BAF IN THE NEWS

Stateline: States await Obama jobs plan
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=442467
State transportation officials hope the new federal plan includes money for as many as 9,500 “ready to go” infrastructure projects they say will put people back to work quickly and help lower the nation’s 10-percent unemployment rate. Many state officials, including Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), have said that the original stimulus plan did not steer enough money toward transportation projects. 

NATIONAL NEWS

Journal of Commerce: Obama Plans $50 Billion for Transport
http://www.joc.com/node/415135
President Obama’s multi-layered jobs plan includes spending around $50 billion in additional funds on transportation infrastructure programs, with the goal of obligating that money to specific projects within the next year.  The President in his speech did not list the dollar amounts or give many program details of his job-creation proposals. However, a senior administration official told reporters that the White House “is considering a package in the range of $50 billion above and beyond the current levels of infrastructure spending, but that’s something we’ll be working with Congress on.”

DC Streetsblog: White House Backs $50B For ‘Merit-Based Infrastructure Investment’
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2009/12/08/white-house-backs-50b-for-merit-based-infrastructure-investment/
President Obama today threw his weight behind significant new transportation spending as part of a broad jobs bill taking shape in Congress, with $50 billion slated for transit, roads, bridges, and ports and the administration endorsing "merit-based infrastructure investment that leverages federal dollars."

The Hill: Building a Broadband Future
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/71193-building-a-broadband-future
Right now in America, one-third of kids are dropping out of high school—among minorities the rate is fifty percent.  This does not bode well for America’s place in the Information Age.  Today, most of our citizens have their medical history strewn across pages of paper records.  We still carry illegible prescriptions by hand to a pharmacist, hoping they accurately decipher what drug was ordered.  Too many citizens in rural communities lack access to specialists critically needed for their care.  Costs are going up, but health care quality is not.  Our energy transmission system is horribly inefficient.  The power company does not typically know when the power is out, until someone calls.  A smarter grid would not only improve the efficiency of our power use, it would help preserve the quality of our environment.  These are problems that can be solved, in part, with better information systems.  To do it, we need a top tier information infrastructure that reaches everyone and a collective commitment to use it in ways that better our lives and our communities.  We need Broadband.

Press Release: Water Woes a Product of Inadequate Funding for Infrastructure Upgrades
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/12/08-12
... “The best approach to ensuring the integrity of our water and sewer infrastructure would be to create a dedicated source of federal funding to ensure that local municipalities have a consistent source of money to maintain their water systems, thereby ensuring their ability to provide, safe, clean, affordable water for residents. A Clean Water Trust Fund would achieve this goal, while ensuring that local water utilities remain publically controlled, safe from the pitfalls of risky privatization schemes, and ultimately rendering bottled water obsolete."

STATE NEWS

CBS 4: Legislature Approves New Rail Plan
http://cbs4.com/local/legislature.session.rail.2.1357686.html
The Florida Legislature's special session will likely be labeled a success after the Florida Senate passed a bill that would clear the way for a commuter and high-speed rail system in Central and Southern Florida.

Examiner:  Ohio rail group's call to save public transportation at odds with support for $1 billion rail plan
http://www.examiner.com/x-23537-Columbus-Government-Examiner~y2009m12d9-Ohio-rail-groups-call-to-save-public-transportation-at-odds-with-support-for-1-billion-rail-plan
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The recent launch of a Web site by a rail advocacy group that designed it to showcase the wishful thinking that's pulling Ohio's proposed first-phase, $564 million "quick start" plan to restart surface grade, conventional train technology running between Cincinnati and Cleveland, ignores the very real problems that will be created for passengers who arrive at their destination only to learn that the local public transportation system can't take them where they want to go, when they want to go.