. 

Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that excellent testimony. I will 

come back to your observations on flexibility for transfer of capital 

funds to operating account later, but it is a splendid example of 

what we heard and what we intended well over a year and a half 

ago. 

Mr. Theerman, welcome and thank you for your presentation. 

Mr. THEERMAN. Chairman Oberstar, Ranking Member Mica and 

Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today and for your leadership in providing funding 

for water and wastewater infrastructure in the American Recovery 

and Reinvestment Act. My name is Jeff Theerman. I am the Executive Director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District. In addition to my duties at MSD, I also serve as the President of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, or NACWA, and it is 

my pleasure to testify on behalf of NACWA as well. 

This past recession had a significant impact on budgets of wastewater utilities across the Country, impacts we are still feeling 

today. Harmful closures continue, along with cutbacks in manufacturing and construction and significant unemployment. These conditions have led to significant decreases in revenue for utilities. 

The funding provided by ARRA helped fill the funding gap left 

by these revenue shortfalls and specifically allowed MSD to move 

forward with capital projects we may have otherwise been unable 

to undertake. MSD received a combination of loans and grants for 

many projects within our service area. Direct funding was provided 

for the Argonne and Upper Maline Creek projects in central and 

northeast portions of our service area. These projects were constructed to address antiquated sanitary sewers whose capacity 

problems resulted in basement backups and sewage overflows. 

24 

Funding provided a total of $10,980,000 and generated 250 new 

construction jobs to build or rehabilitate 8800 feet of sewers, resolving both health and environmental concerns. 

ARRA loans and grants were used extensively throughout Missouri. This, coupled with low construction bids, freed up $88 million of SRF funding for the district’s Missouri River Treatment 

Plan expansion. All told, these funds will save MSD $70 million 

over a 20-year period and create an additional 564 jobs during the 

three-year period of construction of this project. It is important to 

note the savings MSD will accrue over this time frame will be used 

to accelerate additional projects for treatment plan disinfection improvements on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. 

ARRA also authorized the Build America bonds program. These 

funds allowed the district to take advantage of lower-cost financing 

and allowed MSD to issue $137 million in bonds, with an estimated 

savings of $20.5 million in interest that can then be used to fund 

other projects. 

Infrastructure improvements and the jobs required to construct 

them are essential to St. Louis. With unemployment in our region 

at 9.5 percent, and with construction hours worked dropping to 50 

percent of 2008 levels, ARRA funds allowed our construction industry to remain afloat. 

MSD will be spending billions of dollars constructing sewer infrastructure improvements over the coming decades, relying heavily 

on private contractors to provide high-quality construction services. 

If our economic situation leads to a serious decline of private companies in the construction community, our infrastructure investment programs will suffer from increased cost and a lack of qualified contractors. 

For these reasons, in Missouri we welcome stimulus funding for 

the need it addresses, the employment it continues to bring, and 

the relief it provided for many workers who faced the stark reality 

of sudden and extended unemployment. 

Many communities have similar stories, and for these reasons, to 

the extent additional stimulus efforts are necessary, we urge you 

to include a robust investment for clean water infrastructure. Investing in water and wastewater infrastructure provides significant 

economic and environmental returns to the communities in which 

those investments are made, as well as to the Nation’s economy as 

a whole. 

I thank this Committee for its leadership in seeing to it that our 

critical water infrastructure is a key component to Federal economic recovery efforts, and I look forward to any questions Members of the Committee may have regarding my comments. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for your personal, that is, 

your St. Louis perspective, but also that from NACWA. We are 

grateful for the support that your national organization has given 

to our efforts to reauthorize the SRF, the State Revolving Loan 

Fund program, which has stalled in the other body, as we quaintly 

say, for the last four years. Actually more than that, for the last 

six or eight years. We are going to continue pressing the case for 

the $15 billion four-year authorization bill. By the time we get to 

that, I think we will need more like $20 billion. 

25 

I will now yield to Mr. Boozman for an introduction for our next 

witness. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a real pleasure 

to have Kelly Johnson with us today. Kelly is the Airport Director 

of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, and I have had the 

opportunity, being here five terms, to work with a number of different individuals, administrators throughout Arkansas and 

throughout the County, and I would rank Ms. Johnson at the very, 

very top of that list as far as being capable and just doing a tremendous job administrating our airport. Our airport is a very 

young airport, it has been one of the fastest growing airports in the 

Country, and nobody does a better job of stretching their dollars 

and taking care of taxpayers’ money. 

So, again, it is a real pleasure to have you here today, and I certainly enjoyed working with you in the past and look forward to 

working with you in the future. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Congressman Boozman, and thank 

you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to be here today. It is my 

distinct privilege to be the Director of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport and also serve as First Vice Chair for the American 

Association of Airport Executives. The Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, or XNA, as we lovingly call it, is a small hub airport 

that serves five cities and two counties in Northwest Arkansas. 

I would like to begin by thanking Congress for including infrastructure provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act. I would also like to thank the Members of the Committee for 

your tireless efforts to pass an FAA reauthorization bill that would 

also stimulate the economy and create jobs. 

The Recovery Act included $1.1 billion for ready-to-go airport 

construction projects. The FAA has already issued 331 grants for 

367 airport construction projects at airports around the Country. 

According to the FAA, 268 of these projects have already been completed. 

Last year, XNA received $9.5 million in Recovery Act grants to 

construct an alternate landing surface. This funding will help us 

complete a critical safety project at our facility, as well as saving 

and creating jobs in our community. Our one and only runway is 

rapidly deteriorating due to a condition known as alkali-silica Reaction. This is a chemical reaction that often causes concrete in runways, highways, and bridges to crack and expand. The deterioration has been so bad that we have spent approximately three-quarters of a million dollars in the last two years alone repairing the 

pavement to prevent foreign object debris which could damage aircraft and jeopardize safety. 

We are constructing the alternate landing surface so that we can 

close our crumbling runway and begin a major reconstruction 

project, instead of continuing to throw money at dramatically increasing repair costs. If this project hadn’t taken place, we could 

have been forced into the position to close our airport and repair 

our deteriorating runway. A shutdown would have impacted Fortune 100 companies, including Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, which are 

headquartered in Northwest Arkansas, as well as smaller businesses that rely on air service into and out of our airport. Without 

26 

the Recovery Funds Act, we simply would not have been able to 

proceed with this critical safety project as quickly as we did. 

We estimate the construction of the alternate landing surface has 

created approximately 100 direct jobs, as reported on a quarterly 

cumulative basis, or 25 full-time equivalent job years. However, it 

is important to note that that estimate does not include the indirect or induced jobs that have been retained or created as a result 

of the project. 

The Recovery Act also included bond-related provisions that are 

helping airports move forward with critical infrastructure projects 

that have been delayed because of the collapse of the bond market. 

For instance, the bill excluded private activity bonds from the Alternative Minimum Tax for bonds at airports issued in 2009 and 

2010. The AMT provisions have been enormously successful. The 

FAA estimates that approximately 40 airports have issued more 

than $10 billion in bonds that benefitted from the temporary AMT 

provision. The AMT relief is expected to save airports approximately $1 billion in reduced financing costs. Our airport refinanced more than $30 million in bonds this year, 

taking advantage of the non-AMT opportunity. This has resulted in 

making our bonds, which we market weekly, much more attractive 

to investors. 

The Recovery Act also created the Build America Bonds program 

to help State and local governments reduce their financing costs 

and build infrastructure projects. Several airports have successfully 

issued approximately $2 billion in Build America Bonds to refinance projects at their facilities. 

Mr. Chairman, I would like to discuss a few other steps that 

Congress could take to help airports create jobs and stimulate the 

economy. First, we urge Congress to pass an FAA reauthorization 

bill that raises the cap on passenger facility charges and increases 

airport improvement program funding. It has been three years 

since the FAA bill expired. We hope that you and your Senate colleagues will work together to send a multi-year bill to the President’s desk before the end of the current extension, which expires 

at the end of this year. 

Airports are grateful for the House-passed version of the bill, 

which includes provisions to raise the PFC cap from $4.50 to $7.00 

and increase AIP funding by $100 million per year. The higher 

PFC level alone will generate more than $1 billion per year for critical safety, security, and capacity projects, without relying on Federal funding. Raising the PFC cap and increasing AIP funding will 

also stimulate the economy by creating tens of thousands of good 

paying jobs every year. 

Third, airports recommend that Congress extend the Build America Bonds program, which also expires at the end of this year. This 

would provide airports with another tool to lower borrowing costs 

and invest in additional infrastructure projects to help stimulate 

the economy. Congress could also help by extending the AMT provisions that are slated to expire at the end of this year. A permanent 

AMT fix would help save airports even more money, allow them to 

invest in more infrastructure projects, and create even more jobs. 

Chairman Oberstar, Ranking Member Mica, and Members of the 

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, thank you again for 

27 

inviting me to appear before you today, and I look forward to answering your questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, thank you. You really raced through your 

statement. You hit all the points, and I especially appreciate your 

appeal for passage of the reauthorization bill for aviation. I am 

going to send your testimony over to the other body and ask them 

to get going with it. This is an appeal from the heartland here, 

right from the very heartland of America. 

