The Portland City Council on Wednesday voted unanimously to authorize up to $41 million in revenue bonds to pay for construction of a new CityFleet maintenance facility, plus an additional $1.9 million for estimated financing and bond issuance costs.

The project will include a garage, an office, a parts area, electric vehicle charging stations and other related infrastructure. The total cost estimate is $57 million. Other funding includes approximately $14.6 million of Portland Clean Energy Fund grant money and approximately $2 million of fleet division cash resources.

The bond issuance process typically takes about 12 weeks, with a sale anticipated in March 2026 and closing in April 2026, according to a staff report by the city’s finance committee. Repayment is planned over 20 years at 5 percent interest.

The new facility’s annual costs, including debt service and operations/maintenance, will be approximately $7 million from 2026 through 2046. Costs will be covered through rates included in interagency agreements, which are paid by bureaus based on their expected use of project amenities, the ordinance states.

CityFleet has the largest municipal fleet in the state. A “path to net zero” calls for the fleet’s carbon emissions to drop to zero by 2050. To support this goal, CityFleet must have a primary maintenance garage able to handle electrical needs in terms of both capacity and efficiency. CityFleet’s existing facility, Kerby Garage, at 2929 N. Kerby Ave., is unable to support an electrification transition because of its outdated electrical system, small size and inefficient physical layout. Kerby Garage has a leaking roof, inadequate electrical and fire safety protection, and no capacity for EV expansion. Plus, it isn’t compliant with modern seismic and energy codes. The city estimates that even after a renovation that could cost $43 million, the building would fail to meet modern operational and safety standards, according to the city’s Bureau of Fleet and Facilities.

The new maintenance facility – to be called the Cutter Garage – will be at property on Swan Island, at 6800 N. Cutter Circle. The Cutter Garage will be operated under a 23-year lease, with options for two 10-year lease extensions. The facility is owned by Elm Realty Partners.

The Cutter Garage will be able to serve more than 2,400 vehicles used by more than a dozen city bureaus, accommodate the city’s growing electric vehicle fleet, and provide safe working conditions for 50 vehicle and equipment mechanics. Features will include safe and modern workspaces, multiple bays per worker, and a modern electrical system and EV charging infrastructure. The project team plans to seek a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver rating for the building.

The project team includes architect LRS Architects and construction manager/general contractor JE Dunn Construction.

The project is expected to enter the bidding phase in late November, with subcontractor selections and guaranteed maximum price recommendations targeted for mid-January, according to city spokesperson Alison Perkins.

The city expects permitting to take place in March 2026, and then construction to start the following month. The project is scheduled to be completed by spring 2027.

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LOS ANGELES — After a section of a large industrial tunnel caved in on Wednesday, more than two dozen construction workers who were hundreds of feet beneath the streets of Los Angeles raced for miles in the dark.

Remarkably, all 31 workers escaped Wednesday night, and none suffered any major injuries. The workers had to traverse the most treacherous part — 12 feet of loose dirt, while water rushed into the tunnel — themselves before rescuers could reach them and drive them to the only opening, Fire Department Chief Ronnie Villanueva said.

The tunnel, which is 18 feet wide and 7 miles long, is under the Wilmington neighborhood, a heavily industrial area filled with oil refineries slightly north of the Port of Los Angeles. The nearly $700 million project is designed to create space to carry treated wastewater to the Pacific Ocean.

The workers were 400 feet underground and as many as 6 miles away from the entrance/exit, said Michael Chee, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. They had traveled for an hour in a transport vehicle to the work area, he added. They were supervising the operations of a machine that digs out the corridor and then builds the tunnel at the same time, he said. Panels that are installed are then used to move the machine forward, he said.

When workers learned of the collapse, they ran back and hopped aboard the transport vehicle, but it could move for only a mile before it encountered the debris.

“What we understand is the men who were in front of the collapse had approximately 6 to 8 feet of space above the debris where they were able to clamber over,” Chee said.

Then the workers — still in the dark and miles from the opening — continued on foot until rescuers were able to reach them and help them onto vehicles to take them to the shaft where a cage carried them out.

Aerial footage showed a crane hoisting workers out of the tunnel in a yellow cage.

“They’re shaken up,” Chess said, adding that all work has been halted and the workers will take time to recover.

Arally Orozco said her three brothers who were in the tunnel are too traumatized to speak to journalists. After escaping, one came out crying.

“He told me he thought he was going to die underground,” she said.

She said they described to her what they experienced: That night, at their work area, they heard a hissing sound.

“They heard like a psss sound, like air was going out, like pressure was escaping, and they didn’t know what it was,” Orozco said.

A while later, a couple of workers were heading back through the tunnel toward the opening when debris started raining down, the brothers told her. One worker ran back to alert the others while the other worker rushed ahead to get to the opening and call for help, Orozco said.

