Rural Republicans question using private cash to fix infrastructure

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee convened a hearing on Wednesday to get input from transportation leaders from rural regions as lawmakers and the new administration assemble an infrastructure package.   “Funding solutions that involve public-private partnerships, as have been discussed by administration officials, may be innovative solutions for crumbling inner cities, but do not work for rural areas,” Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said.  “Public-private partnerships and other approaches to infrastructure investment that depend on a positive revenue stream from a project are not a surface transportation infrastructure solution for rural states.” Infrastructure advocates have warned that the model would favor urban areas over rural ones, because investors would only be attracted to projects that can recoup their own investment costs through some of sort of revenue stream like user fees or toll ways. Those types of projects tend to be concentrated in more populous areas with higher traffic. Part of the reason why rural states depend heavily on the government for transportation dollars is they tend to have smaller populations and thus less revenue to keep up with aging infrastructure in sprawling areas. Rural states, particularly in the west, also have a large number of federal parks and public lands owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) pointed out that the issue also affects broadband in rural areas, which can hurt school children trying to use the internet for homework, she said.