For joining. My name is loren smith. Itll be three years this month that ive been at the department, incredibly honored to be part of a great team doing a lot of what we think is really, really awesome work. Its going to be a lot of help to a lot of different parts of the country. Were really, really excited about. I had the honor of serving previously with secretary chow at the labor department. Its been a fascinating experience seeing different cabinet agencies and how the different organizations work. Im joined today by four really excellent panelists i think youre going to enjoy hearing from. I first want to introduce Alex Herrgott who is executive director of the public improvement counsel, fipsi. He has been in that role since september 2018. He had been serving previously as the associate director for infrastructure for counsel on Environmental Quality at the white house. Mr. Herrgott worked for senator james earnhoff in california. He served as primary staff for transportation and water issues and helped to pass the 2005 and 2012 surface transportation redevelopment bills. He also worked on the water act of 2007. He also served as legislative director from 2013 to 2014 and deputy staff director for Senate EnvironmentalPublic Works Committee to pass the f. A. S. T. Act as well as the Water Infrastructure improvements for the nation act in 2016. Next, i want to introduce jane williams, the acting administrator of the federal transit administration. She brings over 20 years of executive experience to her role, having served previously at the department of energy and the department of labor under president reagan and the department of interior under president george h. W. Bush. Ms. Williams leads an agency of 500 people in washington, d. C. And ten regional offices across the country. She manages the annual budget of over 13 billion. The fta is one of the department of transportations nine operating administrations. It provides financial and Technical Assistance to Transit Systems including buses, subways, light rail, Commuter Rail, trollies, and ferries. Our third panelist, nicole nason. She leaves a Modal Administration within the department of transportation that is responsible for the nation 49 billion federal aid highway program. Previously she was the assistant secretary for the u. S. Department of state. She has served in numerous roles in washington, d. C. As well. She was the administrator at the national highway Traffic Safety administration. In that role, she was the twotime recipient of the gold medal for the department of transportation which is the highest honor. She served at d. O. T. s assistant secretary for Government Affairs and was in the branch as counsel for the u. S. House judiciary committee. Our final panelist is quintin kendall, the deputy administrator of the federal railway administration. He is previously served as the Deputy Assistant secretary for management and budget from 2005 to 2008 under secretary nor man manetta. Most recently from 2013 to 2018 she was Csx TransportationVice President for State Government and community affairs. So, thats our panel. And im going to transform myself briefly into a panelist myself. And i want to give you all an update on an initiative that were very excited about at d. O. T. , our routes initiative. And keeping with our love of acronyms, this is the rural opportunities to use transportation for economic success. Let me see if i can get our slide going here. So, the routes initiative is part of the departments effort to address underserved areas across the country. We have several work streams weve undertaken that are going to be very helpful. Lets see where we are. Rural networks are incredibly important part of our transportation system. Lets see if lets make sure i havent gone too far here. There we go. Okay. So, one thing that weve been trying to assess and gather the data thats going to tell us a little bit more about some of these areas that we believe have been underserved in recent decades. Something that weve done is we have some talking points here. But i really want to get to some of the data, some of the specific points that weve looked at that we think are incredibly important for why we think that this initiative is necessary. The first pillar that we see within our Rural Initiative is the safety impact. 46 of all highway fatalities in the u. S. Are in rural areas. And when you consider that rural areas house a majority of the land area but only 19 of the population, that 46 looms very large. Youre dealing with multiple, several factors of the safety impact where so many of those fatalities are in rural areas. And we think that is an issue that we really need to address and understand more of. The second major pillar of our Rural Initiative is the infrastructure condition. We see that a great majority of closed and out of service bridges are in rural areas and that its a number of those areas where we have not been able to keep up with the maintenance that those areas in this country needs. And why is that important . Thats important because of the third element of the Rural Initiative which is infrastructure usage. One of the stats that i think is incredibly eye opening is that 44 in that first bullet, that 44 of all rural vehicle miles travelled are actually driven by urban residents that are passing to or through rural areas, whether theyre going to visit family members or going for recreation or transitting to another urban area. That 44 number is incredibly important. And then you see that bottom number there. That 47 of truck vmt occurs in rural areas. Of course a great majority of everything you see in the supermarket gets there by truck on the ground. What the r. O. U. T. E. S. Initiative, thats why were doing this. What it is is a crossdepartmental initiative to coordinate and understand what resources the department has within our authorities, within our programs to address rural needs