The group had to squeeze through a tiny hole that she said one of her brothers feared he would not fit through. Water was rushing in so forcefully that it pulled at the transport vehicle, she said. Her brother told her at one point the water reached up to his waist and he struggled to breathe because it seemed like the tunnel was losing oxygen.

“They felt helpless,” she said.

The project has been under way for two years without any problems, Chee said.

“The tunnel boring machine has been digging under streets, public right-of-ways, homes, parks, lakes, ponds, golf courses without incident until now,” he said.

Officials will investigate to determine the cause, Chee said.

“What our people and what our contractors and their specialists are going to do is a full assessment,” he said. “Everything from the engineering to the structural integrity to the safety, and obviously a very close inspection and look at the actual collapse point in the tunnel before anything else is done.”

Working so near the shoreline and at such a depth means crews could have been contending with very wet conditions that add challenges during design and digging, said Maria Mohammed, president of the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California.

“You would design not just for the pressure from the soil and the weight of the soil; you have to design for the pressure from the water,” said Mohammed, whose group is not involved in the project.

The investigation could take months, if not longer, Mohammed said. It will take some time just to make the tunnel safe for investigators to enter, she explained. Once inside, they’ll try to determine where the collapse originated, she said.

“It all comes down to: what’s the first element that broke?” Mohammed said. “Usually, a collapse is a propagating thing. One thing fails and it takes other things with it. So, you would try to figure out, of the broken elements, which one broke first.”

City Councilmember Tim McOsker praised the workers for keeping cool heads.

“This is a highly technical, difficult project,” he said. “And they knew exactly what to do; they knew how to secure themselves. Thank goodness for the good people that were down in the tunnel.”

Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference that she met with some of the workers.

“I know when we raced down here, I was so concerned that we were going to find tragedy,” she said. “Instead, what we found was victory.”

Editor’s note: Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press journalists Damian Dovarganes and Eugene Garcia contributed to this report.

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The Oregon Legislature‘s failure to pass a transportation funding bill is beginning to impact projects around the state.

On Friday, the Oregon Department of Transportation sent a notice that it was canceling a chip seal project on Route 34 near Corvallis. Work was set to begin on Monday. Other chip seal projects were canceled in Union and Grant counties in eastern Oregon.

“ODOT is experiencing a significant and immediate funding shortfall that is resulting in staff layoffs and reduced capacity across the agency,” the department stated.

ODOT began implementing layoffs on Monday, with 483 employees let go. That number was expected to rise to 600 to 700 later in the day. A second wave of layoffs is planned for early 2026 without further funding from the Legislature, the governor’s office stated Monday.

“Consequences to essential transportation services are imminent across the state,” Gov. Tina Kotek stated on Monday. “This is not business as usual. These layoffs constitute an emergency in Oregon’s transportation system that will hurt every part of Oregon.”

Hundreds of vacant positions held open in the past four years will be permanently eliminated, the governor’s office warned.

The layoffs list totals 11 pages, and includes engineering specialists, transportation maintenance specialists and information systems specialists. Unionized staff who receive layoff notices may be able to move into other positions, both vacant and filled, following specific processes, an ODOT spokeswoman stated in an email. As such, the impacts to specific regions and programs may not be known for months.

Kotek cautioned that Oregonians would begin noticing reduced services, including fewer potholes getting filled, reduced pavement maintenance and road striping. Brush clearing and fire-prevention work will also be scaled back.

As winter approaches, drivers can expect slower and less frequent snow and ice removal, particularly in rural and mountainous areas, the governor’s office stated.

“This emergency was preventable, and we still have time to intervene,” Kotek stated. “I have not and will not stop fighting for Oregonians who rely on us to keep our roads safe and people and products moving. Come winter, without a shared commitment to solve this crisis from partners and lawmakers, Oregonians will be left out in the cold — literally.”

The funding shortfall leaves ODOT relying on diminished gas tax revenue, vehicle registration fees and other sources. A monthslong effort to pass a landmark transportation bill failed after opposition from Republicans and some Democrats in the Legislature.

Some observers have called on Kotek to reconvene legislators in a special session.

Beyond short-term maintenance needs, the agency’s funding troubles put the state’s big freeway projects — including the Interstate 5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project — at risk, said Joe Cortright, president of City Observatory and a longtime ODOT critic.

The transportation bill’s failure “puts them in a really dire situation,” he said. “The question is whether ODOT should be taking on a $2 billion project for which it has no money at the same time it’s laying off hundreds of employees. Doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Cortright also questioned how much of a $450 million federal grant, announced in March 2024, for highway cover design and initial construction of the I-5 project will be realized.

“It’s very much a question up in the air as to how much of that money continues to be available,” he said.

The Legislature in this session approved $250 million for the Interstate Bridge replacement program. That followed the 2023 Legislature’s approval of House Bill 5005, which identified Oregon’s eight-year plan to allocate $1 billion for its share of the project. An updated price tag is expected soon; the most recent estimate was $6 billion.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the 2025 Oregon Legislature approved $250 million for the Interstate Bridge replacement program.