We passed that legislation in the 110th Congress. In 2007 we 

moved that bill. And it bogged down over a number of items that 

were in our bill, not in the Senate, and that the previous Administration couldn’t agree with and couldn’t resolve, one of them being 

air traffic controller pay issue. This Administration came into office; they settled that within the first five months, the new contract 

done, ratified by the controller’s union; and then the issue of the 

passenger facility charge, which is grossly misunderstood by others 

or, if understood, then grossly misrepresented as a tax. It is not a 

tax, it is a fee. And it is not required. No airport has to impose the 

passenger facility charge; if you choose to do so, you are allowed 

to do so. That was initiated as an initiative of the Bush 1 administration under then Secretary of Transportation Sam Skinner. 

I was Chair of the Aviation Subcommittee at the time we passed 

the authority for the first PFC. It took quite a combined bipartisan 

effort to get that passed and we did it, and it has resulted in billions of dollars of investment on the hard side of airports, 

supplementing the AIP program, building runways and taxiways 

and expanding airport capacity, and also dealing with those airport 

needs that are beyond AIP authority and which you, your brother 

and sister airport authorities across the Country, have used wisely 

to enhance capacity and deal with the needs of travelers. 

The airlines don’t really care what happens to the traveler; they 

just set a time, you come and we will leave when you are onboard, 

and if you not onboard, we will leave anyway. But it is the Airport 

Authority that worries about the traveler, to make sure that their 

passageway to the gate is smooth and efficient, and you have done 

those things with those passenger facility charges. 

So there is just one person over there in the other body that is 

holding it up; has set himself up as the authority, as the fiscal conscience of the Congress, which is a lot of baloney, frankly. I say it 

and I have said it many times publicly, privately, and it is in violation of the bipartisan accord we have had for going on 20 years for 

the PFC. 

Then there is one other little issue that has to do with National 

Airport. Not so little, it is a big conflict of interest of legislating a 

majority, monopoly, almost, a stranglehold on National Airport for 

one airline, U.S. Airways; and it is something the other body has 

to deal with, it is beyond our ability to resolve. They have it all 

tangled up in holds and hot holds and secret holds and filibuster 

threats. 

Let’s begin with Mr. Cummings. Do you have any questions of 

witnesses? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Foxx, just one question. You were talking about bids coming 

in at sometimes 30 to 40 percent less than the engineering study 

28 

or whatever. Is that because people were out of jobs and out of 

work, and they were more anxious to get opportunities? I just wonder what that says about the regular bidding process. You follow 

what I am saying? That is quite a difference, and I was just curious. 

Mr. FOXX. I understand exactly what you mean, sir. Based on our 

engineering estimates, I think it was more indicative of the climate 

which they were facing. All of the contractors were looking to get 

projects so they could put people back to work, so they were willing 

to take some risk and put in lower bids than what they would normally put in just to get those projects and get people back out 

there. I am not saying that they would take a loss; it is just that 

they were trying to bid, I would say, more realistically on some of 

the projects that we had. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So I guess they may have taken less of a profit? 

Mr. FOXX. Right, less of a profit. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And keeping their people working? 

Mr. FOXX. Yes, sir. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. They prefer that. That makes sense. What about 

minority participation? I mean, what kind of minority participation 

were you able to achieve, do you know, with regard t those dollars? 

Mr. FOXX. In regards to the dollars, across the board, around 36 

percent minority participation in all of the projects that we have, 

women-owned businesses and minority-owned businesses throughout the city. In many cases we try to encourage the prime contractors to increase that amount so that we can get more of the smaller 

businesses on the construction sites to help those out. But on average it is around 36 percent minority participation in all contracts. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Certainly. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is an extraordinary achievement. We would 

like to have more about you achieve that goal. From my experience, 

I would say that is probably the highest minority participation of 

any system in the Country. 

Mr. FOXX. Well, the City of Baltimore promotes minority and 

women-owned business participation in all of its contracts, and all 

of the prime contractors that we deal with pretty much agree with 

that process and try to pull in as many women-owned and minority 

businesses as possible to participate in the contracts. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You know, it was Mr. Cummings who had a very 

significant hand, as we shaped the stimulus bill, in providing the 

$20 million authority for bonding for minority-owned enterprises. It 

was his suggestion and initiative from the Maryland experience, 

and I thank him for that. 

I thank the gentleman for yielding. 

Mr. FOXX. I talk regularly with the Congressman about minorityowned businesses and their participation in all contracts in the 

City of Baltimore. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. Just one other question. 

You said you had projects that were shovel-ready. How did you 

make a determination as to which projects you take on? 

Mr. FOXX. Well, when we evaluate, we look at the criticality of 

the project and how it would support neighborhood revitalization. 

Some of the projects we looked at how it supported the traffic flow, 

29 

the priority as far as traffic flow within the City of Baltimore. For 

example, Northern Parkway, a critical east-west arterial, and we 

just didn’t have enough money to repair that, so we invested a lot 

of the stimulus dollars into that. 

Plus, after the disaster in Minneapolis with the bridge, we focus 

a lot on our old bridges, and Argonne Bridge is one of them; and 

that was priority because it has such a low rating to get that 

bridge fixed as quickly as possible, and the stimulus funds allowed 

us to do that. We had the project design; we just had to get the 

money to get it out there and get it fixed. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. 

I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. 

Mr. Boozman? 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Something I would like to know from whoever 

would like to volunteer the answer or just really a comment, one 

of the things that we have really had tremendous problems with 

is just getting projects going. I think the average road project takes 

what now, Jim, nine or ten years, or something? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It depends on the nature of the project. A simple 

mill and overlap often takes three years, and transit projects average 14 years. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Exactly. And we saw the bridge, your bridge, that 

was completed in a very short time. That probably would have 

taken many years, years and years, through the normal cycle of 

things. 

So tell me a little bit about some of the problems that you have 

had in getting your projects going and if you have any suggestions 

on how we can cut through some of the time delays. Not only is 

it a time factor, but it is also a money factor with inflation and 

every other reason. So whoever would like to comment just for a 

minute or so. 

Mr. FOXX. One of the things we were asked when we were addressing the stimulus funding was to have shovel-ready, and in my 

mind, when it says shovel-ready, that means the design had to be 

near completion so that we could go out on the street and award 

the project. In many cases, if you are running an engineering, like 

in the private sector, as the Director of Transportation, I have always had projects in the design phase; and you are right, if you 

started off from concept, it normally takes about a year, a year and 

a half to get an individual project designed before you can get it 

out on the street. 

So we had several projects that were around 60 percent, 90 percent complete in design, but we just didn’t have the construction 

money. And we completed those projects, put them out on the 

street, and that is what we considered; if it was around 60 to 90 

percent complete in design, we considered that as being shovelready because it was close to being completed as far as the design, 

and we could put it out, advertise it, get a bid on it, and go into 

construction within a relatively short time, six to nine months. So 

that is the technique we used. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Further answer to the gentleman’s question is 

that it helps to have a bridge collapse and people die, and quickly 

30 

your public attention is focused on doing things right and cutting 

through. Secondly, we didn’t relocate that bridge in Minneapolis; it 

is the same bridge piers, the same location. There was no environmental impact statement required; there was no right-of-way acquisition necessary; there was no design and engineering; they did 

a design build project. 

And, third, in the management of the project, the contractor and 

the State of Minnesota and the Federal Highway Administration 

all were in the same building, on the same Floor, and, instead of 

sending emails to each other, they walked down the hallway to 

share information and overcome and resolve differences or issues 

or questions. And the permitting that was necessary was very 

minimal, but it was all done ahead of the project. 

I yield to the gentleman. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Well, I think a big part of that is, as you say, the 

agencies, rather than being in a confrontational style, it was more 

of a cooperative style of working together; not a gotcha attitude, 

but this is what we need to go forward and ensure that this is done 

in a timely process. And I know you agree with this; we have 

talked at length. 

These are things that we truly do need to work on, and perhaps 

at some point, once the stimulus funding is done, it might be a 

good time to get some people who have gone through the process 

again just to sit down and say what were your obstacles, because 

I know the big study that we had done, that was one of their major 

things, was getting it such that we could get things done in a timely fashion. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Exactly. In the course of these hearings, I have 

repeatedly asked State DOTs and wastewater treatment agencies 

and transit agencies to give us their suggestions on project expediting. And in the future transportation bill that was reported from 

Subcommittee, we do have, in the Federal Highway and the Federal Transit Administration, an office of project expediting, which 

we have taken these lessons, we are going to apply them. Of 

course, it is always subject to further refinements and further improvements. 

But we started this with Mr. Young in the current SAFETEA 

legislation, and I crafted that provision; it took 44 pages. But delivering projects faster and more efficiently is a cornerstone of the future of transportation. We are going to work hard on that. 

We are going to also have to speed up our getting to the Floor 

to vote; we have zero time left. Two hundred seventy members 

have not yet voted. We will resume the hearing within 10 minutes 

after the last vote. 

The Committee stands in recess. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The Committee will resume its sitting. Apologies 

to the panel and to the subsequent witnesses for the interceding 

votes. It took longer than anticipated. 

Mr. Foxx, you referenced at some length the water taxi service 

in Baltimore, 80,000 passenger trips you wrote down, I wrote 

down? 

Mr. FOXX. Yes, sir. 

31 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And you had 35,000 more passenger trips with 

the funding received from the stimulus? 

Mr. FOXX. What I said, sir, is when we add that third route from 

the purchase of a water taxi, we expect another 25 to 30,000 trips 

on an annual basis. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And describe for me where—I know the Baltimore Harbor reasonably well, although I haven’t been there I 

would say three years, at least. But describe where that service 

originates and terminates. 

Mr. FOXX. Since you have been to Baltimore, you know that the 

Inner Harbor area is sort of an inverted U. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Correct. 