in ways that we can do a better job getting that coordination, getting that information together. Right now the department is developing a tool kit that will be available to all grant applicants. But, you know, particularly we see from underserved areas, smaller areas, applicants that may not have may not have as many resources that those applicants would have the opportunity to sort of see in an accessible document what are the ways that what are the ways that grant applications can be completed . What are the elements of successful grant applications . And that is thats something that we have spent a lot of time working on. We also have a request for information thats currently in the federal register. And you probably all didnt know that you were getting a homework assignment today comes to this session. This request for information is open july january 27th, and we are looking for commentary, thoughts, suggestions on what the department can be doing, what are the areas of need, what are some things the department should be considering when were trying to when were trying to regress this balance, trying to do a better job of coordinating to make sure we can help rural areas become better resources. And again, i very much appreciate your attention on this issue. We think its one of the departments most exciting initiatives and were happy to look at that. So, with that, i am going to click to the next slide which will bring up a eventually. It may take a moment. Were going to bring up the next slide deck for our next panelist and Alex Herrgott, federal permitting improvement steering counsel. Im going to yield the mic to you. Oh, yes. My staffs waving to me that we also are going to get to the q a portion after the presentations, and the q a will be were going to do the index card method. So, anyone thats interested in sending in a question, we have folks around the room that have index cards and you can signal one of them and theyll bring you over one if you want to send us up a question. And were going to read those after we do the presentations. So, look around for those weve got folks over here. Well read and respond to your questions in a little bit. So, alex. All right. Thank you, loren. How many of you are familiar with the federal Improvement Steering Council . Thats enough. Rest assured youre not going to forget what it is after this presentation. But my name is Alex Herrgott. Im the executive director of the council appoint bid the president. We have a single goal to address a single issue which is a lack of clarity of who is in charge of making decisions across up to 13, 14 federal agencies on major Infrastructure Projects that span Service Transportation beyond that over to broad band, Water Infrastructure, aviation, energy, and several others which you can see at permits. Performance. Gov. But the bottom line is this, as my colleague over at d. O. T. And the administrators will be talking about today, its the importance of things they can do within an agency to ensure we are stewards of the public trust. As Civil Servants were ensuring were providing the best most efficient infrastructure in the country while recognizing that through the permitting process were trying to achieve the most pragmatic balance between the Natural Environment and human activity. Of the 4 million miles of roads in this country, we have to ensure the roads, when we maintain, modernize, and restore those physical assets, that we are not held up with unnecessary red tape. Is this my clicker . So what im going to walk you through is a brief explanation of what the council is. We provide a onestop shop within the federal government to ensure there are no communication breakdowns and that the kind of expectations you have on your federal government to give you decisions, not necessarily yeses, but decisions in environmental reviews is essential to ensuring predictability and transparency in the permitting process. What is the permitting council . It was created in law by the f. A. S. T. Act. What does it offer . It offers a transparent online dashboard along with enhanced coordination across all agencies from a team that exists in my office which is an independent Government Office that sits outside all federal agencies and reports directly to the president. How do we deliver those benefit . From working with project sponsors to those that are proving projects through, the relevant resource agencies, states, communities, tribes to ensure that decisions that need to be made are done within a time frame and all relevant information is available to all individuals at all times to ensure that we can adjudicate disputes, resolve issues, and at some point in the process, hopefully within the timelines, ensure that the decision document or all the relevant authorizations that are spread across federal agencies are done in an appropriate amount of time. What is going through this project look like as an existing project sponsor . Im going to get into that. At the heart of that, and im not sure if the cspan3 folks in the back can see this, but this is the famous chart we made for the president a couple of years ago. In order to put a permit, a project, in this case just a regular ordinary federal highways project, these are the amount of Decision Makers that are required across 13 federal agencies not including the state and federal. Although its a vertical chart, it kind of looks but the bottom line is this. You can have 14 different agencies making up to 52 different decisions according to 15 different statutes not taking into account the respective guidance, need for regulations, and the other core precedent that dictates how a project is supposed to be done across federal agencies. You shouldnt have to hire a lobbyist or be an expert to figure out how to move through the process. This is not a republican or democrat issue. This is a common sense performance issue to enshoo you are that we actually