05.22.17

Hoeven to OMB Director: Level Playing Field for Public-Private Partnership Projects

Senator Working to Ensure Corps Uses Accurate Benefit-Cost Ratio for Public-Private Partnership (P3) Projects

WASHINGTON – Senator John Hoeven, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today pressed Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to ensure that OMB accounts for innovative funding methods, like public-private partnerships (P3), when calculating the benefit-cost ratio of Army Corps of Engineer projects. Currently, OMB does not give due credit to projects that secure non-federal funding. The agency calculates the federal benefit-cost ratio of a project using the total cost of the project, rather than just the federal share, which can put such projects at a disadvantage.

Hoeven joined Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and a bipartisan group of senators and representatives in sending a letter to OMB asking the director to reevaluate the process for calculating the ratio for Army Corps of Engineer programs. The text of the letter is here.

Hoeven has repeatedly spoken with OMB Director Mulvaney, as well as Army Corps Chief of Engineers Lieutenant General Todd T. Semonite to ensure that innovative funding methods are accounted for in OMB and Corps calculations. 

“Permanent flood protection for the Red River Valley is the first Corps project to use the P3 method and may be used by the agency to demonstrate how infrastructure projects around the county can be advanced in a more cost-effective and timely manner,” said Hoeven. “OMB and the Corps need to take into account state and local investment in projects and accurately calculate their benefit-cost ratio using the federal investment, not the total cost of projects, like permanent flood protection for the Fargo-Moorhead region, to ensure that projects being funded with non-federal dollars are not put at a disadvantage.”

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