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A Bridge to Somewhere

NEW YORK CITY—Author Barry LePatner says a coordinated game plan is needed to confront infrastructure, the next major nationwide issue after healthcare and the economy

By Paul Bubny | Updated on October 16, 2009

NEW YORK CITY—The Obama administration on Thursday released data showing that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has created 30,383 jobs under federal contracts awarded since its passage. In the popular perception, that means $787 billion going toward rebuilding roads and other infrastructure. The reality, says attorney and author Barry LePatner, is quite different.

“The stimulus act is almost exclusively a jobs bill; it truly has nothing to do with addressing the major shortcomings of our nation’s infrastructure,” says LePatner, founding partner of LePatner & Associates and author of Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: Fixing America’s Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry. “We can’t confuse the funding for ARRA with the several trillion dollars that will become the focus of our nation’s infrastructure, once healthcare and the fiscal crisis are behind us next year.” He says that after these two mega-issues are resolved, “the spinal cord that makes us a great nation” must come next.

The question is, where will that attention come from? Given the crazy quilt of state and federal jurisdictions, the answer is unclear. “We have more disarray than we have a game plan,” LePatner says. “As someone who has spent the last two years researching a book about the perilous state of our nation’s infrastructure, I see major restructuring needed if we’re going to address the serious problems that we have.”

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