Connecticut’s infrastructure conundrum persists amid renewed focus

During the Connecticut Business & Industry Association’s (CBIA) recent 2022 economic update session held at the Trumbull Marriott, the watchword was arguably “infrastructure.”

This was especially on display during the panel discussion titled “How Connecticut Should Spend Federal Infrastructure Funds.” Mark Boughton, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Revenue Services, moderated the discussion and was joined by Tom Santa, president and CEO of Santa Energy in Bridgeport; David DeMaio, president of the Pat Munger Construction Co. in Branford, and Tom Jensen, vice president of government affairs for UPS.

Boughton, a former Danbury mayor, explained that his role was both to provide a single point of contact in the government for concerned business leaders and to serve as the governor’s senior adviser on infrastructure matters. 

“People think we just have cash rain down on us in Hartford for stuff like roads, bridges, broadband, trains, things like that —and that’s not really true,” Boughton said, explaining that while there are roughly $5 billion which the state can direct toward already existing programs, the part he found most exciting was the $580 billion earmarked for competitive grants.

“That’s really where I think Connecticut will excel,” Boughton said. “But there’s a catch. The catch is we’ve got to be like Ricky Bobby in ‘Talladega Nights’ —if you ain’t first, you’re last. You have got to get those applications in fast.”

Boughton then asked his interlocutors: “What does government need to get right to ensure that this bipartisan infrastructure law is transformative for generations to come? What do we need to get right?”

“Road construction is obviously the low-hanging fruit,” answered DeMaio. “If you think about what really needs to happen is you need to add lanes. However, that’s an almost impossible undertaking if you look at the effort that would take. So, we need to bolster our freight railways. The infrastructure’s there but it needs to be updated.”

DeMaio added that shifting significant amounts of freight from trucks to trains would benefit everybody remaining on the highway and would make for a generational change. DeMaio also said he would like to see improved utility infrastructure in currently underserved communities, like Guilford where the lack of a sanitary sewer has killed multiple development projects.

Jensen agreed that adding lanes was unfeasible, but that interchanges between I-95 I-91, and I-84 could all be improved to provide increased “fluidity and velocity.” 

“If you’re not trying to figure out capacity to the extent it’s possible,” Jensen said, “and I know it’s challenging in Connecticut, but if you’re not trying to figure out capacity, you’re planning to fail.” Watching changes to consumer behavior and a shift to an increasingly remote workforce are also necessary according to him.

Santa echoed many of his colleagues’ statements but added that the state’s deep-water ports also needed investment. His business deals with shipping products on Connecticut waterways, which Santa called “dormant assets that really beg to, without a huge amount of money, be brought back to life.”

Boughton also put the question to the panel of what businesses need to do right to ensure that transformative efforts by the state have the maximum impact.

Santa suggested that a “big picture” approach was necessary, that different stake holders need to look at the costs and benefits to decisions outside of their immediate environment. He gave an example of a business opposing the reactivation of a rail line near its property despite the fact the small sacrifice of a minor daily disruption could greatly revitalize the local economy and provide with many more opportunities to do business.

Jensen said that more of a focus on user pay for user benefit would help ensure infrastructure is funded as it is needed. He called the recent gas tax holiday a bad policy, stating it will lead to a hole in the state’s transportation budget, and he floated the idea that paying for the use of highways through a means other than the gas tax will prove necessary as more commercial fleets and private cars are electrified.

DeMaio’s response was that businesses need to embrace outside the box thinking and explore options such as incentivizing the use of public transit by employees to help bolster state efforts to improve transportation more generally.