News

In This Issue

• Save the dates: SGA Full Coalition Meeting and Lobby Day; Reception at NPSG
• Federal Policy Update: New Congress
• Upcoming Key Conferences
• Upcoming report release: “Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation”
• SGA is hiring!

Save the dates: SGA Full Coalition Meeting and Lobby Day; Reception at NPSG

• SGA’s annual Full Coalition Meeting and Lobby Day (plus the GMLA meeting and Board meeting) will be held on Thursday, March 17 and Friday, March 18. The Lobby Day will likely be held in the morning on the 17th and the full coalition meeting on the afternoon of the 17th to be followed by a coalition happy hour. The GMLA meeting will likely be held first thing on Friday the 18th to be followed by the board meeting that afternoon. The schedule may change, but please hold these dates and plan to join us in Washington, DC for this event.
• SGA will be co-sponsoring a reception at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference on Friday, February 4, 2011 at 7pm. The reception will be held at Grand Lobby of the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture, at 551 S. Tryon Street (two blocks from the hotel). Please join us if you’ll be in Charlotte for the conference.

Federal Policy Update: New Congress and Appropriations Update
New Congress
The new Congress kicked off this week with all kinds of new faces in the Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate. In the House, there are 87 new Republicans and 9 new Democrats; the Senate has 12 new Republicans and 1 new Democrat. With the large turnover, we lost some champions on important issues, including Senator Dodd on the Livable Communities Act and Congressman Oberstar on transportation. However, we still have many strong smart growth allies and will be looking to build more in the coming year, but we need your help. UPDATED: You can find a preliminary list of House Members on key committees here. Please let us know if you have any ties to these new Republican members.

Note: House Dems have not announced committee assignments yet and neither has either party in the Senate, we’ll update you on this information as we get it.

Appropriations Update
Every year Congress must pass an appropriations bill to fund federal agencies and programs through the fiscal year. In the last Congress, the appropriations process was especially contentious between Democrats and Republicans, and after several weeks of negotiating, they were unable to reach a compromise. Instead of passing an appropriations bill, the last Congress passed a continuing resolution (CR), which keeps the government funded at current FY10 levels through March 4, 2011. The CR also extends surface transportation programs (SAFETEA-LU) through March 4, 2011.

What does this means for smart growth issues?

• We supported funding for several Partnership programs at HUD, DOT, and EPA during the last year, but because of the CR all programs will be held at FY10 levels. HUD Sustainable Communities initiative will continue to be funded at the FY10 level of $150 million. EPA Sustainable Communities will be funded at the FY10 level of $6.7 million rather than the proposed $11 million. Even though the House and Senate requested $200 million for DOT Livable Communities, the program was not funded in FY10 so there is no funding in the CR for the program.
• In the next Congress, Republicans will be attacking critical transportation, housing, and EPA programs. During negotiations for this year’s appropriation bill, Republicans attacked any increased spending and specifically targeted eliminating $250 million for livability initiatives, $500 million for new TIGER grants, and $1 billion for high-speed rail grants. With a new and more conservative Congress this year, Republicans will continue to target and likely attempt to strip existing funding for these programs. We’ll be sending updates and critical federal asks as these happen. Thanks for all the work you do to support these programs! We wouldn’t be successful without Members and Senators hearing from you.
• For transportation reauthorization of SAFETEA-LU, Congress will need to address the bill by March 4, 2011 or do another extension of the programs (put your money on this option).

Upcoming Key Conferences

• New Partners for Smart Growth – The 10th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference will be held February 3-5, 2011 in Charlotte, NC. More than a NASCAR mecca and a financial epicenter, this burgeoning hub of the Southeast has the excitement of a cosmopolitan city, yet maintains the friendliness of a small town with Southern charm. Check out the program and register today!
• Good Jobs, Green Jobs – The 2011 Conference takes place February 8-10 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. Registration is only $175. The Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference is the leading forum for sharing ideas and strategies for building a green economy that creates good jobs, reduces global warming and other environmental problems, and secures America’s economic and environmental future. Learn more and register here.
• Registration is open for the 2011 National Brownfields Conference which takes place April 3-5, 2011 in Philadelphia (click here to register). The conference is the largest, most comprehensive event focused on cleaning up and redeveloping abandoned, underutilized, and potentially contaminated properties in the nation. There is no better deal in the redevelopment marketplace than Brownfields 2011 because registration is FREE!

Upcoming report release: “Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation“
“Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation” updates the Stimulus 120-day report that the coalition successfully helped release in June 2009.

The new report is substantially slimmed down and focuses just on job creation. From the intro:

“As part of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA), states and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) received $26.6 billion in transportation funds that could be spent on almost any surface transportation needs. While there were many national goals for this money, arguably the most pressing need was to save and create jobs.

The question Smart Growth America set out to answer in this report is whether states spent their flexible transportation money on projects that created the maximum number of jobs. The short answer to that question, unfortunately, is no.

Too many states did not use ARRA transportation funds on projects that would have provided the greatest number of jobs—short- and long-term. This report explores how states allocated their transportation dollars, analyzes the resulting number of jobs created per dollar spent and provides recommendations on how states could have better invested their dollars to create the most jobs.”

Main findings:

• We rank states by spending on the most job-creating categories
• We report that:
  • SGA analyzed the data collected and published by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, for all 50 states. The data show that:
    • Every $1 billion committed to ARRA highway projects has produced 2.4 million job-hours.
    • Every $1 billion committed to ARRA transit projects has produced about 4.2 million job-hours.

Our release plan:

• We are aiming for January 24th with an exclusive in a national paper first and then state level rollout.
• We will provide support to coalition partners who want to do a local release – draft statements and pitching help.
• The report will be posted on our new website (up and running by 1/24) and we will send out an email alert around it too.
• As soon as the rollout date and plans firm up a bit more, we will organize a call with coalition partners interested in local releases.
• You can full a confidential draft of the report here. PLEASE DO NOT SHARE, EMAIL, BLOG ABOUT, TWEET OR DISTRIBUTE THIS REPORT IN ANY WAY.

SGA is hiring!
We’re hiring for two positions: Deputy Communications Director and Government Affairs Associate. Please share these postings with qualified folks you know!