Mr. FOXX. And we have residents on the east side, west side. So 

the service connects basically at, I think General Ship is one of the 

companies there, and it goes across to the Canton area on the east 

side of the Inner Harbor. Overall, it is about a 10 to 15 minute trip, 

but what it does is it saves the residents who work over on the east 

side and commuters who are trying to get to the east side, they can 

park their cars in garages or at their home and take the water taxi 

to get to work on the east side; it saves them from hitting the congestion in Downtown Baltimore. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Is it all passenger, or do you accommodate vehicles as well? 

Mr. FOXX. It is all passenger, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And where are those passenger vessels produced? 

Mr. FOXX. I don’t have that with me, sir, but I can give you that 

information. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Made in America? They have to be under our 

Stimulus Act. 

Mr. FOXX. Yes, sir, they are. That, I do know. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. All right. And what plans do you have for expanding your water taxi service for the future? 

Mr. FOXX. Right now, we have increased it just recently, and as 

far as future plans, we think that right now the addition of the 

third line will be more than adequate for our needs. What we are 

trying to do is build up an interconnected transit system around 

that Inner Harbor area within Baltimore by connecting the bus 

transit and the water taxi transit together and making a complete 

circuit or transit system. And as far as future needs, we will evaluate what we are doing right now and then take a look at it. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, that is exciting for me to hear. That is a 

very important initiative, as you just described it, intermodalism, 

to bring public transit together with the ferry service, instead of 

just depending on the car to get you to one point, if you can take 

your bus, light rail, streetcar, or subway and come to a waterfront 

destination, take the ferry boat, save more time, more impact on 

the environment by using the ferry boat, low cost, low emissions, 

and serve vast numbers of people, then we are serving the best interest of transportation. 

Mr. FOXX. Yes, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We plan to increase substantially, nearly double, 

the funding for ferry boat service in the future transportation bill 

reported from our Subcommittee last year. 

Mr. FOXX. Great news. 

32 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Theerman, you referenced in your testimony, 

I wrote it down, but I think it is also in your presentation; I will 

just work from my notes, the increased issues that wastewater 

treatment agencies must deal with; nutrient control, sewer overflow, stormwater, water quality standards, emerging contaminants. 

I think by implication you also include CSO combined storm and 

sanitary sewer overflows. You talk about emerging contaminants. 

What are the emerging technologies to deal with CSO and with, 

particularly, stormwater runoff? 

Mr. THEERMAN. Nationwide, clean water agencies are working 

with best management practices to deal with stormwater runoff. 

Green infrastructure is becoming another tool in the toolbox, with 

that being employed in lieu of gray infrastructure improvements, 

all in an effort to resolve water quality concerns at the lowest cost. 

And that list you just read is representative of all the competing 

issues on the water side for the ratepayers’ dollars. So the 

prioritization of those, the working to solve the most important 

water quality issues in a priority fashion is something NACWA is 

very intently interested in. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Holding basins for stormwater runoff were tested 

in the Anacostia River here in the Washington area in 1968, 1969, 

1970. They used huge polyurethane bladders that could hold up to 

300,000 gallons as a test to channel the runoff, hold the runoff, and 

then pump it back through the system when the storm had subsided. Now the District of Columbia, the blue plains treatment system are moving into a much larger holding tank facility to deal 

with that runoff problem. 

In my district, in Duluth, Minnesota, Kurt Soderberg, now recently retired as the Director of the Western Lake Superior Center, 

I guess that smile on your face suggests you knew or know Kurt, 

has three such holding tank projects under construction now. Two 

of those are stimulus grant funded. I think that makes an awful 

lot of sense, rather than tearing up streets and putting in new capacity; build these storage facilities until after the storm has 

passed, and then you can, at a more leisurely paced, pump that 

material back through the treatment system. What do you think 

about that? 

Mr. THEERMAN. I can give you an example from St. Louis. We 

have a large combined sewer area in St. Louis, covers about 75 

square miles. There is about 1800 miles of combined sewers. The 

estimate MSD has developed for separation of those systems into 

two, wastewater and stormwater system, is about $10 billion on the 

public side, with another $10 billion of cost on the private side, because literally you are getting into the plumbing of most buildings 

in the combined sewer area. Alternatively, we have proposed a 

long-term control plan with a cost of $1.8 billion, but involves storage tunnels and the use of green infrastructure, similar to what 

you are seeing in Duluth. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that. We will be calling on you in 

the future. We passed, in the 110th Congress, and then again in 

this 111th Congress, through this Committee, through the House, 

reauthorization of the State Revolving Loan Fund program, which 

is the replacement for the wastewater treatment grant program 

that the Reagan Administration abolished and converted to loans. 

33 

Difficult as those are for smaller systems, they have to pay back 

the capital, they have to pay back the interest, but still it has been 

a lifelong. For 15 years that program has not been reauthorized, 

it has been continued through the appropriation process. 

So I urge you and all your brother and sister agencies to appeal 

to the Senate, release their hold, bring their bill to the Floor, have 

a vote on it. If they don’t want to vote for it, that is one thing; but 

to hold it hostage to some ideology that we don’t even know about, 

to say that the Senate can’t even take a stand on an issue is offensive to us in the House, and that is on both sides of the aisle. Passage of that bill would help immensely to move projects ahead. 

Mr. THEERMAN. You can have NACWA’s commitment to continue 

to work on that with the Committee, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I appreciate that. Thank you. 

Ms. Eleanor, you said very well that your revenue income has remained relatively constant over a period of years, but expenses 

have grown, particularly on the operating side, and the Section 

5307 operating funds was very important for your system and for 

others throughout the Country. You should know that when the 

Committee acted on our portion of stimulus, we had $12 billion for 

transit. That was reduced when we went into negotiation on the 

overall package within the House, but when we came to the Floor, 

an amendment by Mr. Nadler of our Committee, from New York, 

restored the $12 billion. 

That, unfortunately, was cut back when we got to conference 

with the Senate on the stimulus. It was testimony right at that 

table from Bev Davis of Atlanta, who said it doesn’t make sense on 

the one hand to give us funding to buy new transit vehicles and 

on the other hand to lay people off because we can’t afford to operate them. Give us the flexibility to shift capital funds to our operating account. And we did that, and we are going to do that in the 

future of transportation in which we double the funding to $99 billion in the authorization language in our bill for transit over six 

years. 

Now, it is urgently needed. Over the past 15 years our Nation’s 

population has increased 14 percent. Automobile use has increased 

22 percent, but transit ridership has increased 43 percent. And 

more people are riding on bus transit systems than on rail, but rail 

travels more miles. But both are essential to the future of relieving 

congestion in our metropolitan areas and to connecting the suburbs 

to the center city and the exurbs to the suburbs in the center city, 

and connecting rural America with commuter rail to urban centers. 

That is why we are going to have this significant increase in investment in transit for the future to address all of our transportation needs equitably, and providing some flexibility for operating 

expense is an issue we are dealing with. We have provided five percent flexibility for the major populations, those a million population 

and above, and larger amounts for the smaller systems. 

In some of the major metropolitan areas we have heard transit 

agencies say, some agencies, not all, but two or three have said 

don’t give us this authority because our State legislature will tell 

us use your capital account for your operating expense, and then 

they don’t provide the State matching funds, so they are escaping 

their responsibility for transit. 

34 

Now, do you have some insights for us on that issue? 

Ms. ELEANOR. First of all, I want to say thank you for everything 

that you have done for transit. It is wonderful to see that there are 

those who understand how important it is. Flexibility is important 

in a transit system. For my particular system, before the recession, 

I would have been overjoyed to have flexibility. 

But since the recession we have a problem on both sides of our 

budget. We used to be able to put away money, save money for 

buses out of our annual revenue. We no longer can do that. In fact, 

we are borrowing from our bus replacement fund just to keep operating. So by 2013 we are going to be broke in our capital program 

unless we turn it around, and the only way we can do that is to 

downsize our agency. 

That being said, that is only Community Transit. There are other 

systems who desperately need flexibility, and I would urge you to 

continue that fight; I think it is something that we do need. 

And as far as the State legislature or others not taking responsibility, my personal opinion is if we are going to get out of the transportation fix we are in, it is going to take everybody funding transit; the State, the feds, the local. 

So, again, I hope I have answered your question, and I want to 

thank you again for everything you do. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that response. And you are right, 

this is a partnership; we are all in this together and each jurisdiction of government has its role and its responsibilities to carry forward. 

Mr. Barnes, your testimony was exciting, was very illuminating. 

This Foothill Transit project with Proterra is very enticing. How 

many of these buses do you think you can incorporate into your 

system and how many are likely to be requested by other systems 

across the Country? 

Mr. BARNES. Well, we think that the technology could be applicable to as much as 60 to 70 percent of our system. The technology 

is particularly well suited for the traditional local style service that 

has lots of stops and starts, travels an average of 12 miles per 

hour. Where the technology in its current form doesn’t apply is to 

our longer haul commuter express routes. These would be folks 

traveling from the suburbs into Downtown Los Angeles, where the 

average trip length is 45 to 60 miles. 

The technology could evolve to get there, but there is additional 

work that needs to be done in terms of battery technology and 

range extension to accommodate those longer trips. But we think 

there is great applicability. We already have one line targeted for 

full electrification. Our board has directed us to start working on 

a second and we have done demonstrations where we have seen the 

product can work on other lines. 

