Volcker Alliance Public Finance Infrastructure Project Featured at ASPA

Through the Deferred Infrastructure Maintenance Project, the Volcker Alliance and the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota (UMN), with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, are partnering to help states quantify infrastructure maintenance gaps and improve practices to close these funding gaps. Research partners previewed the early learnings of this project at this year's American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) conference.

Research partners, Zhirong (Jerry) Zhao (now at Zhejiang University) and Camila Fonseca-Sarmiento from the Humphrey School, presented Assessing and Reporting Deferred Maintenance Needs as part of the "Budgetary Issues across Levels of Governments" panel. The project is focused on assessing the deferred infrastructure maintenance needs across all 50 states, and will include in-depth case studies on ten different states. The presentation covered the project's background, research methodology, an explanation of deferred maintenance, and an overview of the project findings thus far. Fonseca-Sarmiento walked the audience through a sample of our in-depth state case studies, demonstrating how states generally allocate insufficient funds to their maintenance needs. The Volcker Alliance plans to publish these findings later this year. Fonseca-Sarmiento's presentation, Assessing and Reporting Deferred Maintenance Needs, can be found below.