Washington, DC
August 10, 2007

Two weeks ago following the underground steam pipe explosion in Manhattan, Conference President Palmer took to the national air waves, appearing on talk shows and talking to the press expressing our concern over the deteriorating situation we have with our infrastructure.

Then a few days later on August 1, the nation and indeed the world, thanks to CNN, was in disbelief once again that a Minneapolis bridge in America would collapse almost before our eyes.

Levees go down in New Orleans, steam pipes explode in New York City, and now a bridge, built decades ago goes down.

For over 30 years the nation’s mayors have warned our nation that aging infrastructure must be monitored and maintained. At one time, we had an alliance of organizations called “Rebuild America.” The late mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson, led the organization and then after him came then Philadelphia Mayor and now Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to lead that effort. Rendell addressed our Winter Meeting and brought polls and pollsters to show that a majority of urban and suburban mayors supported more federal resources, their federal taxes, to be spent on infrastructure maintenance and development.

Unfortunately, new federal infrastructure projects are more popular than spending money on the deferred maintenance of standing infrastructure.

The American Society of Civil Engineers continues to give our infrastructure an overall “D” average on their report card. As USCM President, Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic joined the engineers at the National Press Club, where he said he would never understand why people would oppose federal funding to protect our children on a school bus from being killed. He talked about while as a young man serving on the Akron City Council, he remembered an incident in Ohio that always stayed with him. When the bridge went down in Minneapolis and the picture of that school bus was just hanging there, I remembered what Mayor Don Plusquellic had warned us about when he was our President.

Months ago, Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson asked me, whatever happened to the Rebuild America organization? He was all over me about infrastructure needs, not just in Louisville, but throughout the nation. He was the first to call after the Minneapolis tragedy.

So the mayors know of the need for safety and also for economic reasons. What are we going to do about it? Conference President Palmer has asked us to have the infrastructure needs issue on our agenda at our Trenton Leadership Meeting September 14 and 15.

Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak called me the day after the tragedy. We will have him come be with us in Trenton. In addition, we are inviting key governors to join us. We will develop a bipartisan strategy that will have at its core a strong and realistic infrastructure initiative for Congress and President Bush and our next President.

Just yesterday, President Bush said “no” to a gas tax increase to support the maintenance and repair for our bridges throughout the nation. President Bush points his finger at Congress and blames the Congress for ignoring our overall infrastructure needs. President Bush alleges that Congress uses our tax money for pet projects and earmarks. It’s all about how you define “pork.” For example, if Minneapolis Mayor Rybak and others asked for special appropriations to repair the bridge that went down, then I guess it still would’ve been called pork by someone.

But I mention this to let the mayors know that Washington is still Washington. President Bush sticks it to Congress and Congress sticks it to the President. Meantime, we, the cities, are all caught in between and people suffer and sometimes people die. But the blame game ain’t going away anytime soon.

On the Climate Protection front, we had a great victory when the House of Representatives voted 241 to 172 to pass our Energy and Environment Block Grant legislation. We are so appreciative of so many in Congress who have supported our goal of providing federal block grants to cities that will provide funding for local governments to design their own tailored programs to meet individual needs throughout the nation.

Speaker Pelosi stood with our President, Mayor Doug Palmer, in support of his request and advocacy for our energy and environment block grant legislative proposal. We thank Congressman Albert Wynn and his staff for spearheading our effort.

The Senate has already passed an energy bill, and in that bill, the Secretary of Energy has the power to make the decisions on grants to local governments. We favor what the House has passed, which is a formula grant as outlined in our 10-Point Plan and a major block grant program has been our goal. We are halfway there.

Soon, the Senate and House conferees on energy legislation will be announced and we urge you to focus on the movement of our legislation. As we go forward to the conference between the House and Senate, we will need your help. The goal is to get a bill containing the House language providing block grants coming directly to cities to President Bush soon for signature.

Conference President Palmer is saying that it is most important that all of you put the November 1-2 Seattle National Climate Protection Summit on your schedule. We are working with Mayor Greg Nickels to make the Seattle November Summit a meeting that will exceed even our previous summits. Please register now for this most important meeting.

As the 2007 summer scorches the USA earth, let's hope it will soon be cooler and we hope all of you will take some time off as we head toward the end of Summer, Labor Day and Fall meets us for a new season.