In terms of the applicability to other systems, there are over 30 

systems in the U.S. that are interested in this particular type of 

technology and we think that as it continues to demonstrate its viability there will be even more beyond that. So it has great promise 

for the future. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And I take it the technology is not company-specific; that New Flyer could build these. Mr. Rock, you are an electrician. I imagine you would like to get your hands on one of these 

35 

electric buses and see how it works and what to do with it when 

you need maintenance. 

Mr. ROCK. That is correct. We would like to be involved in that 

type of technology, and probably are in the R&D environment. I 

don’t know that at this time. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Ms. Johnson, I have been very impressed with 

the way airports have moved aggressively, efficiently in using their 

stimulus funding. We had $5.25 billion in our Committee bill reported from this Committee. By the time we got through with the 

Senate, they had fleeced us. That funding went elsewhere and we 

were left with $1.3 billion. I was invited by Bemidji Airport Authority, just outside my district, right on the borderline. Congressman 

Peterson and I share that territory, so they invited us for the 

groundbreaking. 

Well, by the time I got there it was a ribbon cutting. They had 

already built the project. They had already poured the concrete for 

the parking apron. Mr. Mobley, they would have had all of your 

brothers at work on that project and was done. And Mr. Van 

Leeuwen, the Airport Director, said we have the ability to advertise 

for bids, receive bids, and hold those bids for up to a year so that 

when the funding is right, then we can move on the project. That 

is not the case with the Federal highway program; they don’t have 

that authority. 

Have you used that in your operations? Have other airport authorities done the same? 

Ms. JOHNSON. We can’t hold bids for a year in our particular circumstance, but we have a 120-day window. What we have found 

which worked well for us with this particular project that I referenced during my testimony, we did a base bid and did eight additive alternates. So we added as much work as we could allow based 

on the funding that was received and were able to really push the 

project along that way. 

In addition to that, I just have to commend the FAA for really 

pushing that money out the door. We have a particular problem at 

our airport; our board is very pragmatic in their thinking, and 

when we have money they allow us to go out and get engineering 

done and have projects waiting on the shelf. FAA is good at picking 

those projects that are really needed for a particular community or 

for the basic connectivity of the national airspace system. So we do 

try and do that as much as we can, but we do have a limitation. 

Different States have different regulations, so it really does make 

a difference. 

But a big project with no increase in PFC, with no long-term bill, 

trying to build a multimillion dollar project on 15 CRs is really difficult for a small community to pull off. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The aviation investments, I cited these at the 

outset of this hearing, but 155 runway improvements, 139 airports, 

11 million operations, and taxiways at another 78 airports, 8.1 million operations, and 25 projects for modernization of en-route centers. Those are significant benefits to a huge segment of the traveling public, underscoring the need for the passage of the four-year 

authorization bill. It just exasperates me that we have had to do 

another short-term extension. 

36 

Ms. ELEANOR. Well, we certainly appreciate the work of this 

Committee. We know that you understand our needs and that you 

are out there working for you every day, and we want to thank you 

for that. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Did you have any obstacle of any kind dealing 

with FAA and the stimulus funding? 

Ms. ELEANOR. No, no real obstacle in dealing with the stimulus 

funding, just getting the program ready to go. We have a really 

sort of bizarre situation with a runway that is not very old, and 

trying to get everybody onboard with the fact that there really was 

a problem at XNA did take some time and they did require us to 

do some initial studies. We understood that initial let’s make sure 

what we have here we go out here, because we are spending $30 

million to do this particular piece of pavement, then we are going 

to turn right around and spend another $30 million to rehab the 

existing runway. The nexus of that was they got it, they understood that we have one runway. Wal-Mart corporate headquarters 

is nine miles from us; Tyson Foods is 12 miles away. Very large 

economic impact to the United States if we can’t do business in 

Northwest Arkansas. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that testimony, that is excellent. 

Mr. Mobley, how long have you been a laborer, member of the 

Laborers Union? 

Mr. MOBLEY. Fifteen, 16 years. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. My son, while going through college, worked a 

few summers as a laborer, a card carrying member of the Laborers 

Union, kept his card active from freshman year, sophomore year, 

to junior year so that he could earn decent pay and help pay his 

way through college. During high school he worked mowing lawns 

and he did odd jobs and carefully put his funding away. By the time he graduated from high school, he had $8,000 in the 

bank. That was enough to pay room and board for maybe a semester and a half. But what he earned working on a Nordstrom’s 

project out here in Tysons Corner got him through that freshman 

year, and other similar projects. 

What we heard as we were shaping this stimulus bill in December of 2007 and through 2008 were the snides and critics on the 

outside saying these are just temporary jobs, these aren’t permanent jobs. I take exception to that because that is your career. 

Mr. Rock, you are an electrician. That is your career. A carpenter 

trains to do carpentry work. That is your career. You go from one 

job to another. What do you say to people who say, well, those are 

just temporary jobs? 

Mr. MOBLEY. To me, I say it might be a temporary job for me 

that I am there, but it is the impact on everybody else that uses 

those roads; it is jobs for everybody else and it is on down the line. 

I mean, for a few people it might be temporary that they are in 

that position, but at the same time it creates long-term use of travel for the trucking industry and anybody else. I mean, yes, my job 

in construction on a particular project is short-term, but the benefits for the communities are far beyond that. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes, a factory worker stays in that factory. An 

iron ore miner works in the mines until it is shut down for some 

reason for until the ore is played out. They are in a fixed location. 

37 

But building tradesmen and women move where the jobs are. That 

is your career. That is not temporary for you. That particular 

project is temporary until it is done. 

Mr. MOBLEY. Exactly. Yes, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. How many members of your local are without employment right now? 

Mr. MOBLEY. I don’t have those figures. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is not really fair. I didn’t ask you to come 

with that information, but just give me a horseback estimate. 

Mr. MOBLEY. Members of my union, of the active members, not 

including the retirement, I would say 100 people on the list out of 

1,500 from my local. I would say that would be a fair number. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Now, in 1998, the gentleman’s portrait there on 

the wall behind you, Bud Shuster, and I worked on the Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century, TEA-21. We engineered a 40 

percent increase in funding. We also had to take on the House 

Budget and Appropriations Committees, and Jim, you will remember that, and the Clinton Administration that put fire walls around 

the Highway Trust Fund, but we prevailed. 

And the result of that increase was 3 million construction jobs 

over the next six years. There was no one sitting on the benches. 

We also included $10 million in TEA-21 for training for apprentices 

and other new entrants into the building trades because the trades 

told us we are not going to have enough people to do all the work. 

You are going to have to have new hires. 

Well, that was $218 billion in 1998. The bill for the future of 

transportation is $450 billion, more than double that amount. And 

we are going to need training, but we will create 6 million new construction jobs in the course of that bill. That is what we need. That 

is the long-term future of transportation. 

And with the stimulus, and I cited the figures, 35,400-some miles 

of highway improved or rebuilt, reconstructed. That is nearly threefourths of the mileage of the Interstate Highway System, or equal 

to it. That represents 4 percent of the needs, 4 percent of the state 

of good repair requirements to rebuild our Federal-aid highway system. 

There is a huge job yet to be done. So tell your brothers help is 

on the way. We are trying to overcome all the obstacles and objections. Maybe after the elections, things will settle down and people 

will get over the collywobbles and decide to do something good for 

America. 

I want to thank this panel for your testimony and your responses 

and your patience throughout this long morning and early afternoon. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. Chair? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I am sorry. I didn’t see Mrs. Napolitano. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. I snuck in. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Just a very quick question. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield to the gentlewoman. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Of Mr. Barnes, because I know that we have 

had numerous increases in regard to the cost of the buses, the life 

span of the buses, and the savings not only in long-term life of the 

bus, but also the environment in savings emissions. 

38 

Would you address that please? 

Mr. BARNES. Absolutely. The vehicle is unique in that it is projected to be an 18-year life vehicle as opposed to a 12-year life vehicle. So that in and of itself allows the vehicle to operate longer, and 

that is primarily because it is a composite body construction which 

is much stronger, much more durable than a traditional steel construction on a vehicle. 

From an energy efficiency standpoint, the early tests are showing 

that this vehicle is five times more energy efficient than a traditional diesel coach. So it is a very efficient vehicle that has a longer 

life. It has a higher up-front cost, but when you look at that on a 

life cycle basis, we believe that it can actually demonstrate a lower 

cost. 

Further, because it is an electric-powered bus, there are very few 

parts that have to be maintained. You don t have to change the oil. 

Because it uses regenerative braking, you don t change the brakes 

as often. So again, cost savings can be generated along those lines. 

From an environmental standpoint, coming from the Eastern San 

Gabriel Valley, which is very challenged in terms of air quality, 

this is truly a zero emission vehicle. We are purchasing renewable 

energy credits so we know that the energy that goes into that bus 

comes from some sort of renewable energy, whether it is solar, geothermal, wind power. It is a true zero emission vehicle. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. How many buses do you currently have? 

Mr. BARNES. We currently have three and provided that the bus 

meets our performance expectations, we have funding in place to 

order nine more. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I want to thank the panel and we will call on you 

in the future as we continue our work on transportation initiatives. 

I will now up bring our second panel. I will start with Mr. Cox, 

President of Corman Construction Company, representing ARTBA, 

one of my favorite organizations in Washington. 

TESTIMONY OF BILL COX, PRESIDENT, CORMAN CONSTRUCTION, INC., REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN ROAD & TRANSPORTATION BUILDERS ASSOCIATION; JAMES E. 

