Legislation recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives calls for the senior procurement executive of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to enhance the services of the Office of Contract and Procurement by working with agencies, states, and other grant recipients on implementing public private partnership (P3) procurement best practices.

The legislation, H.R. 3465, was sponsored by Representative Sean M. Maloney of New York, who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He served on a special committee panel that issued a report in September 2014 finding that P3s can be better utilized to enhance the delivery and management of transportation infrastructure projects across the country. The legislation calls for the senior procurement executive at DOT to develop suggested best practices to encourage standardizing state P3 authorities, including consistent, fair and balanced assumptions made in the calculations of unsolicited bids, noncompete clauses and other major P3 agreement elements.

A report by the Congressional Budget Office issued earlier this year found that P3 expenditures for the 36 highway and bridge P3s that have occurred in the United States over the last 25 years have totaled nearly $32 billion, which is less than 1 percent of the approximately $4 trillion spent on similar projects by all levels of government over that same period. While P3s cannot provide the sole solution to the nation’s infrastructure needs, H.R. 3465 intends to further encourage the use of P3s in financing transportation infrastructure needs. The legislation is among a series of recent steps taken to encourage the use of P3s. A list of recent Ballard Spahr alerts on this topic are below:

Bill Would Create New Category of Tax-Exempt Bonds, Tax Credits for P3 Projects

Obama's Proposed 2016 Budget Seeks To Address Infrastructure Needs

New P3 Legislation To Take Effect in Washington, D.C.

President Announces New Build America Initiatives; Introduces New Type of Municipal Bond

The full text of H.R. 3465 can be found here.