POLITICO Spotlights Kelly Bill to Help Repair America’s Public Schools
Public Buildings Renewal Act uses “private investment and innovation to rebuild our nation’s dilapidated and dangerous schools”
WASHINGTON — Legislation introduced by U.S. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA) – a member of the House Ways and Means Committee – to help repair the nation’s public schools was featured today in a new piece for POLITICO titled, “How to fix our crumbling schools.” The bipartisan bill – the Public Buildings Renewal Act (H.R. 5361, also known as “the Renewal Act”) – would permit state and local governments to access private activity bonds (PABs) for the financing of critical construction and infrastructure projects for qualified public buildings such as schools, hospitals, court houses, universities, police stations, and prisons.
Excerpts from the article:
As another school year ends, we are reminded that where we teach children is just as important as what we teach them. The US Green Building Council recently reported that over $45 billion in additional funding is needed annually to upgrade and maintain our schools to ensure for health and safety. Thousands of U.S. children are attending deteriorating public schools where asbestos, moldy walls, falling ceiling tiles, lead paint, broken toilets, pesticides, leaking roofs, and poor ventilation have become the norm.
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It’s clear big upgrades are needed. But there’s a problem: one of the most helpful new approaches to updating public infrastructure isn’t available to schools.
This approach is called a public private partnership and the idea is to take the burden off cash-strapped governments by harnessing private sector innovation. Faced with funding shortfalls, many state and local governments have increasingly turned to public-private partnerships to complete projects and produce long-term accountability.
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Public private partnerships can also improve academic performance. A KPMG study of the United Kingdom’s public private partnership school program reported the rate of improvement in educational achievement was 44 percent faster in schools rebuilt using a partnership than those that used conventional delivery.
The good news is that last week Reps. Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)—a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat—introduced a bill with significant bipartisan support that would change the tax code to create a new category of Private Activity Bonds for schools. The bill creates $5 billion in such bonds for schools and other government owned facilities with minimal direct cost to the federal government. More importantly, the bill would enable school districts to enjoy lower financing costs while employing the ingenuity of the private sector and transferring considerable financial risk away from taxpayers.
Public private partnerships are not a panacea, but they can fast track the massive school construction needed and stretch tax dollars to do more for less. Congress should pass the Kelly-Blumenauer bill and empower school districts—as they have transportation agencies—with essential federal financing tools that catalyze the use of private investment and innovation to rebuild our nation’s dilapidated and dangerous schools.
NOTE: This piece was authored by Bill Archer, a former U.S. Representative from Texas (1971-2001), was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1995 to 2001. Samara Barend leads the US Performance Based Building Coalition, a national non-profit organization focused on catalyzing the use of private investment in public building infrastructure.
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