MCCULLOUGH, PRESIDENT, CASE CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT/CNH, REPRESENTING THE ASSOCIATION OF EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURERS; YANCY WRIGHT, SUSTAINABILITY 

DIRECTOR, SELLEN CONSTRUCTION CO., INC., REPRESENTING THE U.S. GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL; AND 

LAUREN COHEN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL 

Mr. COX. Good afternoon, Chairman Oberstar. My name is Bill 

Cox, as you said. I am the president of Corman Construction and 

we are headquartered in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. 

I am also the incoming Chairman of the American Road and 

Transportation Builders Association. 

Corman Construction is one of the mid-Atlantic region’s larger 

heavy civil contractors. We specialize in the construction of bridges, 

highways, underground utilities, tunnels and marine facilities. My 

grandfather founded the firm in 1920 and we are now in our fourth 

generation as a family-owned and operated company. 

39 

Mr. Chairman, I am somewhat unique as a witness extolling the 

virtue of the Recovery Act as our firm has received no direct ARRA 

transportation work to date. We have been awarded two ARRA 

projects through the National Park Service, one in the District of 

Columbia and one in Western Maryland. The one in Western Maryland is under construction. The one in the District of Columbia will 

start in the next month or so. 

I can guarantee you, however, that despite that fact that have 

not won any transportation work, the markets in which we operate 

would have been devastated without this infusion of revenues. In 

the search for jobs created or saved and other metrics, too many 

people have overlooked the interconnectedness of Federal, State, 

local and private sector investments in transportation improvements. 

The Recovery Act’s transportation resources strengthened the entire transportation construction industry, not just those firms that 

received specific contracts. The Recovery Act’s transportation investments have kept many of our suppliers and subcontractors, 

without whom we could not operate, in business. It has also helped 

prop up State programs and as a result we are now starting to see 

more diverse projects being bid. 

Mr. Chairman, the effectiveness of the Recovery Act cannot be 

analyzed in a vacuum. I will tell you, however, as a contractor operating in multiple States, that many transportation construction 

firms would likely have closed their doors without the Recovery 

Act’s transportation investments over the past two years. 

There are several key points I would like to make about the Recovery Act. First and foremost, the Recovery Act is indisputably 

supporting construction activity and jobs in the transportation sector. And this is virtually the only construction activity that did not 

suffer a significant downturn during the recent recession, and almost solely because of the transportation investments made by the 

Recovery Act. 

In my home State, Maryland, the Recovery Act has supported 

more than 172 highway and bridge construction projects, pumping 

more than $430 million into our highway construction market. As 

a result, our contractors have been able to preserve hundreds of 

jobs. 

As critical as the Recovery Act was in boosting the U.S. transportation sector, it is also clear that our equipment purchases and employment levels are nowhere near where we would like them to be. 

This situation is by no means the fault of the Recovery Act. To justify investing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in new 

equipment, or hiring new employees, contractors must be able to 

make an informed judgment about the long-term outlook for the 

transportation industry. 

Over the past few years, we have seen a collapse of private sector 

construction activity and severe cuts in State and local transportation construction investments. In fact, 22 States reduced their 

highway contract awards in their States last fiscal year. 

The other clear fact about the Recovery Act is that its benefits 

are coming to a close. The value of new contracts awarded for all 

modes of transportation significantly increased in the first year of 

the Recovery Act. New airport and transit contracts awarded in 

40 

2010, however, have declined to the 2008 level. Highway awards 

are still rising, but at a slower pace than in 2009. 

Mr. Chairman, this would not be a surprise to anyone as the Recovery Act’s transportation investments were never intended to be 

a long-term solution. A long-term transportation solution, however, 

is exactly what our industry and the U.S. economy needs now more 

than ever. We were very pleased to see President Obama’s announcement on Labor Day of his commitment to enacting a six-year 

reauthorization of the Federal Surface Transportation Program. We 

also appreciate the leadership demonstrated by this Committee in 

continuing to push for a multi-year bill. 

As welcome as it is to have the Administration join your push, 

the fact remains that an authorization bill will be one year overdue 

tomorrow. A multi-year transportation bill will help generate jobs 

in the hard-hit construction industry and much more. Transportation infrastructure investments provide long-term productive assets that improve the competitiveness of U.S. firms and enhance 

the quality of life for all America. 

Mr. Chairman, I know you and this Committee do not need any 

prodding from me to advance a robust, multi-year transportation 

bill. I only hope that the other Members of Congress will recognize 

and embrace this urgent situation. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for your presentation. And we thank 

ARTBA and particularly Pete Ruane, your man on the ground in 

Washington, for steadfast advocacy that you have demonstrated for 

the future of transportation and for the previous legislation from 

TEA-21 and SAFETEA, even back to ISTEA. Pete Ruane has been 

there and been a steadfast advocate. 

Mr. McCullough, President of Case Construction Equipment. 

Mr. MCCULLOUGH. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Committee Members. As stated, my name is Jim McCullough and I am 

the CEO and President of CNH Construction Equipment 

headquartered in Racine, Wisconsin. 

I am also the Vice Chair of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, and I am here today representing the Construction 

Equipment Manufacturers Sector. 

From my travels and analysis of the global construction and 

equipment markets, I can personally attest that this Nation’s competitiveness is being seriously challenged. The countries that we 

are competing against understand that to sell more product, to access global markets, and to reach more customers, they have to get 

to the market faster, and for that they are investing in modern infrastructure, and they are doing it at rates that far exceed America. In fact, it is absolutely putting the U.S. to shame. 

Despite the competitive threat, and despite dramatic warning 

signs of collapsing interstate bridges and bursting natural gas pipelines, the Nation has not come to grips with the fact that this 

Country’s very foundation is crumbling right under our feet. 

The manufacturers of the U.S. construction equipment industry 

can play a significant role once policy and funding is established 

to turn the situation around. The heavy construction equipment industry is a major contributor to the U.S. economy and substantially 

41 

impacts the economy of every State and every Congressional District. 

In 2008, the equipment manufacturers, distributors and inde- pendent maintenance people had a $365 billion impact on the U.S. 

economy, supported more than 2 million American jobs, and paid 

$111 billion in wages, salaries and benefits. However, a 2009 study 

by Global Insights showed that during the recession, our sector has 

lost approximately 50 percent of our pre-recession activities. 

While the numbers in my written testimony show that indicators 

in a recent sector survey are beginning to trend up, one must ask 

the question: Up from where? That trend is still not strong and our 

numbers are nowhere near where they were before the economy 

imploded. 

A year after we completed the Global Insights study, we, as manufacturers, are still about 40 percent to 50 percent of the volume 

in revenue our industry produced in 2007. As a result, layoffs have 

occurred significantly inside the production facilities and obviously 

cutbacks have been made across the companies of all the manufacturers in the industry. 

So the big news earlier this week that the recession has ended, 

well, Mr. Chairman and the Members of the Committee, let me respectfully tell you it doesn’t feel that way in our business. 

I am pleased to have been offered the opportunity to come here 

today to give the Committee a glimpse of the current economic 

state of the construction equipment industry, and to provide some 

observations of the impact of the stimulus. 

Most importantly, I am here today to urge this Committee to 

continue to push for infrastructure vision, long-term commitment, 

as well as a long-term surface transportation funding authorization 

bill. 

In the survey summarized in my written statement, AEM asked 

our members about the impact of the stimulus funding on their 

business. Just about 20 percent said they are seeing some impact 

from the highway and other stimulus spending, but the funding 

was, a the Committee is well aware, far below our transportation 

system required investment, and the emphasis on shovel-ready 

projects focused the majority of the work on road resurfacing, reconstruction and rehabilitation of existing bridges and roadways. 

A large number of equipment product lines manufactured by our 

members, such as earth-moving and lift equipment, are typically 

not utilized in these types of projects. 

A long-term infrastructure and transportation bill will provide 

critical funding for bulldozer-ready projects, with long-term value 

to ease congestion and more effectively move people and goods. 

As of the end of July, 2010, the State highway departments reported that over 15,000 highway and transit stimulus projects were 

underway in some form or fashion. That means that our customers 

were utilizing their existing fleets of equipment to undertake this 

work, but they were not adding labor nor were they purchasing 

new equipment. 

The infusion of additional capital from the stimulus has thus 

kept many of our customers in business and may have provided a 

lifeline to the anticipated increased economic activity that a longterm reauthorization plan will provide. But it is critical that ConVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:17 Dec 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00157 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58493.0 KAYLA
42 

gress and the Administration move quickly before the end of the 

current extension to avoid a dramatic reduction in funding. 

Mr. Chairman, it was almost a year ago when you joined the 

Equipment Manufacturers Association and our dealers on the National Mall for a rally to urge enactment of a long-term surface 

transportation bill. Since then, the construction industry has continued to be challenged by uncertainty in the North America construction market. This uncertainty is not being fueled by the lack 

of a long-term transportation plan, but also by instability in housing, nonresidential construction, and other related markets, and 

generally, a trying business environment invaded by the Chinese. 

Without stimulus funding targeted to surface transportation 

projects, our sector and the entire highway construction industry 

would be in dramatically worse economic condition. But that stimulus funding is not enough to bring about the dramatic improvement we are looking for. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for your strong statement and for your 

support last year out there on the Mall. I remember that event 

very well, and for the strong support that ARTBA has provided this 

Committee over a generation for advancing the cause of transportation investments. 

Mr. Wright, Sustainability Director. 

Mr. WRIGHT. Thank you. I have a little bit of a presentation to 

walk through for you guys, to mix it up a little. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. OK. 

