Norton Heading to NYC for Transportation and Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership Panel Forum, Monday

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and others on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Special Panel on Public-Private Partnerships (P3 Panel) will travel in New York City on Monday, June 16 for a roundtable policy discussion on private investment in infrastructure using public-private partnerships. In addition to the roundtable, the P3 Panel members will visit sites in the New York City area that have used public-private partnerships for transportation infrastructure. Norton is one of the Members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee selected for the special panel. The P3 Panel, which over the last several months has held hearings and roundtables with various stakeholders, is tasked with exploring the current state of public-private partnerships across all modes of transportation and infrastructure, and how the public investment in infrastructure can be used to attract private resources. The panel is developing a set of recommendations to be submitted in August on the role of public-private partnerships in transportation, economic development, water infrastructure, and the other fields within the jurisdiction of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

"Hearing from financial industry leaders in New York City – the hub of the industry – is a key step for our panel in exploring the capability and the interest of the private sector in helping the nation to improve the nation's transportation and infrastructure systems," said Norton. Congress is not stepping up fast enough, and at least for the immediate future, we must be innovative in seeking sources of funding, but always mindful of the public interest."

The roundtable, on Monday, June 16, 2014, from 10:00 a.m. to noon, in Conference Room A (6^th floor) of the Javitts Federal Building (26 Federal Plaza, New York, NY), will be webcast live at https://transport.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=384126. In addition to the Members of Congress, the roundtable participants will be Jamison Feheley, J.P. Morgan; Karl Kuchel, Macquarie Infrastructure Partners; Tom Osborne, IFM Investors; Steve Howard, Barclays; and Elliott Sclar, Columbia University.

Norton, the Ranking Member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, was selected to join the 11-member P3 Panel in January. She has used her work on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to develop initiatives that have resulted in successful public-private partnerships in the real estate and land-development sector. Among them are the Old Post Office building redevelopment; the Southwest Waterfront; the Capitol Riverfront; NoMa, where a new Metro station – the only one to be funded by the private sector, the District of Columbia, and the federal government – drew investment and resulted in the development in the neighborhood; and the Southwest Ecodistrict, an underused portion of the National Mall.