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By Lee D. Han
Transportation engineer, University of Tennessee

Twelve days after a portion of Interstate 95 collapsed in north Philadelphia during a truck fire, officials opened a temporary six-lane roadway to serve motorists while a permanent overpass is rebuilt. This was a major success after the June 11 disaster was predicted to snarl traffic for months.

U.S. cities often face similar challenges when routine wear and tear or natural disasters damage roads and bridges. Transportation engineer Lee D. Han explains how planners, transit agencies and city governments anticipate and manage these disruptions.

How do agencies plan for disruptions like this?

Planning is a central mission for state and metropolitan transportation agencies.

Traditional long-term planning focuses on anticipating and preparing for growing and shifting transportation demand patterns. These changes are driven by regional and national economic and population trends.

Shorter-term planning is about ensuring mobility and safety during service disruptions. These events can include construction, major scheduled events like music festivals, traffic incidents such as crashes and hazardous material spills, emergency evacuations, and events like the I-95 bridge collapse in Philadelphia.

Agencies have limited resources, so they typically set priorities based on how likely a given scenario is, its potential adverse effects and the countermeasures that officials have available.

For bridges, the Federal Highway Administration sets standards and requires states to carry out periodic inspections. In addition, agencies develop a detouring plan for each bridge in case of a structural failure or service disruption.

Major bridges, such as those at Mississippi River crossings, are crucial to the nation’s economy and security. They require significant planning, commitment and coordination between multiple agencies. There usually are multiple contingency plans in place to deal with immediate traffic control, incident response and field operations during longer-term bridge repair or reconstruction projects.

What are some major challenges of rerouting traffic?

Bridges are potential choke points in highway networks. When a bridge fails, traffic immediately stops and begins to flow elsewhere, even without a formal detouring plan. Transportation agencies need to build or find excess capacity before a bridge fails, so that the disrupted traffic has alternative routes.

This is usually manageable in major urban areas that have many parallel routes and bridges and built-in redundancy in their road networks. But for rural areas, failure of a major bridge can mean extra hours or even days of travel.

When traffic has to be rerouted off an interstate highway, it can cause safety and access problems.

If large trucks are diverted to local streets that were not designed for such vehicles, they may get stuck on railroad tracks or in spaces too small for them to turn around. Heavy trucks can damage roads and bridges with low weight limits, and tall trucks may be too large to fit through low-clearance underpasses.

Successful rerouting requires a lot of coordination between agencies and jurisdictions. They may have to adjust road signal timing to deal with extra cars and changed traffic patterns. Local drivers may need to be directed away from these alternative routes to prevent major congestion.

It’s also important to communicate with navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze, which every driver has access to. Route choices that speed up individual trips may cause serious congestion if everyone decides to take the same alternate route and it doesn’t have enough capacity to handle the extra traffic.

Can these events permanently change commuting and traffic patterns?

In some cases, yes. Some repairs take months, such as the 2022 I-40 Hernando De Soto Bridge crack across the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee. Others can stretch over years, such as the 2007 collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. Some structures are rebuilt elsewhere, like the I-880 Cypress Street viaduct in Oakland, California, which collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

While traffic is disrupted, motorists change their commute patterns or may even switch to other modes, such as buses or commuter rail. But after repairs are completed, even if some commuters don’t return to their old routes, new traffic soon will take advantage of the restored capacity. In the end, it’s hard to tell just by looking at usage whether commuters have changed their travel patterns permanently.

Will money from the 2021 infrastructure bill reduce the risk of these kinds of events?

Unfortunately, things do fall apart. U.S. infrastructure has been deteriorating for decades. The American Road & Transportation Builders Association estimated that 1 in 3 U.S. bridges need repair.

At the current rate, we are unlikely to catch up to a state of good repair any time soon. But strategic investments like the 2021 infrastructure bill can likely help repair and address critical deterioration concerns for some high-risk bridges, roads, dams and other structures.

Can public transit fill part of the gap?

Public transit may be able to fill the gap in several ways when key roadway links are destroyed or damaged.

Fixed-route rail transit services, such as Washington, D.C.’s Metro and commuter rail services in Chicago, typically have exclusive rights of way, which let them travel at higher speed than buses on surface streets. They also have high capacity that can be increased by adding more cars to each train or running trains more frequently.

If those systems’ routes are not disrupted due to something like a bridge collapse, they may be able to operate above their normal loads. Drivers can shift to transit as long as their trip origins and destinations are conveniently located near transit stations.

Bus transit services don’t usually have exclusive rights of way or means to add extra carrying capacity per vehicle. But they have more flexibility to extend the service areas that they cover and connect otherwise non-walkable locales.

Coordinating use of various transit services and creatively adjusting bus lines could address some local travel needs, such as daily commutes and school and shopping trips. But local public transit services struggle to fill longer-distance gaps that extend beyond their service areas.

