The League’s John LaMacchia.
The Michigan Municipal League’s John LaMacchia will be in Washington D.C. Thursday to participate in Infrastructure Week 2016. The celebration organized by the National League of Cities and its partners is to raise awareness about the nation’s infrastructure needs. Cities construct and maintain the majority of our nation’s infrastructure and depend on a solid infrastructure network to provide safe and healthy communities, and grow their local economies.
LaMacchia, assistant director of state affairs for the League, will speak 2:30-4 p.m. Thursday, May 19, as part of a panel discussion on “Securing Our Water Future: 21st Century Solutions for 21st Century Cities”. The panel discussion will be live-streamed on the NLC’s Facebook page.
Other panelists are Council Member Matt Zone, City of Cleveland, Ohio, and National League of Cities 1st Vice President; Council Member Ron Nirenberg, City of San Antonio, Texas, and Chair, National League of Cities Energy and Environment Committee; Commissioner Heather Repenning, President Pro Tempore, Los Angeles Board of Public Works; Tyrone Jue, Senior Advisor on Environment to Mayor Ed Lee, City of San Francisco, California; Jonathan Trutt, Executive Director, West Coast Infrastructure Exchange; and Clarence E. Anthony, CEO and Executive Director, National League of Cities.
LaMacchia will discuss the Flint water crisis but he’ll explain how the Flint issue is part of a much larger infrastructure problem in communities statewide.
Also earlier this week, NLC released a new report called, Paying for Local Infrastructure in a New Era of Federalism. Declining funding, increasing mandates and misaligned priorities at the federal and states levels have put responsibility for infrastructure on local governments. But what ability do cities have to take up this call? The authority of cities to meaningfully address growing infrastructure challenges is bound by levers authorized to them by their states. The study finds that cities are limited in the number and scope of tools they are authorized to use, and that access to these tools is highly uneven in states across the country. Read a blog about the report by the League’s Summer Minnick.
View the report here: http://www.nlc.org/find-city-solutions/city-solutions-and-applied-research/infrastructure/local-infrastructure-funding-report
View the full infrastructure week schedule here: http://www.nlc.org/influence-federal-policy/infrastructure-week-2016
Matt Bach is director of media relations for the Michigan Municipal League. He can be reached at mbach@mml.org.