By David W. Burns
July 4, 2011

Former Anchorage Mayor and now-Alaska Senator Mark Begich talked with his former colleagues during the Sunday Plenary Session of the 79th Annual Meeting in Baltimore, providing an update on what’s going on in Washington (DC) with the legislative process.

Begich spoke as Chair of Steering and Outreach Committee of the Majority leadership team of the U.S. Senate and focused mostly on the issue of the federal budget.

“The work we do over the next two to three months will be critical,” Begich started, referring to the fact that the fiscal year 2012 and 2013 budgets were already being worked on and that cuts were going to be a large part of both.

Despite the call to reduce debt, Begich was supportive of the idea of investments to cities.

“There’s no question that Senators realize the importance in investing in our infrastructure,” Begich remarked. “As we deal with the funding issues, the revenue issues, we need to ensure our infrastructure is stable so we can grow and there is no better place to invest that money than cities.”

Begich continued by providing details, specifically with Senator Barbara Boxer’s anticipated transportation bill markup prior to July 4. The Senator was also optimistic about moving on clean energy issues.

Begich was also supportive of the Infrastructure bank idea that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emnauel talked about during Saturday’s plenary session, mentioning specifically Senator John Kerry as an ally working to get that in the bill.

“All of these ideas are more in our sights than ever because when members go back home, they hear about the jobs not being created and we’re look for current tools to get these projects moving forward, which we believe is directly through mayors,” Begich remarked.

The Senator concluded by applauding the mayors’ efforts on saving Community Development Block Grants.

“Programs like CDBG have a big multiplier effect, where a dollar in can have a two, three, four, five, ten times impact on the streets and in communities,” he said. Begich continued, “We have to work to protect these programs with a long term impact and these next three months are more critical than ever.”

Overall though, the debt and long-term budgets are going to be the focus of the Senate for the remainder of the summer. Working with Delaware Senator Chris Koons, a former County Executive, Begich concluded by saying, “We know from our experience at the local level that you can’t just push things off into the future. We need to deal with these issues now.”