U.S. secretary of transportation: Dealing with huge infrastructure challenges

Facing huge infrastructure needs over the next 25 years, Arizona must find a new way of doing business, according to former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta. In the keynote address at this week's "Arizona 2030" forum, Mineta said that new way of doing business means coming together across political, ideological and regional divides to deal with the state's infrastructure issues. The forum — cosponsored by Arizona State University, Arizona Investment Council, Thomas R. Brown Foundations and The Communications Institute — was designed in part to unveil an infrastructure report prepared by researchers at the W. P. Carey School.

Facing huge infrastructure needs over the next 25 years, Arizona must find a new way of doing business, according to former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta. In the keynote address at this week's "Arizona 2030" forum, Mineta said that new way of doing business means coming together across political, ideological and regional divides to deal with the state's infrastructure issues.

The forum — cosponsored by Arizona State University, Arizona Investment Council, Thomas R. Brown Foundations and The Communications Institute — was designed in part to unveil an infrastructure report prepared by researchers at the W. P. Carey School.

According to the report, which looked at infrastructure in the education, energy, health care, public safety, telecommunications, transportation, water and social and environmental services sectors, Arizona's state and local governments will need $11 billion per year over and above the expenditures already being made to support a population of 10 million, which the state is expected to reach by 2030. And this does not include additional expenditures on private infrastructure providers.

Bipartisanship as strategy

To build the necessary infrastructure that will support Arizona's current and future populations, Mineta said, "the strategy needs to be bipartisanship." "There's no such thing as Democratic bridges or Republican highways," Mineta said. "We need to evaluate these infrastructure issues with the best analysis possible, and make decisions on facts and measurable standards — not on partisan ideology."

Moderator Jack Cox asked how to arrive at bipartisan solutions. Former Republican Representative Barry Goldwater, Jr. said that he's not sure what the answer is, because today the atmosphere in Congress is very different than when he was a member. "I spent 16 years in Congress as a minority member," Goldwater said, "and the majority party at the time recognized that without participation from the minority party, there could be no democracy."

In those days, he said, Republicans and Democrats "got along well." Even though they "fought like hell," they would "go get a whiskey afterward." Mineta, who served 20 years as a Democratic representative in Congress at the same time Goldwater was there, agreed that there used to be a sense of bipartisanship and courtesy and a willingness to work together that he doesn't see anymore.

He attributes the change, in part, to a move away from the 5-day workweek. Now, he said, committee members don't get to know each other. "And when you don't know somebody as well, you can be sharper. In the old days you would say, 'I'd like to address my esteemed colleague Congressman Goldwater,' and you meant it. Today, saying that is clich , rhetoric, just part of the habit. Today, political, partisan point making is really the name of the game."

State Senator Bob Burns agreed that open dialogue — not partisan point-making — is key for policymakers. Yet, Cox commented, it appears that partisanship is a huge problem in Arizona's legislature. Shannon Scutari, Policy Advisor for Growth and Infrastructure in the Governor's Office, said that in the Governor's Growth Cabinet, members are mandated to work together across political boundaries. Scutari said that should become business as usual, no matter who sits in the Governor's chair.

A new model for decision making

APS Chairman Bill Post suggested that Proposition 400 is a great example of cooperation across political, ideological and regional divides. Passed by Maricopa County voters on November 2, 2004, Prop. 400 authorized a 20-year continuation of the half-cent sales tax for transportation projects in the County.

"Proposition 400 was done in a very inclusive way — it was done as a public-private partnership where our political leaders led the effort supported by private members in business and other institutions in order to achieve a common goal for our community," Post said.

That kind of decision-making process, he said, is the state's competitive advantage. "We do have in Arizona a history of working together in [public and private planning and cooperation]." According to Post, the focus in Arizona should be on using public-private partnership as a new model for how infrastructure decisions are made. Post contrasted the Prop. 400 decision-making process with the process APS went through when building Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station.

"We went through 15 years of construction, then we went through a whole process of achieving political support for it. We had hearings before the legislature as to whether or not we should even complete Palo Verde. There was a ballot proposition as to whether or not the state ought to have a nuclear plant. It was sequential and public involvement came in only towards the end of the process."

