Dive Brief:
- The U.S. DOT has furthered its effort to tie funding for new transit construction projects to marriage and birth rates. The Federal Transit Administration proposed new guidance this month for the Capital Investment Grants program for regions with “birth or marriage rates at or above the national average.”
- The proposal is part of a larger definition change, adjusting the share of the CIG that the FTA would provide for a total overall project cost. Above-average marriage and birth rates could up the share by 5% each.
- Plans for the guidance have existed since the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term, when Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy backed the administration’s agenda to “rescind woke policies” and ease regulations.
Dive Insight:
Other proposed factors that would boost CIG’s funding share of a project include cost-effectiveness and congestion relief.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., characterized the proposal as “bizarre and dystopian,” in an official statement on the Senate Appropriations Committee website. The vice chair of the committee, Murray said the change would apply to 40 projects already in the CIG program, which would potentially trigger new rating and cost-share requirements.
That could lead to project redesigns or redos on environmental reviews, potentially increasing construction costs, Murray said.
Notably, the CIG calculation share can also be negative: for example, a project deemed to have low cost effectiveness is paired with a CIG adjustment factor of -25%. The proposal does not include negative adjustments for lower marriage or birth rates, just positive additions for higher rates.
But Murray said the proposal could reduce CIG funding for important projects below the 40% floor set by Congress in annual funding bills, a benchmark in place since 2020.
Murray also pointed to research by the Urban Institute that found the practice of tying funding to marriage and birth rates would prioritize White communities. “Residents of areas with high marriage and birth rates are much more likely to be white and much less likely to be Black or Hispanic,” according to the research.
“Tying funding for transit projects to marriage rates and how many babies a woman has is the sort of bizarre and dystopian idea you’d expect in a TV show, not actual policy put forth by the U.S. government—yet here we are,” Murray said in her statement.
Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at The George Washington University, said she was not aware of any previous federal program ever adjusting infrastructure funding for marriage or birth rates.
She classified the proposal of the CIG change as “collateral policy,” a practice usually designed to have a direct impact via funding priorities, such as including small, women-, veteran- or minority-owned businesses in contracting requirements.
“What’s so odd about this is that it’s funding for infrastructure,” Tillipman said. “I think that is the biggest question mark behind this: What is the policy goal here? Are you rewarding a jurisdiction because it happens to have higher marriage or birth rates?”
She conjectured that the reasoning could be tied to population size. But even then, she noted that marriage or birth rates are not a direct indicator of the population within an area.
“To me, I just don’t see a straight line between giving them more money and birth and marriage rates,” she said. “This feels really collateral. Very, very collateral.”
The FTA did not respond to Construction Dive’s inquiries about the proposal. The public comments period for the proposal is open through Nov. 16.