In major urban areas like Philadelphia that have large populations and have invested a lot in their transit systems, public transit could carry as much as 25 percent of daily commute trips. But for disruptions outside of major cities, such as a bridge collapse on an interstate highway in a rural area, public transit probably won’t have much of a role.

It’s also important to note that public transit services are for moving people. Freight shipments, which rely on trucks and other specialized vehicles, also need to get through or around disrupted zones. This often requires large commercial trucks either to use nearby local streets that weren’t designed for such big, heavy vehicles, or to make long-distance detours. That increases delays, pollution, safety risks and transportation costs that will eventually be passed on to consumers.

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By JEFF McMURRAY
Associated Press

Arizona officials refer to a notoriously congested stretch of desert highway through tribal land as the Wild Horse Pass Corridor, a label that’s less about horses than the bustling casino by the same name located just north of where the interstate constricts to four lanes.

With the Gila River Indian Community’s backing, the state allocated or raised about $600 million of a nearly $1 billion plan that would widen the most bottleneck-inducing, 26-mile section of I-10 on the route between Phoenix and Tucson.

But its bid for federal grant money under the new infrastructure law to finish the job fell short, leaving some advocates for road construction accusing the Biden administration of devaluing those projects to focus on repairs and mass transit.

“Upset would be the right terminology,” Casa Grande Mayor Craig McFarland said of his reaction when he learned the project won’t receive one of the law’s first Mega Grants the U.S. Department of Transportation will announce this week. “We thought we had done a good job putting the proposal together. We thought we had checked all the boxes.”

The historic federal investment in infrastructure has reenergized dormant transportation projects, but the debate over how to prioritize them has only intensified in the 14 months since President Joe Biden signed the measure.

The law follows decades of neglect in maintaining the nation’s roads, bridges, water systems and airports. Research by Yale University economist Ray Fair estimates a sharp decline in U.S. infrastructure investment has caused a $5.2 trillion shortfall. The entire law totals $1 trillion, and it seeks to not only remedy that dangerous backlog of projects but also build out broadband internet nationwide and protect against damage caused by climate change.

Some of the money, however, has gone to new highway construction — much of it from the nearly 30 percent increases Arizona and most other states are receiving over the next five years in the formula funding they can use to prioritize their own transportation needs.

For specific projects, many of the biggest awards available under the law are through various highly competitive grants. The Department of Transportation received around $30 billion worth of applications for just the first $1 billion in Mega Grants being awarded, spokesperson Dani Simons said.

Another $1 billion will be available each of the next four years before the funding runs out. Still, the first batch has been closely watched for signals about the administration’s preferences.

Jeff Davis, senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, said it’s already clear that the Biden administration plans to direct a greater share of its discretionary transportation funding to “non-highway projects” than the Trump administration did. However, with so much more total infrastructure money to work with, Davis said, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

For example, one of the projects that the administration told Congress it had chosen for a Mega Grant will widen Interstate 10 — but in Mississippi, not Arizona. Davis said the department likely preferred the Mississippi project due to its significantly lower price tag. This year’s Mega Grants combine three different award types into a single application, one of which caters specifically to rural and impoverished communities.

Some of the winning grants are for bridges, while others are for mass transit — including improvements to Chicago’s commuter train system and concrete casing for a rail tunnel in Midtown Manhattan.

Along with the nine projects selected, transportation department staff listed seven others as “highly recommended” — a distinction Davis said makes them clear front-runners to secure money next year. Arizona’s I-10 widening effort was part of a third group of 13 projects labeled as “recommended,” which Davis said could put them in contention for future funding unless they’re surpassed by even stronger applicants.

But such decisions remain largely subjective.

Advocates for regions such as the Southwest, where the population is growing but more spread out, argue that their need for new or wider highways is just as big of a national priority as a major city’s need for more subway stations or bicycle lanes.

Arizona state Rep. Teresa Martinez, a Republican who represents Casa Grande at the southern end of the corridor, said she was livid when she heard from a congressional office that the administration might have turned down the I-10 project because it didn’t have enough “multimodal” components.

“What does that even mean?” she said. “…. They were looking to fund projects that have bike paths and trailways instead of a major interstate?”

Testifying in March before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg assured Arizona Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly that he understood the state’s unique highway needs and that his department wouldn’t “stand in the way of a capacity expansion where it’s appropriate.”

Some Republicans, however, remain skeptical, in part due to a memo the Federal Highway Administration distributed in December 2021, a month after Biden signed the bill. The document suggested states should usually “prioritize the repair, rehabilitation, reconstruction, replacement, and maintenance of existing transportation infrastructure” over new road construction.

Although administration officials dismissed the memo as an internal communication, not a policy decision, critics alleged they were trying to circumvent Congress and influence highway construction decisions traditionally left to states under their formula funding.

Last month the Government Accountability Office concluded the memo carried the same weight as a formal rule, which Congress could challenge by passing a resolution of disapproval. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, pledged to write one.

