Pathways to Building Resilient Infrastructure

Since CFM launched the Resilient Infrastructure Financing Initiative, we have been developing action-oriented research, trainings, and policy development to help communities learn how to better leverage public investment through public-private partnerships. The initiative overall makes recommendations for state and local governments on three issue areas:

Predevelopment Assistance Funding: Create a State and Local Predevelopment Assistance Fund to close the financing gap and act as a catalyst for public-private partnerships.

Regional Deployment Accelerators: Create and fund a national network of frontline regional accelerators linking predevelopment assistance with permitting and other best practices to accelerate resilient infrastructure projects.

Infrastructure Risk and Resilience Assessment: Create a requirement and incentive to encourage local sponsors of major infrastructure projects to conduct an Infrastructure Risk and Resilience Assessment (IRRA) to ensure that life cycle project costs, maintenance needs, and other risks are considered, along with alternative financing and management measures that leverage scarce public dollars.

COVID-19 Recommendations for Public-Private Partnerships 

Building back community resilience while protecting three million state and local jobs doing critical public services is crucial. To this end, we have additional recommendations for strengthening local fiscal capacity, innovation, and high-impact public-private partnerships:

• Develop new revenue sharing strategies to support essential and sustainable public services: We are working with the Administration and Members of Congress and state leaders to ensure that any economic stimulus package includes targeted and flexible emergency assistance for state and local governments.

• Create a public-private community solutions team at the Treasury Department to support long-term recovery through financial innovation: CFM created a new public sector financial innovation practice area in 2019 to develop action-oriented research, trainings, and policy development to help communities learn how to better leverage public investment through public-private partnerships, impact capital, and Opportunity Zones.

Learn more about the Center for Financial Markets' work on COVID-19.