Mr. WRIGHT. I am here on behalf of the U.S. Green Building 

Council. I work for Sellen Construction, one of the largest general 

contractors in the State of Washington. It has been in business for 

66 years. We have over 600 employees and we mostly do projects 

for folks like Children’s Hospital. We are building part of the Amazon headquarters, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a lot of 

large general commercial construction work. 

Primarily negotiated. We don t do a whole lot of federally-funded 

work, mostly because of the delivery process. And most recently, we 

created a separate entity, and this is where my current role is, as 

director of Sellen Sustainability. We created this really to help support our clients around sustainability and to continue to evolve the 

industry across the United States. 

I am here today to talk about GSA projects, General Services Administration projects. It is called the Fed Center South. It is a design-build-delivery process, so very unique to the GSA. And I am 

going to talk about that in a few minutes, but it started off with 

us partnering with a local architect, and in a very short time frame 

we had to be prepared with a very strong design and make sure 

that we had all the numbers in place so we can meet the budget. 

The project itself is on the Duwamish River, for the client, which 

is the Army Corps of Engineers. And as you can see here in the 

yellow triangle, that is a portion of the building that exists that we 

are removing, and we are building a new structure there. The 

budget is about $66 million and we just started construction on it 

a few months ago. And so I am going to tell you a little bit more 

about that. 

43 

The design itself, we talked a little bit earlier, you mentioned 

yourself, Chairman Oberstar, about how long some of these projects 

can take. This particular project could have taken anywhere from 

a year and a half to two years to get the design process and the 

bid process in place to get a low bid contractor. Instead, by 

partnering up and doing design-build, we were able to come to the 

table, give this presentation as you will see here, these images, finished images, strong design, and get all that done in seven months, 

to the point where we just started construction. 

These are a few more images of the design. We are actually really focused on making it a restorative project. The site itself is a 

giant parking lot, so there is also contaminated soil. We are doing 

a lot to reclaimate that site. 

The facility itself for the Army Corps of Engineers has focused 

a lot on energy reduction strategies and a number of sustainability 

strategies, as you can see here in this slide, a lot of daylight and 

great amenities to enhance the indoor environmental quality. 

The estimated taxpayer savings on an annual energy savings 

basis is about $180,000 a year if you compare that to an average 

office building of similar size. This project is about 175,000 square 

feet. And because of the GSA requirements, there are a number of 

sustainability features in place that we are pursuing, along with 

the LEED Gold certification. Right now, we are pushing that further into LEED Platinum. We are doing our best to do that, even 

though we are set with a target of LEED Gold. 

I was just on site the day before yesterday, before I flew out. I 

took some photos to share with you the process that we are going 

through. This is also a job creation effort, but as well a natural resource conservation effort by deconstructing the building. If this 

was a low bid project, it would typically just be crushed up with 

the big heavy equipment and sent away to a landfill. But because 

we have approached this as part of our design-build effort, the 

point was to deconstruct it. We have a bunch of laborers out there 

taking the nails out and we are going to reuse all the car decking 

and all of the beams in the new facility. 

So there are about 200,000 board feet of structural timbers that 

are being cleaned up and set aside for reuse. And as far as job creation goes, for peak employment over the 2.4 years, it is roughly 

two years and four months of construction duration, we see peak 

employment of about 205, and then our average monthly employment is about 74, with an average worker hours per month of 

11,248. 

Really, what we are here to share is that the delivery process 

makes a lot of sense. Having the right team makes a lot of sense. 

And the effort that your Committee has put in place in pushing 

this money forward on projects like this makes a big difference, not 

only in the private market by setting precedents, but also in the 

market for the Federal Government and how we can best reduce 

waste, and what we can do to help share those lessons learned so 

we can do this on other projects. 

Thank you for your time. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that very engaging presentation 

and the slides that were very vivid in their projection. 

44 

Mr. Cohen, Harvard Business School. Thank you for being with 

us today. 

Mr. COHEN. That is right. Thanks. 

My name is Lauren Cohen. I am a Professor at Harvard Business School. 

First, I would like to thank the Members of the Committee for 

inviting me to appear and for holding these important hearings regarding progress on the ARRA. So I am actually happy to be speaking last, as I am going to take a bit more of a mega view on the 

Act. 

How Government spending impacts the private economy is a 

question that both economists and policymakers have struggled 

with for decades. And I think the ARRA provides an excellent example of exactly why. 

At the time it was enacted, unemployment stood at around 8 percent, and now with unemployment over 9.5 percent some have argued that this is proof that the stimulus just didn’t work, but others might argue that in the absence of the spending, unemployment would have been a lot higher, maybe 13 percent. 

And the truth is we just don t know what would have happened 

without the spending, and clearly some of the reasons why we decided to spend were because we anticipated future unemployment. 

So the point is because anticipated changes in the economy 

caused spending, we can t just look at what happens to the economy after the spending and conclude that we are seeing the effects 

of the spending. 

So the way the researchers like to tackle this problem and to distinguish cause and effect is to run experiments. So the good news 

is we have actually been running these kinds of experiments with 

spending for many years at the State level. So as I am sure you 

know, when Senators or Representatives ascend to the Chairmanship of powerful Congressional Committees, Federal money seems 

to flow to their State. 

The precise timing of this ascension to these Chairmanships is 

actually quite random in the following sense. You only become 

Chairman if you are the next in line and the current Chairman retires or is defeated or there is a party change. And because we 

think that these events depend almost entirely on political circumstances in other States, ascension to the Chairmanship is essentially unrelated to events or conditions in the new Chairman’s 

home State. So for example, a Senator is often not even up for reelection during the year of his or her ascension to this Chairmanship. 

So we studied these randomly timed increases in Federal funding 

to States at different times over the past 40 years. And the results 

were quite surprising, at least to us. So first, I want to lay out that 

during the years following the appointment, the State where the 

Chairman ascends experiences about a 40 percent to 50 percent increase in earmark spending to the State and about a 9 percent to 

10 percent increase in total State level government transfers. 

What we focused on in the study is looking at what effect that 

has on the private sector economy. And what we see is that focusing on investment, so capital expenditures, employment, research 

and development, and payout to these firms, we find strong eviVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:17 Dec 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00160 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58493.0 KAYLA
45 

dence that corporations retrench in response to Government spending shocks. 

So to give you one example, in the year that follows this Congressman’s ascendancy, and we get this Government spending 

shock, we find that the average firm in the State cuts back capital 

expenditures by roughly 15 percent. These firms also significantly 

reduce research and development expenditures and they increase 

payouts to their investors. The idea is that with less investment opportunities, they reduce employees and have lower sales. 

And I just want to talk a little bit about this. This shows up in 

both large and small firms that we look at. It shows up in large 

and small States for ascendancies to Chairmanship in the Senate 

and the House. And to give is some more evidence that it is spending causing the corporate downsizing, we see this corporate 

downsizing lining up exactly with these Government spending 

shocks. 

So things are going along in a State. When we see these Government spending shocks because of these ascendancies, corporations 

start to retrench and they continue until the Government spending 

stops coming in, so the Chairman steps out, and then we see corporations start to spend and hire employees again. 

What I do want to mention about this is that consistent with this 

Keynesian viewpoint, we find that there are less severe corporate 

responses and retrenchments when unemployment is high or when 

capacity utilization is low. OK? So this is the idea that if you have 

lots of people that are sitting on their hands it doesn’t have as big 

of an effect through these factors of production market if the Government comes in and starts to spend. 

And last, and one of the most convincing pieces of evidence to me 

is that we actually went through 92,000 earmarks and we coded 

them to exactly what industry they applied to. And what we found 

is that it was exactly those industries where corporations seemed 

to be pulling back. So if all the earmark spending was going to 

health care, we saw this concentrated exactly in the health care industry. 

So just to conclude, our findings suggest that new considerations 

or new channels through this competition for factors of production 

like labor, land, capital, and these are quite apart from standard 

interest rate or tax channels that we usually talk about with Government crowding out, may limit the stimulative capabilities of 

Government spending by deterring corporate spending. 

Whether these additional forces are sufficient to materially lower 

the multiplier in fiscal stimulus in a large economy like the U.S. 

remains an open question, but we think at a minimum our research suggests that the retrenchment of corporations should be 

taken into account when considering the merits of future Government spending. 

So again, thanks for the opportunity to address the Committee 

and I would be honored to take any questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for your presentation. I appreciate 

your being with us today. 

Let me begin with Mr. Cox and Mr. McCullough. The question 

I have for both of you, you can answer from a different perspective. 

How much of your production, Mr. McCullough, is exported? 

46 

And Mr. Cox, how much of your equipment buying is used equipment versus new equipment in this current recession that we are 

experiencing, compared to what it would be during, let’s say, 2002, 

2003, 2004, 2005? 

Mr. COX. Maybe I will start. Generally, we buy new equipment. 

In the past, we have bought used. With the ever-changing requirements for emissions from diesel engines, we are buying the newest 

equipment that has the highest tier in terms of lowering emissions. 

So in fact the work we are doing up on the Intercounty Connector, 

we have requirements that we have to be above certain tier levels 

with 80 percent or 90 percent of our equipment fleet. So that predicates the fact that most of it needs to be new or relatively new. 

Over the past couple of years, we have really not purchased any 

new equipment either used or new. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. McCullough? 

Mr. MCCULLOUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The answer on Case specifically is that we are a global company 

and in many cases to give you an export number would be probably 

a little bit different. We have production facilities in Europe and 

South America, et cetera. 