According to figures the Federal Highway Administration provided to The Associated Press, 12 capacity-expansion projects have received funding through previous competitive grants since the memo was issued. States also have used their formula funding toward 763 such projects totaling $7.1 billion.

As for the Arizona project, some state officials have expressed plans to move ahead on their own if they can’t secure federal money — although they’re not giving up on that, either. Considering that one crash can back up traffic for miles between the state’s two largest cities, they say it remains a top priority.

McFarland, the Casa Grande mayor, said perhaps the next application will stress some of the other components of the $360 million request besides the highway widening — including bike lanes that tribal leaders have long sought for some of the overpasses.

“If you read the tea leaves, you can see where they’re at,” McFarland said. “… It’s a competitive process. You don’t always get it the first time you ask for it. So, ask again.”

Associated Press writer Josh Boak also contributed to this report.

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By JOSH BOAK and COLLEEN LONG
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House hosted a summit Thursday to help speed up construction projects tied to the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure law as the Biden administration tries to improve coordination with the mayors and governors who directly account for 90 percent of the spending.

“This is the first time we’ve tried this in 50 years on this level,” said Mitch Landrieu, the White House’s infrastructure coordinator and a New Orleans mayor. “We’re going to really push hard to make it go faster and try to do it better, and try to get at least all the federal agencies focused on accelerating the pace of design, construction, permitting.”

The summit comes at a critical moment for the nearly year-old law as high inflation and worker and material shortages are threatening to delay many projects.

At stake is a legacy-making investment championed by President Joe Biden, who has said that it’s the largest set of public works projects since the Interstate Highway System began in the 1950s during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. Biden has repeatedly told voters this election year that the government can deliver results with Democrats and Republicans working together.

At a Los Angeles subway line construction site, Biden said Thursday that the infrastructure investments were crucial for improving people’s quality of life and economic opportunities.

“The transit system needs an upgrade badly — you know that,” he said. “It needs to connect poor neighborhoods, ease traffic congestion, air pollution and make it easier for people to get around.”

The president spoke on the heels of an inflation report showing that prices climbed 8.2 percent from a year ago. He said he would address the cost of gasoline in remarks in the coming week.

“The price of gas is still too high and we need to keep working to bring it down,” he said. “I’ll have more to say about that next week.”

White House officials declined to provide additional context, but Biden said later during a stop at a taco shop that he was speaking to Saudi Arabia after the kingdom’s recent announcement that it planned to cut oil production. People should “stay tuned,” he said.

Administration officials plan to use the White House summit to smooth the way for accelerating the pace of construction, which in turn can help to control costs and maximize the value of dollars spent.

The Transportation Department is setting up an internal center to provide best practices on project design, planning and construction for state and local leaders. The Commerce Department will have a “Dig Once” effort so that construction workers are not repeatedly punching holes into roads to lay water pipes, broadband connections and electricity and natural gas lines, in addition to other efforts by government agencies and industry groups.

“I just fully expect that the more we work on this, and the better we get, the more money we’re going to save and the more time we’re going to save,” said Landrieu, who spoke at the event along with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, among others.

Roughly 3,000 people were expected to gather in-person and online for the summit. It overlapped with Biden’s being away from the White House as he travels to Western states.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock will speak on a panel about getting projects done on time. He said inflation, worker shortages and supply chain issues have each been barriers and cause an increase as high as 30 percent in forecasted costs.

“All of those issues are the most critical threat to what we’re trying to do,” Hancock said.

Denver is using federal funds to ensure that neighborhoods remain connected as express lanes are added to a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 70 that bisects the city. Hancock wanted to ensure that the neighborhoods on either side of the highway were not cut off from each other, which could make it more difficult for children to attend school. Funding from the infrastructure law provided an additional $14 million to keep neighborhoods intact, with the project scheduled for completion in 2026.

Hancock said that the infrastructure law also created an “unprecedented” opportunity to partner with female and minority-owned contractors.

“We should not let this moment pass by,” he said.

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As economic stimulus and infrastructure spending increase, an unfortunate side effect is an environment that encourages unethical and illegal bidding practices.

The construction industry relies on competitive bidding to ensure that participants receive commensurate value for their efforts. Similarly, public and private owners alike depend on the competitive bidding process to obtain lower prices, promote innovation, encourage efficient utilization of goods and services, and provide a level playing field for participants in the construction industry.

When confidence in the integrity of the bidding process is eroded, these goals are undermined. Unethical and illegal bidding practices also diminish confidence in the procurement process and result in the inefficient allocation of resources. Discussed below are several categories of unethical and illegal bidding practices.

One common complaint about the bidding process involves the practice of bid shopping. Bid shopping is the disclosure of the low bidder’s price to other bidders in an attempt to obtain an even lower bid. Bid shopping frequently occurs when a prime contractor uses the low bid as leverage in post-bid negotiations with other subcontractor bidders.