Today, APS couldn't just decide on its own to build a nuclear power plant, Post said. It would take an open, inclusive decision-making process that is dynamic — not sequential — and includes all the parties from the beginning. "It's a different decision model and it's one that we in Arizona have the opportunity to design," Post said.

Jack Tomasik, Planning Director for the Central Arizona Association of Governments, suggested that the way Pinal County has dealt with huge population growth over the last decade can also serve as an example of how not to move forward — another contrast with Post's new decision-making model. Tomasik said that between 2000 and 2008, 71,000 new dwelling units were built in Pinal County — representing an 87 percent increase over that period.

said the development process was "led by the private sector." The public sector, he said, only began reacting to the development boom in 2006. State Representative Phil Lopes agreed that Arizona should model the Proposition 400 process, but "instead of doing it outside the legislative process," he said, the state should "do it within the legislative process for the purpose of creating a mechanism to solve the problem, including a revenue source."

"By decision of the legislature, we would call for participation and support from a broad community-based group in the development of a plan and the implementation of that plan, including a funding source for the purposes of addressing energy infrastructure. The legislature could then decide if it wanted to refer the issue to the people or keep it in the legislature and pass it by statute. But it would get us out of the potential of not taking action and get us away from partisanship," Lopes said.

State first

Yet other forum participants suggested that partisanship might not be the only challenge confronting policymakers as they seek to deal with the state's huge infrastructure needs. Scutari said that because the big infrastructure projects that will be required to prepare for an Arizona of 10 million are "20- or 30-year overnight success stories," they're "really difficult issues to tackle politically."

These kinds of projects require policymakers to put their own political careers on the line for a project even when those policymakers won't likely be around for the ribbon-cutting ceremony, she said. Yet Mesa Mayor Scott Smith pointed to Arizona's history of strong leaders making those tough decisions. Advocating for expensive infrastructure projects can be tough and risky, he said.

"But I really don't think that John Rhodes or Carl Hayden cared one bit about losing the next election when they were talking about the Central Arizona Project.They cared about the project. They cared about the state." Representative Rhodes and Senator Hayden — along with Representative Morris Udall a bit later — began fighting for CAP in the 1950s, four decades before the system delivered its first water to Central Arizona. Rhodes and Udall served 30 years in Congress and Hayden served almost 60 years.

Communicating with the voters

Part of the new decision-making model, some forum participants suggested, has to be communicating with Arizona citizens. But Coconino County Supervisor Matt Ryan said that the kind of language policymakers use when describing infrastructure projects — and their associated price tags — has to change when communicating with the general populace.

"If you say the word 'tax,' that's not popular. So how do you say 'it costs money' in another way?" he asked. In Coconino County, Ryan said, policymakers were able to get the county's capital tax — which will pay for 30 years of building projects — by bringing community members to the table and communicating effectively. Smith suggested that voters are not resistant to funding infrastructure projects if they're well communicated.

"The citizens of Arizona have shown time and time again that when presented with a sound program that is generated from the ground up, is not force-fed to them, and is well-defined and has a clear objective, they will support it," he said, adding that Proposition 400 is a great example. In designing those projects that voters will support, Smith said, not only is bipartisan leadership and clear vision essential, but so is a better understanding among policymakers of voters' values.

"Citizens just want a solution," Smith said. "People think, 'that pothole out there isn't a liberal pothole or a conservative pothole, it's just a pothole — take care of it, please.' Maybe if we took that approach and understood our constituents and their values better we could get beyond some of these problems. I think that's where the real solution is." Burns added, "The general public has to be on board with what will be the plan of the future or they will be in a position to stop it."

Bottom Line:

• Facing huge infrastructure needs over the next 25 years, Arizona must find a new way of doing business — that means coming together across political, ideological and regional divides to deal with the state's infrastructure issues.
• Open, bipartisan dialogue, rather than partisan point making, is key to overcoming Arizona's huge infrastructure challenges.
• Stakeholders must come together in public-private partnership — as they did during the Proposition 400 process — in a new kind of inclusive, dynamic decision-making process.
• Policymakers might have to put aside their egos — even, perhaps, their reelection ambitions — to fight for important infrastructure projects.
• Part of the new decision-making model has to be communicating with Arizona citizens. Voters are not resistant to funding infrastructure projects if they're well communicated and well led.