So I would say on an export basis, coming out of the U.S., probably about 15 percent, but if you looked around the world on a pie 

chart, essentially about 35 percent of the volume comes from America; 35 percent from Europe; and then the balance are Asia-Pacific 

and Latin America. So we are a global company, and in reality the 

company’s survival has really been Asia-Pacific and Latin America 

for the last couple of years on the construction equipment side of 

the house. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, what I hear anecdotally as I travel around 

the Country meeting with manufacturers and with operators of 

equipment, construction companies, is that they are shipping used 

equipment. One of our big exports in 2009 was used construction 

equipment to China, India and other Pacific Rim countries because 

they didn’t have use for it here in the United States. 

Mr. MCCULLOUGH. Yes, probably more strongly starting in about 

2007 and 2008, particularly as the European markets began to 

slide and the Asia-Pacific and Latin American markets held, there 

was a lot of equipment that left the Country on a used basis at not 

so pretty prices for those that were overloaded. 

The reason is happened was essentially both North America and 

Europe had collapsed about the same time. So what was three 

months of inventory all of a sudden became a year, a year and a 

half supply, and obviously the retailers scrambled to get it off their 

balance sheets. And then after we got to about 2009, not so much. 

It is also interesting to note that in the future, these outlets aren 

t going to exist because two regions will be tier four and two regions will be tier three. So all of a sudden where this opportunity 

was global to dispose of used equipment, you are back to basically 

the U.S. and Europe can share the equipment, but the other two 

regions are staying on tier three. So you won’t be able to sell tier 

four equipment at significant price increases over tier three. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is a very interesting analysis, very down to 

earth analysis of the real world. 

47 

What period of time, Mr. Cox, do you and your associates on the 

construction side need? What window of amortization do you look 

at when buying a piece of equipment, with regard to a $100,000, 

a million or two million dollar piece of equipment? 

And Mr. McCullough, what do you and your associate producers 

look at for that window of amortization? 

I ask that because we are trying to pass this six-year authorization bill, which would create a period of stability in funding and 

the level of funding. 

Mr. COX. Maybe I will start. Most of our work is with public 

agencies, State DOTs, Federal Highway Administration, National 

Park Service. We work a little bit in the private sector, but most 

of it is public. And I think the public agencies look towards the sixyear bill with more interest because then they can ramp up their 

programs. They can start to hire designers to design the programs. 

The State of Maryland and the State of Virginia in the last five 

years have gone more to a design-build delivery method, not for the 

majority of their work, but for their major projects. And that has 

shortened the time frame in getting a project from a conception 

stage into, once they get their FEIS and their main permit, then 

they can let the thing as a design-build and shrink the time for 

completion as long as they have the money. 

So we really look to the States to have a long-term program that 

we can see out ahead and that allows us to then make our strategic 

planning decisions on equipment investment and manpower investment as we go forward. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. McCullough? 

Mr. MCCULLOUGH. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would like to answer 

the question a couple of different ways. Number one, as far your 

proposal for six years, I think that would begin to provide some 

stability to the contractors that specialize in transportation itself. 

But I think relative to the macro economy, the biggest issue is that 

we really don t have a long-term vision in these other sectors. 

As the economy is recovering, if you really get into residential 

construction, nonresidential construction, which probably adds incredible amounts of after-stream value to the various people that 

touch it: first, the water and sewer, then the road that goes in, 

then the curbing that goes in, then the housing that goes in, and 

then all the landscaping and on up to furnishing, et cetera. 

The value chain is unbelievable that comes through that side of 

the business. 

Transportation by itself, there are a lot of contractors that certainly aren t able to participate in that. So from actually the overall health and welfare of the economy and how many jobs get 

added across about 12 different sectors of construction is very, very 

important. 

But on your specific question, most contractors run machinery for 

about 5,000 hours before it goes to the secondary market. The life 

of the machine is usually about 10,000 hours. So if you had a 

crawler hydraulic excavator, which is what you will primarily see 

on these major roads, they basically run maybe 65 percent utilization to deem whether they need to expand. A lot of customers today 

will rent until they see that they have an order book of jobs that 

continue on for quite a while. 

48 

But at six years, I think you would at least begin to say, OK, we 

have a stable plan here and there would be much more effective 

planning by the contractors than what they are able to do today. 

Plus, you would probably stabilize the labor equation much more 

significantly. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is the best summary I have had of how the 

construction sector and how the manufacturing sector look at the 

life cycle for equipment. I appreciate that very much. 

A further question. I have heard from contractor after contractor 

that, although it doesn’t apply, Mr. Cox, in your case exactly, but 

that in 2005, 2006, 2007 they were doing 80 percent of their business in the private sector and the balance in the public sector. And 

that has just reversed now. Because of the stimulus, those who are 

still operating are doing most of their work in the public sector, 

heavy on highway construction. 

Why isn’t that private sector coming back? And which portions 

of that private sector construction are not returning? 

Mr. COX. Well, of course, we know the residential isn’t returning 

yet. And you find it difficult for people who consider themselves 

public works transportation contractors like ourselves to be competitive in the residential field. We have more overhead. We have 

larger groups. We may pay our craftsmen at a higher scale and 

they have more benefits than they have in the residential arena 

that comes and goes. 

We do compete in the commercial sector when that gets going. 

But of course, I think the difficulty there is that the commercial 

sector, at least in the Washington-Baltimore area, was overbuilt 

going into the recession and it is going to take a number of years 

for it to come back before the banks get to a position where they 

can be lending on these large projects. 

So most contractors now are forced into the public sector, and 

that is one of the reasons why Mr. Foxx earlier was getting such 

low bids on the contracts that he had was that there are so many 

people who are forced to go into maybe a kind of work that they 

didn’t do before, but that is the only work there is to bid. And in 

order to keep the doors open and to keep their key people, they 

have to lower their pricing. 

It is a windfall for the State DOTs and the public service agencies right now. It will be a problem in the future because a number 

of these contractors won’t be able to financially survive what they 

are doing to keep working right now. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. Thank you for those responses. 

Mr. Wright, in your presentation you cited $180,000 dollar a year 

savings. Was that savings on electricity cost on the Federal Center 

in Seattle? And is that an annual recurring cost savings? 

Mr. WRIGHT. That is correct. Part of our focus not only from the 

LEED certification perspective, but on the overall sustainability 

goals for the GSA is to focus on energy efficiency. So that is on 

power consumption. That dollar amount is based on the first year 

of operations. It is not necessarily taking into account the increases 

in energy costs over the next however long we want to do that. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It is of great interest to this Committee because 

we have jurisdiction over 367 million square feet of Federal civilian 

office space. The annual electricity cost is $500 million. If we can 

49 

cut that by 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, some estimates are 

40 percent by installing photovoltaic systems and compact 

fluorescents and other lighting systems that save money, we can 

save the taxpayers a huge amount of money just in the Federal 

buildings system. 

You also cited design-build in your testimony. How much time 

savings did that result in? And how much acceleration did it provide for projects? 

Mr. WRIGHT. It definitely helped us get people back to work and 

to keep people working much quicker. I think that in the end, for 

the Federal Government, it resulted in a much better product. 

When you focus on low bid, you end up typically with contractors 

that are trying to find the cheapest ways to get things done, versus 

when you have a set dollar amount and you are going to win that 

project based on the best design in that set dollar amount, you end 

up with a better project, hopefully a project that will last 100 years 

instead of maybe only 30 years. 

So in that instance, I think it is a better situation. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You had wanted to respond earlier. Did you have 

a comment? 

Mr. WRIGHT. On the private side, the majority of our work is 

done on the private side, and the main reason is because we have 

focused on negotiated work, mostly because we could be an advocate for the owner and build a better project. 

The area that I am still seeing growth on the private side is 

mostly with health care, and that is mostly because their funding 

is able to come from other resources, and then a little bit on the 

institutional side. I would have to agree with Mr. Cox in that the 

biggest reason we are not seeing it happen on the private side with 

our office developers and other folks is because their investments 

are challenged. As soon as we can give them some leverage to get 

going on a lot of their projects that they have teed up, but don t 

have the funding, don t have the bank support, the sooner we will 

be able to get additional people back to work. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. 

One last comment. Mr. Cohen, I listened with great interest to 

your comparison of Committee Chairmanships to funds designated 

for States. And that might apply for the appropriation process. I 

don t think it does in other areas. But in the stimulus bill, we specifically designated two criteria: one, that preference be given for 

allocation of funding to areas of highest unemployment as measured by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Economic Development Administration, which does a monthly evaluation of 

county by county unemployment rates; and secondly, that the 

projects be equitably distributed in each State, although that specific language didn’t make it through conference, so that not all the 

dollars would be absorbed in the metro area. 

The wastewater treatment organization in Minnesota; the Public 

Utilities Commission said that they would be able to spend all 

their $93 million in Minneapolis. That wouldn’t be right, and they 

had a rating system. They evaluate every project and rate them 

from one through 128 of the projects they had in that category. 

So those funds were distributed I think very equitably by formula without designation, without earmarks, without intervention. 

50 

The only area that we left open for discretion was that of the 

TIGER grants, $1.5 billion for the Department to decide where 

they are going to go. 

And we can have a discussion about whether those were well 

thought out or not, but I think on the whole they were. 

Mr. COHEN. Just quickly on that. I think that that is exactly 

right. Look, we looked at Government spending over the past 40 

years and State level government funding. So we have a lot of observations and a lot of power to really try to tease out what these 

effects are. 

And so all of our data suggests that at least the first criteria that 

you put on, which is that it goes to areas that have especially high 

unemployment, our findings are that those are the areas where it 

has the least effect on the private sector, distortionary effect on the 

private sector. So I think in that sense that that is quite good. 