Although bid shopping is legal, for several reasons, the construction industry generally condemns the practice. For example, bid shopping can limit competition, as subcontractors may choose not to submit bids to general contractors that have a reputation for bid shopping. Bid shopping also can result in increased construction costs when subcontractors artificially inflate their bids in anticipation of having them shopped. Other potential negative impacts include increasing claims, encouraging corner-cutting, project delays, and harming the reputation of the industry generally.

The Associated General Contractors of America has stated that it is “resolutely opposed to the practice of bid shopping” and refers to it as an “abhorrent” business practice. Similarly, the American Society of Professional Estimators has described bid shopping as “unethical,” “unfair” and in violation of its Code of Ethics.

A related practice is bid peddling, which occurs when a bidder makes a post-bid offer to lower its price in an attempt to displace the low bidder and receive an award of the contract. Like bid shopping, bid peddling is legal but considered unethical. Yet another related (and legal) practice is bid chiseling. Bid chiseling occurs when there are post-bid negotiations with the low bidder aimed at decreasing the amount of the bid without changing the scope of work.

Although the construction industry generally condemns bid shopping, peddling and chiseling, it has struggled to develop effective solutions to eliminate them. For example, bid listing requirements on public projects (such as the first-tier subcontractor disclosure requirement under Oregon law) have limited bid shopping to some extent. The AGC has been opposed to bid listing statutes and has instead advocated for contractors to voluntarily hold themselves to ethical standards.

In contrast to the above unethical practices, the next category of conduct—bid rigging—is illegal. Bid rigging is the practice of conspiring with another bidder to bid (or not) with information that would typically not be known to a bidder. The term bid rigging covers a wide variety of illegal bidding conduct. Examples of bid rigging include agreements between two or more bidders to: submit identical bids, share profits with a contractor that does not submit a bid, submit higher or lower bids in rotation, set up territories or allocate the market to restrict competition, or agree not to submit bids.

The goal of these practices is to determine the winning bidder in advance or otherwise influence the award of the contract. In many jurisdictions these illegal practices carry significant consequences if the behavior is discovered: criminal sanctions, debarment of claimants, and civil damages, including the potential award of compensatory and exemplary damages.

Discussed below are several strategies that firms can use to reduce the prevalence of these unethical and illegal practices:

• Educate and train employees about proper bidding procedures.
• Require that employees act ethically and in compliance with the law.
• Encourage employees to treat all bidders the same and discourage favoritism.
• Establish protocols for bidding and communicate them to the bidders in writing in advance.
• Encourage competition by soliciting multiple bids.
• Evaluate and consider reducing or eliminating potential barriers to increased competition.
• Streamline the bidding process and seek to reduce bid preparation costs.
• Allow bidders adequate time to prepare and submit their bids.
• Stay abreast of market trends and pricing changes.
• Open lines of communication with bidders and encourage them to contact management when they believe they may have been treated unfairly. Conduct post-bid interviews and solicit feedback.
• Keep records of bidding and contract awards and evaluate them for irregularities and potentially concerning trends.
• Investigate and take action to correct or otherwise address inappropriate behavior.

Unethical and illegal bidding practices are unlikely to disappear. However, the above strategies can go a long way toward limiting these practices and mitigating their effects, while at the same time raising the stature of the construction industry.

Sean Gay is a Stoel Rives LLP partner and member of its construction and design practice group. Contact him at 503-294-9239 or sean.gay@stoel.com.

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the preceding commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Daily Journal of Commerce or its editors. Neither the author nor the 91��Ƶ guarantees the accuracy or completeness of any information published herein.

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By MARY CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has passed a nearly $1 trillion bipartisan plan to rebuild roads and bridges, modernize public works systems and boost broadband internet, among other improvements to the nation’s infrastructure.

The White House is projecting that the investments will add, on average, about 2 million jobs per year over the coming decade. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said just before the bill passed on Tuesday that the legislation is “a decades-overdue step to revitalize America’s infrastructure and give our workers, our businesses, our economy the tools to succeed in the 21st century.”

The Senate will now turn to a second, much larger $3.5 trillion package that would pay for new family, health and education programs, among other liberal priorities. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the House will eventually consider both measures together.

Here’s a breakdown of the bill passed by the Senate:

ROADS AND BRIDGES

The bill would provide $110 billion to repair the nation’s aging highways, bridges and roads. According to the White House, 173,000 total miles of America’s highways and major roads and 45,000 bridges are in poor condition. And the almost $40 billion for bridges is the single largest dedicated bridge investment since the construction of the interstate highway system, according to President Joe Biden‘s administration.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

The $39 billion for public transit in the legislation would expand transportation systems, improve accessibility for people with disabilities and provide dollars to state and local governments to buy zero-emission and low-emission buses. The Department of Transportation estimates that the current repair backlog is more than 24,000 buses, 5,000 rail cars, 200 stations and thousands of miles of track and power systems.

