AP’s brilliant Beth Fouhy takes a crack at how the states will decide how to spend their chunk of the infrastructure money. Ohio’s Gov. Strickland has appointed an “infrastructure czar” to help determine what projects to fund. In Colorado, major decisions will be made by 11 transportation commissioners. In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick has named a real estate developer to oversee bidding for the stimulus money.
The president’s “signature” issue. There’s a massive $8 billion chunk of the stimulus dedicated to creating a European-style network of high- speed passenger trains. The odd thing about his initiative -- the largest single piece of infrastructure spending in the bill -- is it was not included in the original House version but added at the 11th hour. How did it get there?
“I put it in there for the president,” Rahm Emanuel tells Politico. “The president wanted to have a signature issue in the bill, his commitment for the future.” Politico’s David Rogers reports that the White House plans to ask for another $1 billion a year for high-speed rail in each of the next five years.