INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS ARE JOBS PROGRAMS FOR CONNECTED CONSULTANTS.

Charles Marohn wrote a column in January 2024 explaining exactly that.

You and your neighbors are likely wondering: why this project? Of all the things that need to be done, how did this project end up as the one we have devoted time, energy, and resources to?

In an ideal situation, the project is the culmination of a bottom-up process that begins with an urgent community need. People are struggling with one or more aspects of how the city has been built. That struggle was recognized, many incremental changes were tried, some successfully improving the situation and some less so. Over time, an approach that worked was discerned, tested, and affirmed. The big infrastructure project is the next step in that cycle.

That’s an ideal situation. It rarely works that way. Instead, large allocations of state and federal funding nudge local actors to realign their priorities. How do we come up with a project that qualifies for that funding? With the hammer of a large budget, every local priority needs to look like a nail.

A handful of people make a decision far upstream of any real public engagement. That decision—to pursue the funding available for a large project—shapes the internal structure and focus of local governments and limits the options our elected officials are given to consider. 

If you’re frustrated that your community can get $58 million for an overpass on the edge of town, but can’t seem to get a simple crosswalk painted, you’re not alone. Read on.

At the time he wrote the column, Tim Walz was Minnesota governor and concentrating on buying votes in the state, as his brush with national politics was still a few Biden brain freezes away.  A Trump presidency and the defunding of the process worship was at the time a theoretical possibility.

Only when the latest cohort of government efficiency types came to power did the memes come out.

How much money supposedly allocated for high speed trains in California or extending the Dan Ryan L a few stops further south or "improving" a dangerous intersection in Brainerd, Minnesota (where the Duluth connection to the North Coast Limited once met the name train).

We got to see exactly where the project was conceived by a handful of bureaucrats and consultants, and how it gestated to term, fully funded and ready to go, before any public engagement had taken place.

The story begins with the local county engineer, a good guy and a competent manager, who recognized the “federal transportation dollars were poised to flow.” There is no limit to the number of projects we can spend money on locally, but the size of the funding pot meant that a large project, with a significant coalition, was needed.

Here’s the quote from the local paper: “We're not ready to compete for all these dollars … There's all these groups that are coming together saying and highlighting the importance of their roadways and why they need the money.”

The way to compete for a large funding source is to have a worthy project large and important coalition supporting it. In this case, it was a collaboration between state, county, and city transportation departments.

The city’s mayor noted that the county engineer “urged everybody right away to get into the queue and came to our meeting and to his own and said, you know, we need to get our name in the hat, if you will, to try to be part of this.”

The way to gain credibility in the queue is to demonstrate local buy-in and need. This meant all three members of the coalition needed to hire a consultant: someone to prepare the necessary analysis propaganda to justify the project. That happened, of course, and the central talking point of the project was developed.

“It is the busiest at-grade intersection in northern Minnesota and ranks 14th on MnDOT’s most recent statewide list of highest crash cost intersections,” the report suggested. Who can oppose fixing the busiest at-grade intersection in Northern Minnesota?

In like manner to the kids being grown enough to do their own baby-sitting before a single baby-sitter draws a government check, the funds for actually fixing the crossing will not be available until some future mayor and city council has taken office, although the consultants will all have wetted their beaks long before.  Never mind that by the time the ribbons are cut, people who might have different ideas about how best to waste spend their tax dollars will be stuck with the project.

Local reporting suggests that it will be years “before we’re actually seeing any dirt moving” on the project. What this means is that a future group of local leaders will be asked to sign off on a project they didn’t start, they might not prioritize, and they might not even support.

They will be asked to do this after their professional staff has invested hundreds of hours into the effort. After local coalitions of insiders (politicians, chamber of commerce officials, land speculators, etc.) have pledged their support. And, of course, long after the funding has been secured.

What if that new group of local leaders just wants to get crosswalks maintained?

The way we fund transportation today crowds out local priorities. It rewards local bureaucracies when they orient themselves vertically (i.e., “What is the top-down funding program we can qualify for?”), instead of rewarding them for orienting horizontally around urgent local needs.

Local leaders working for different outcomes are often co-opted by the system, cajoled to support the project through token investments in their “alternative” priorities. Either that, or they spend their time in office as the crank fighting the losing rear guard action against the fait-accompli project they don’t believe in.

The error, dear reader, is in thinking of the government programs as providing road improvements, or day-care.  It's all about ensuring that the insiders get to wet their beaks, and it's a good bet that they will milk the sunk cost fallacy for all they can about cutting the money off and depriving the pedestrians of their sidewalks or the kiddos of their nannies.