PASSENGER AND FREIGHT RAIL

To reduce Amtrak’s maintenance backlog, which has worsened since Superstorm Sandy nine years ago, the bill would provide $66 billion to improve the rail service’s 457-mile-long Northeast Corridor as well as other routes. It’s less than the $80 billion Biden — who famously rode Amtrak from Delaware to D.C. during his time in the Senate — originally asked for, but it would be the largest federal investment in passenger rail service since Amtrak was founded 50 years ago.

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

The bill would spend $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations, which the administration says are critical to accelerating the use of electric vehicles to curb climate change. It would also provide $5 billion for the purchase of electric school buses and hybrids, reducing reliance on school buses that run on diesel fuel.

INTERNET ACCESS

The legislation’s $65 billion for broadband access would aim to improve internet services for rural areas, low-income families and tribal communities. Most of the money would be made available through grants to states.

MODERNIZING THE ELECTRIC GRID

To protect against the widespread power outages that have become more frequent in recent years, the bill would spend $65 billion to improve the reliability and resiliency of the nation’s power grid. It would also boost carbon capture technologies and more environmentally-friendly electricity sources like clean hydrogen.

AIRPORTS

The bill would spend $25 billion to improve runways, gates and taxiways at airports and to improve terminals. It would also improve aging infrastructure at air traffic control towers.

WATER AND WASTEWATER

To improve the safety of the nation’s drinking water, the legislation would spend $55 billion on water and wastewater infrastructure. The bill would include $15 billion to replace lead pipes and $10 billion to address water contamination from polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — chemicals that were used in the production of Teflon and have also been used in firefighting foam, water-repellent clothing and many other items.

PAYING FOR IT ALL

The five-year spending package would be paid for by tapping $210 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief aid and $53 billion in unemployment insurance aid some states have halted, along with an array of other smaller pots of money, like petroleum reserve sales and spectrum auctions for 5G services.

The post What’s inside the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

By JOSH BOAK and HANNAH FINGERHUT
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The overwhelming majority of Americans — about eight in 10 — favor plans to increase funding for roads, bridges and ports and for pipes that supply drinking water. But that’s about as far as Democrats and Republicans intersect on infrastructure, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

President Joe Biden has bet that his handshake with a group of Republican senators can help power a $973 billion infrastructure deal through Congress, while Democrats would separately take up a $3.5 trillion proposal that could include money for child tax credits, schools, health care and other priorities. The dual-track approach has produced plenty of drama and uncertainty in Washington, D.C., as negotiations continue, and those divisions seem to extend to the public at large.

The poll finds a slim majority of Americans, 55 percent, approve of Biden’s handling of infrastructure; 42 percent disapprove. About eight in 10 Democrats, but just two in 10 Republicans, approve of Biden on infrastructure.

“I like what he’s done so far,” said Marcos Ommati, 54, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, and edits a military magazine. “The infrastructure plan that he put out there, I think we need that desperately. If you drive around any places in the U.S., you see that the bridges are not in top shape.”

After the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package jumpstarted the economy — possibly creating the risk of inflation — the administration trusts that many voters will cast their ballots in next year’s election on infrastructure and other spending initiatives aimed at helping the economy.

There is general support for strengthening the electric grid, which has been battered this year by a deep freeze in Texas and extreme weather in recent months across the rest of the country. Many of the other infrastructure ideas championed by Biden splinter along party lines, with Republicans largely expressing uncertainty or opposition about many proposals.

Overall, at least six in 10 Americans back funding for local public transit, for affordable housing and for broadband internet service. While strong majorities of Democrats are in favor, fewer than half of Republicans back any of the three.

About two-thirds of Democrats also support funding for passenger and rail service, compared with about four in 10 Republicans. Among Republicans, roughly a quarter say they are opposed and about a third say they hold neither opinion.

Fewer than half of Americans, 45 percent, back funding for electric vehicle charging stations, while 29 percent are opposed. About two-thirds of Democrats, but only about a quarter of Republicans, are in favor. Roughly half of Republicans are opposed.

Slim majorities back expanded child tax credits for families with children and free community college for those who have not yet been to college. About three-quarters of Democrats favor both proposals.

Only about a quarter of Republicans support free community college, while about six in 10 are opposed. Republican views are more mixed on the expanded child tax credit: 34 percent are in favor, while 42 percent are opposed; another 24 percent say they hold neither opinion.

Support is generally stronger for funding for free preschool programs, with about two-thirds in support, including about eight in 10 Democrats and about half of Republicans. Three in 10 Republicans are opposed.

But those investments in children and preschool strike voters like Alan Gioannetti as distortions of the idea of infrastructure. He equates the concept with anything that involves the work of engineers.

“If I need the foundation on my house repaired, I’m not going to call a social worker — I’ll call an engineer,” said Gioannetti, 69, who retired from the oil and gas business and lives in Seabrook, Texas. He takes a similarly dim view on Biden: “Being in the energy business, this new clown we have for a president screwed everything up for my friends and family.”

To pay for infrastructure improvements, about two-thirds of Americans support raising taxes on corporations and raising taxes on households earning more than $400,000 annually. But again, there is a divide on taxes as many Republicans lawmakers believe the increases would hurt economic growth.

