Searching For A Robert Moses?

Two things recently happened, forming an ironic counterpart to each other. On June 26, the Sea-Level Summit — a rare meeting between federal, state and local officials dedicated to driving “real action” toward infrastructure reform — took place in New Orleans. Adam R. Telle, 14th assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, presided over the meeting, meant to forward his “Building Infrastructure, Not Paperwork” initiative. Stakeholders from across the public and private sectors identified 19 priority actions designed to “tear down administrative red tape, align complex permitting requirements, and significantly shorten project delivery timelines.”

On July 10, the New Orleans District announced its “final” recommendation for the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, a project that was first authorized by Congress in 1956. Of course, “final” doesn’t really mean final, as there are further steps to follow and the project hasn’t even been funded yet. Continuing controversy behind the project led the Corps to extend the comment period by 15 more days.

No starker reminder exists of the kinds of delays and ballooning costs for major projects that have so frustrated the public and the industries that depend on them — and have fueled efforts like Telle’s.

Last year, a book titled “Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back” provoked a lot of discussion. In it, Brown University visiting scholar and former political operative Marc Dunkelman explored why large infrastructure projects cost so much and take so long to build.

He begins with Robert Moses, the New York City urban planner and parks and recreation commissioner who, in the mid-20th century, turned the various appointed, formerly obscure city and parks offices he held into behind-the-scenes levers of power until he became the single most powerful person in the city — more powerful than the mayor and other elected officials. Moses was able to get big projects built quickly, often by pulling strings, manipulating bureaucratic rules and riding roughshod over opposition. He did more to shape New York’s built environment than anyone else before or since. Robert Caro’s 1974 biography of Moses, titled “The Power Broker,” won the Pulitzer Prize and became a bestseller.

Politicians in Congress, Dunkelman believes, were so appalled by the revelations of Moses’ near-dictatorial authority that they passed a thicket of laws and regulations that distributed the power to say “no” to large projects to interest groups far and wide. In the name of democracy, the pendulum swung too far the other way, he argues, and it’s now almost impossible for any large project to get built within a reasonable timeline for a reasonable cost.

Dunkelman sees this as an internal fight within the progressive movement, a tension between a “Hamiltonian” impulse to use governmental authority to do big things for the common good, versus a “Jeffersonian” suspicion of it. Leaving aside Dunkelman’s political spin, we can all agree that the desire to build necessary large projects on time and within a reasonable budget is and should be nonpartisan. Finding the proper balance between authority and accountability is hard but necessary.

The Waterways Council Inc. (WCI) has recently proposed that the Corps create a single organization, an Inland Navigation Construction Organization (INCO), to oversee large lock and dam projects across the waterways from start to finish, instead of dividing that responsibility among the various Corps districts. Whoever heads this would be a waterways infrastructure czar — a Robert Moses, if you will, with real authority, but also with transparency and accountability for cost overruns and delays.

With apologies to Dunkelman, the more relevant comparison today isn’t between Hamilton and Jefferson. It’s between a China that can turn itself into a global shipbuilding powerhouse in a decade, supplying more than half of the world’s shipping — and an America that struggles to build more than a few ships a year, and takes more than 70 years to build a single lock on a single canal even when most agree it’s necessary.