IBTTA Looks Forward to Elaine L. Chao Being Confirmed as U.S. Transportation Secretary

The global tolling industry is extending a warm welcome in response to Elaine L. Chao’s likely confirmation as the next U.S. Secretary of Transportation after her hearing on January 11.

“IBTTA and the tolling industry are excited to work to advance the new administration’s vision to invest in restoring America’s crumbling roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure over the next decade,” said Executive Director and CEO Patrick Jones, after Chao’s largely cordial, three-hour confirmation hearing last week before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

“We look forward to ensuring that toll finance remains an important component of any proposal to rebuild our nation's transportation infrastructure,” Jones added. “We will do our part to meet our country's surface transportation infrastructure needs.”

Senators Seemed Satisfied

Chao, a former U.S. labor secretary who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), “emerged from the Senate Commerce Committee's hearing today largely unscathed despite offering few concrete details about how she or Donald Trump planned to roll out a massive infrastructure investment program that the president-elect has promised,” Politico reported January 11. “Under questioning from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Chao said she thinks Trump’s infrastructure package would include at least some federal spending.”

She added that surface transportation infrastructure improvements would be “among the top priorities” for the new administration and said she would look at "all the options [for program funding], both public and private, that provide the greatest cost-benefit."

Chao promised to keep legislators in the loop on a $1-trillion campaign promise that will be a priority during President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. “As the infrastructure proposal is being put together, we will certainly be in great discussion with the Congress because, once again, we can’t do it on our own,” she told the committee.

A Focus on Private Finance

Both Politico and the New York Times reported that Chao made limited reference to specific program solutions, “though she did propose turning to more public-private partnerships, referencing the potential capital available from ‘equity firms, pension funds and endowments,’” according to the Times. “Support for federal infrastructure funding could put the Trump Administration on a collision course with congressional Republicans,” the paper noted, “who have been reluctant or even openly hostile to increasing domestic spending in recent years.”

From the other side of the aisle, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) raised concern about the reference to private funding sources and “cautioned against the privatization of government services, alluding to a possible point of friction between Democrats and the incoming Trump administration.”

A Family Boost

Chao is no stranger to senators, but she still received a warm introduction from McConnell, “including a dryly-referenced compliment about her ‘good judgment...on a whole variety of things,’” Politico noted.

“She’ll be only the second Cabinet secretary we’ve had from my state since World War II," McConnell added. "Who is the other? Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao."

Tolling is an essential tool in the wider toolbox of funding and financing options for the nation’s highways, bridges, and tunnels. Click here for background on IBTTA’s public awareness campaign for the tolling industry, here for a first look at the association’s 2017 Summit on Finance, Policy, VMT, April 23-25, 2017 in Jersey City, NJ.

Photo courtesy of elainelchao.com .