At least eight in 10 Democrats, but about four in 10 Republicans, support raising taxes on corporations or households earning over $400,000 annually. Close to four in 10 Republicans oppose both.

The tax issue is as much about fairness as many Americans see the existing rules as enabling billionaires such as the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, to pay at lower rates than people in the middle class.

“The tax system has allowed people to take advantage of their wealth, and I pay more taxes,” said Amy Stauffer, of Hesston, Kansas, who voted for Biden. “I pay more taxes than Jeff Bezos. Something’s wrong with that.”

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By LISA MASCARO and KEVIN FREKING
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal senators struck with President Joe Biden is at risk of stalling out as Republicans mount stiff resistance over ways to pay for it and momentum shifts to a more robust Democratic proposal that could come into focus as soon as Tuesday.

Biden’s big infrastructure proposals are moving on parallel tracks in Congress in a race against time and political headwinds to make a once-in-a-generation investment in the nation.

Senators from both groups are huddling privately again Tuesday to shore up their proposals. But opposition to the smaller bipartisan package is emerging from business leaders, outside activists and GOP senators, potentially denying it the support that’s needed for passage.

“I’m going to take this day by day and participate in the process and see where we end up,” said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., who was part of the bipartisan group of 21 senators but is not fully committed to the plan.

Paying for the new infrastructure was always going to be a challenge, which is partly why public works investments have lagged over time. Biden has proposed raising taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans earning more than $400,000 a year, which would cover not only the nearly $1 trillion proposal, but also the broader Democratic plan that is now swelling beyond $3.5 trillion. Republicans reject that approach.

Instead, the bipartisan group of senators is racing to salvage its plan, straining to come up with other revenue streams to fund the $1 trillion package, which includes about $579 billion in new spending beyond regular expenditures.

One proposal to go after taxpayers who skip out on income taxes initially had potential bipartisan appeal, but now is being lambasted by the outside groups as a way to enable the IRS to snoop around Americans’ personal finances. It would boost the IRS by $40 billion to bolster staff to audit tax returns, unleashing as much as a $100 billion net increase in revenues to federal coffers.

Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said he doesn’t disagree that “taxpayers need to pay the taxes they honestly owe.” But he said he also believes “the IRS should not have unrestrained authority to impose unreasonable burdens on American citizens, and so that’s where I’m going to be looking.”

Another proposal calls for reinstating fees that chemical companies used to pay for cleaning up the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites, which could bring in about $13 billion over 10 years. Those fees were allowed to expire in 1995, and the cleanup efforts are funded by general revenues. Biden has called for restoring the fees “so that polluting industries help fairly cover the cost of cleanups.”

But the American Chemistry Council called on lawmakers to remove the fees, saying they would likely be paid by consumers in the form of higher costs.

“Pay-fors are still up in the air,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who was also part of the larger group of 21 senators who signed on to the bipartisan effort but is now unsure about it.

The core negotiating group, made up of five Democratic and five Republican senators, says money could come from $125 billion in COVID-19 relief funds approved in 2020 but not yet spent, as well as untapped unemployment insurance funds, among a hodgepodge of other sources.

As the bipartisan group struggles to devise consensus over revenue streams, it’s becoming increasingly clear that their proposal might not be fully paid for at all — opening it to another attack from senators who may withhold their votes over deficit concerns.

“This ought to be credibly paid for,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, signaling the party’s stance.

Ten Republican senators would be needed to back the bipartisan bill, joining with all 50 Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold typically required to overcome a filibuster and advance it toward passage.

With Republicans cool to the bipartisan effort and Democrats eyeing it as insufficient, it’s unclear whether the accord that was struck with much fanfare last month at the White House will prove lasting. A vote is possible — but unlikely — as soon as next week.

Meanwhile, the broader Democratic framework being compiled by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and senators on the Senate Budget Committee he chairs is swelling past $3.5 trillion and gaining momentum.

Emerging from a meeting Monday at the White House, Sanders said he and Biden were on the same page seeking a “transformational” investment — beyond roads and bridges to include child care, elder care and an expansion of health care under Medicare for older Americans, as well as a sizable sum addressing climate change.

A broad range of centrist and progressive senators seems to agree, exiting a meeting with White House advisers late Monday at the Capitol and saying they want to produce a bold plan that “meets the moment,” as Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., put it.

Under budget rules, Democrats could pass the proposal on their own in the evenly split Senate, without the 60 votes typically required.

“The end of the day, we’re going to accomplish something very significant,” Sanders said.

Once rivals for the White House, Sanders and Biden are now joining forces to shape the president’s top priority.

“My job is to do everything I can to see that the Senate comes forward with the strongest possible legislation to protect the needs of the working families of this country,” Sanders said.

Ed Mortimer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said some of the group’s members have concerns about some pay-fors in the bipartisan framework, but added, “This is an investment we believe is worth making.”

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