It doesn’t erase the need, I think, to continue to look and say, 

look, if we drop $10 billion on a State, then it may not be $10 billion of good because we have to look at what the private sector 

does. And if the private sector pulls back by $4 billion, then we 

should think of that as only $6 billion of good. 

So I think the general idea of our paper is just that. It is just 

that we need to keep this in mind and to that point, it seems to 

be less. It seems to maybe be the private sector will hold back by 

$2 billion if unemployment is high if these factors of production 

aren t being used by the private sector. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. The crowding-out issue has been one 

that we have dealt with for many years. I don t think there was 

much private sector investment to crowd out in the last year with 

the stimulus. It just wasn’t there. 

Ms. Napolitano, thank you for your patience. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. No, thank you, sir. I am listening with great 

interest to some of the panel’s focus. 

Mr. Cox, we couldn t agree with you more on the short-term fix 

not being enough. We have argued that in Committee. We have argued it with the leadership. We knew that had to happen, and yet 

we weren t able to get that through. 

But any of you comment on what has been said by some individuals in Congress that there were no jobs created by the funding 

that was in the ARRA for transportation projects? 

Mr. COX. I don t really spend my time looking into the statistics. 

I will say that whether you call them saved or created, to me they 

are the same word. Clearly, when you put money on the street in 

terms of highway construction bill, our typical job that we get is 

somewhere around 30 percent to 35 percent direct labor. That is 

our field overhead and our craftsmen on the job. 

There is another 20 percent in materials. There is probably 25 

percent in subcontractors, and the balance is equipment. 

I don t know what the labor factors are in the materials and the 

subcontractors, but they are probably reasonably similar to what 

we spend in the general contract itself. 

So there is clearly if you, I don t know that you call it job creation or job saving, to me it is the same at this point in time. It 

would have been a job lost had the work not been there. 

51 

Mr. MCCULLOUGH. I believe that you are into one of those scenarios that there are pluses and minuses when it was all said and 

one. The Global Insight people will show basically about 5.6 million 

in construction employment, and I would consider it to be flat over 

the last three years. 

So on the transportation side, perhaps people were added. On the 

other sectors, as you go backwards and look, certainly there were 

declines. But did it do any good? I think most of the contractors 

I have talked to that have been able to participate would say it has 

had some value for them. But you have probably got 75 percent of 

the American contractors are not really in the highway, roads or 

bridges business and so they are more the small to medium entrepreneurs who are literally just going bankrupt left and right. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Mr. Wright, any comment? 

Mr. WRIGHT. We primarily build buildings so we are not building 

infrastructure like they are. Is there a specific question related to 

buildings? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, I am glad you said that because you hit 

upon one of my major focuses, and that is energy. And I was asking 

staff whether or not the building was photovoltaic ready. And the 

reason I ask is because not in my area, but in my adjacent area, 

the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has partnered 

with NECA, National Electrical Contractors, to green buildings. 

The IBEW training facility of over 1,500 trainees has put photovoltaic, and is now producing 85 percent of their electrical needs, 

and the rest goes into the grid and they get credit for it. 

So why can t we begin to look at what is already happening out 

in communities right now, and be able to apply that to new buildings? I am certainly going to talk to the Chairman about our millions of space that we have as Federal buildings, to be able to look 

at how we reduce the amount of energy that we use by looking at 

technology that is there, of training that is there, to be able to do 

that and save the taxpayer and the Government money. 

Mr. WRIGHT. It makes a lot of sense. There are two facets to answering your question. One is the project does have a photovoltaicready package. It is part of a betterments package we have recently submitted to the General Services Administration for approval. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Do you have the infrastructure set? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Well, we are just starting demolition, so there is 

plenty of time still to integrate that package. 

The second answer to your question is we focused, as far as the 

design of this project, we focused on energy efficiency in the sense 

that if we could use the sunlight for light, if we can use natural 

ventilation in some areas, if we can use really smart building skins 

very well insulated, if we can use a number of those components 

to reduce the energy, we reduce the energy by 30 percent. 

So back to your number of $180,000 a year, that is 30 percent 

over an average building. That is where we focused our money because we saw the greatest return on investment with that. And 

now the additive piece would be to add the photovoltaics. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. I am glad you said that because in IBEW and 

NECA they are also looking at technology that is going to be able 

52 

to hold electricity for later use during the day. And there is that 

technology now being looked at in some areas. 

Yes? 

Mr. WRIGHT. One quick comment related to the training. There 

has been quite a bit of funding sent towards training, and so I 

would like to make a comment in that if we can link those to specific projects as much as possible, the benefit is that much greater. 

In other words, if we can make sure that if there is a whole bunch 

of photovoltaic training being incurred, that we can get that into 

a link to specific projects that are being funded to be built with 

photovoltaics. 

Because in our experiences, we have been seeing a lot of training 

take place, but people don t get to go out and readily apply it. So 

we have to have the link to a project for them to go apply it on. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. We hope to be able to increase the amount of 

manufacturing of photovoltaic panels in the U.S., solar panels. 

Right now, even IBEW is working with Native American tribes to 

establish funds for not only manufacturing, but job training for Native Americans. And that is ongoing right now with IBEW. 

Mr. Cox, may I have a moment, sir? Thank you. 

Mr. Cohen, I was listening with great interest about the report 

that you have given this Committee in regard to, I call it 

academia’s view of what we do and how it is being done. And you 

look at how it impacts, how we don t look at the other side of what 

we are doing. In other words, job creation, and whether it is in the 

public sector, private sector and who is benefitting or who is not. 

Did you in your research connect with cities and nonprofits to get 

their view of how they are using the money? How they have created or been able to save jobs that we talk about? Because I do that 

all the time. This is part of the job that we have. 

But it is really critical for us to be able to have beyond academia 

the input from those that are at the frontline. And I would like to 

have you maybe give some light on that. 

Mr. COHEN. I couldn t agree more. We actually did have the 

chance to talk to some private firms about what happened when 

these Government shocks come in. So we didn’t get to talk to the 

Government side, and we absolutely should and we will. But we 

talked to the private sector side and in many of the cases that we 

talked to, they saw some articles that have been written about the 

work that we have done in some papers. 

And so they contacted us, so it is a bit of a selected sample, but 

they did tell us that, look, when this Government spending came 

in, we were planning to do this project, and we had hired all the 

staff, and we were going to build X, and then this Government 

funding came in and built X, and so we were kind of out on our 

hands because we had already planned to do this. We had already 

hired the labor. We had already gotten some capital. 

And so in that sense, it was wasted because then they had to figure out another way to deploy that capital, which was certainly not 

in the first way that they had hoped, not in the best way. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, I am glad you clarified that because I 

have been dealing with academia on water since I Chaired the Subcommittee on Water and Power, and they have great research papers and only academia knows where to find them. So that outVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:17 Dec 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00168 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58493.0 KAYLA
53 

reach has to go into the policymakers and to those that are at the 

frontline, and to me those are the cities that have to deal with the 

unemployment, with the empty homes, with the homelessness. And 

they are cutting the budgets something like 33 percent in some cities of mine. 

Mr. COHEN. The cities, the also the private sector. You wouldn 

t disagree that the private sector is important as well? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. They are the ones who are going to spend the 

money, generally, if it goes to their cities. For every dollar spent 

in one city, once that goes into their general fund. So you know 

they have a great interest in that. 

Mr. COHEN. Absolutely. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. So I just marvel sometimes that we make 

statements of things without going further and checking that information with those that are really at the frontline. And while I am 

glad that Harvard is doing this analysis, I wish they would go a 

little further and really get to all the participants so that there is 

a clearer picture of this. 

Mr. COHEN. We obviously can t contact every city in the United 

States. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Not necessarily, but there are organizations 

that are ready to give you that information that represent the cities, like National League of Cities, Conference of Mayors. All those 

folks are ready. They already had that information because the cities go to them to be able to be the voice for us. 

Mr. COHEN. Well, much of our data comes from the U.S. Census 

Bureau who collects it. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Yes, well that is the Census, a separate agency then from the Conference of Mayors. 

I lost the Chair, so does anybody else have any input on this? 

Nothing? 

See, you have people who are willing to give you information that 

is maybe critical to be able to make that analysis a little more concrete. 

Mr. COHEN. But we have contacted private firms. Are you discounting the private firms that we have contacted? Are you saying 

they don t count? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. That is private. I am talking about cities, 

those that are actually involved, labor organizations for instance, 

because they have those numbers of the people that are unemployed. Some of the organizations in my area have 65 percent unemployment rate. And these are labor organizations that are in the 

construction industry. 

Mr. COHEN. But the Census also collects data on unemployment, 

unless you think they are not doing their jobs, then we have that 

data from them as well. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, thank you. 

Mr. Chair, thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for, as ever, for your very thoughtful 

pursuit of issues in the Committee, always provoke good thinking 

and I appreciate your contribution to our Committee work. 

And to all of the witnesses on this panel, thank you very much 

for your contributions, for your thoughts, your ideas about where 

we are and where we are headed. 

54 

I think there are many lessons for us to learn from the stimulus 

projects under the jurisdiction of this Committee as we shape the 

future transportation bills, as we also work on the future of public 

buildings investments, and the EPA and all the other programs 

under our Committee jurisdiction. 

We have learned a good many insights into advancing the cause 

of public investment and its contribution to the overall productivity 

of the national economy, and we are grateful for your contributions. 

Thank you very much. 

The Committee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:36 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

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