have a reliable federal partner to serve as a resource to provide and protect the environment while ensuring that there is a reasonable understanding that at some point we have to build stuff in this country and we can do it responsibly without holding it up under unnecessary red tapes adding costs and unnecessary delays which in some cases require Additional Resources to augment those that could have been spent building projects doing things that could have been fixed in transparency with a rededication of success which is building a project. Onestop shop. Call our office. Youre a project. We put you on the dashboard. When you have an issue, you dont have to call 12 deferent agencies. We can help you with that. We coordinate. Thats a service that we offer and something that was created by i think 92 senators when it passed in 2015 and a recognition that we needed a Statutory Council that existed within the federal family to provide the clarity and predictability we should have been offering 15, 20 years ago. Executive oversight. The counsel cil is made up of a agencies. They apoipoint a serpo and only elevate to the counsel member when we have a dispute among issues where we have a Critical Path issue where there are significant delays we expect we can head off before they hand themselvess in an issue where we have retract able decisions between two agencies or litigation and dispute resolution. If we have a disagreement between two agencies, i can elevate a decision up to the office of management and budget. Its the strongest, strongest end remedy that exists in the federal law. This is how you become a project. You apply. Can i turn that off or is that audiovisual aid . All right. If a project is of 200 million of economic activity, deals with one or more federal agencies, or requires Environmental Impact statement you can apply under one of the eight covered sectors. We have a decision where we work within the lead federal agency. We decide whether or not your project meets the requirements to be a covered project. This is where the rubber meets the road. We develop a coordinated project plan which is awe realist prudent plan across all agencies, state, and state and tribal if they opt in so we can have a road map to build a project over a period of time with the idea that on average agencies will meet these goals within two years or Environmental Impact statement and 90 days for all relevant permits. This is what the dashboard looks like. We did it so an 8th grader can understand which is really where my reading level is. These are the projects. We simply list it in a central repository. Its spread across agencies websites or mined within vurmtal impact statement documents. And for those that have read those documents that is why the Administration Made strides to ensure we have pragmatic reasonable documents without needing a phd to figure out whether the impacts were something that needed to be addressed. All of the relevant information. When developing record for these projects theyre placed across all agencies. Here we sri appoint of contact thats managed by a reliable federal partner that is a one stop shop that can show you who the affected is. All of the relevant permits. The federal highways project requires authorizations from the epa, fish and wild life service, potentially the delegated services to state on section 402 of the clean water act which deals with nonpoint discharge or permit that deals with 401. All of those, although we may not have jurisdiction are listed in one place so we have a road map in understanding what the dependencies are, the requirements on other agencies to make decisions to the lead agency, in this case, would be federal highways or fta or whoever is the lead agency can make a decision without having to without having to do whack a mole across the federal agencies to figure out their respective requirements in the statute, where they are in the process. In a more e detailed analysis, with those permits where it is with milestones and timelines. This is really what its about. Its about having an understandable, reliable chart, that shows you where in the process you are with expected planned completion times. The only way those dates worldwide changed is if my office is notified within 30 days and a milestone extension is asked for. That could come from project sponsor or the state. Its not a bad thing. What were trying to get to is a rational and pragmatic way to not just have dates on a sheet that are changed or paused without an understanding of why so that the ub approximate lipu sponsor knows where a project is at all times. Theres also the opportunity for states to opt in to the fast forwarding process where what they will do in many cases if theyre not colead the registered their required organizations even though we dont have jurisdiction so we have the full road map of what decisions need to be made and when so that we can get to a logical and pragmatic conclusion. Weve had a tremendous amount of successes where weve saved millions of dollars on projects. Often times its difficult to assume what the savings would have been as the opportunity cost of projects that are actually being completed on time. Many of these are projects that were completed below budget and earlier than anticipated. As many of you know, if we get the project done when we said were going to get it done following the required statutes and addressing the publics concerns, thats a win. These are the sectors that are covered under fast forwarding. There is a clear definition of what projects are eligible. Currently we have over 200 billion worth of projects on the dashboards, makes it the largest entity of its kind in the world. This is something that you may not have heard of because the goal is not to put out press releases. The goal is to work with project sponsors, work with states, work with agencies to ensure that as we roll out the other respective g