REXBURG, Idaho – The US Department of Transportation will fund community reconnection projects in Washington and Idaho intended to assist disenfranchised populations using appropriations from the Inflation Reduction Act.
The package, which will distribute $3.3 billion across 41 states, will fund projects in major metropolitan centers including Seattle and Portland, and smaller areas like Rexburg, Idaho.
Rexburg’s new $2 million in federal funding will allow the city to hire a private contractor which will identify ways to connect low-income communities which were bisected by the construction of US Highway 20.
Rural communities will receive 17.9 percent of the total funding package, while sovereign nations will receive 3.5 percent.
Federal road projects separating disenfranchised communities is a phenomena which Black leaders in Spokane have sought to address for decades.
Interstate 90 divided the East Central neighborhood when it was constructed in the 1960s and further entrenched racial segregation in the Lilac City. No funding for projects in Spokane were highlighted in the Department of Transportation announcement.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pitched the new funding push as a way of rectifying harmful transportation project development choices.
“While the purpose of transportation is to connect, in too many communities past infrastructure decisions have served instead to divide. Now the Biden-Harris administration is acting to fix that,” Buttigieg said.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022 and was the largest infrastructure policy to hit a president’s desk in several decades, cost $739 billion in total.
Because construction and infrastructure projects often take several years to complete, the full impact of the bill will not be felt until the end of the 2020s at the earliest.
