2010 Policy Agenda

• SGA Federal Policy Agenda for 2010 (doc)

Complete Streets

• Complete Streets fact sheet (pdf)
• More advocacy resources from 
the National Complete Streets 
Coalition

Climate

• Current transportation and smart growth provisions in Senate climate bill, as of 10/28/09 (pdf)
• CLEAN-TEA Fact Sheet (pdf)
• CLEAN-TEA Talking Points (doc)
• CLEAN-TEA Template Letter (doc)

Livable Communities Act

• About the Liveable Communities Act (doc)
• Livable Communities Act, Section by Section (doc)

Regeneration Act (CRSI)

• "Leave behind" fact sheet (pdf)
• Bill Summary (pdf)
• H.R. 932 full-text (pdf)
• Talking Points (pdf)
• Cosponsorship letter (doc)
• NEMW House Coalition letter (pdf)

In-District Advocacy Toolkit

• Tips for scheduling a meeting (doc)
• Sample meeting request letter (doc)

The Word out of Washington

December 22, 2009
November 25, 2009
October 20, 2009
October 5, 2009
September 21, 2009

Take Action
Tell Congress to support high-speed rail.

Other Additional Actions
Tell your Senators to guarantee funding in the climate bill for cleaner, efficient transportation options.
Click to tell your Representative to invest in our struggling communities by supporting the Community Regeneration, Sustainability, and Innovation Act of 2009!
Take action on the Complete Streets Act of 2009.

Stay Involved
Stay involved by signing up for SGA's Action Alerts. These will keep you informed on the progress of legislation and opportunities to contact your legislator on critical issues in the future.

Updates: The Climate Bill (Updated October 30, 2009)

Roughly one-third of our emissions come from transportation. For that reason, Smart Growth America and our partners have been working hard to make sure that climate legislation steers funds back to the kinds of transportation options that can help reduce emissions from the transportation sector.

Investments in cleaner options like public transportation, efficient passenger rail, and streets safe for walking and biking reduce emissions, create jobs, save money in the long term, provide affordable transportation options for all Americans and help keep our cities and towns livable.

Senate:On September 30th, Senators Boxer and Kerry released a draft of their climate bill. "The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" (S. 1733) would set a national goal for reducing transportation related greenhouse gas emissions, require states and metropolitan planning organizations to incorporate emission reduction targets and strategies in existing transportation planning processes, and then provide the tools, technical assistance and funding to states and MPOs to create plans as well as set up a competitive grant program to invest in smart growth and green transportation projects. The Senate bill also includes funding for public transportation agencies.  Allocations for clean transportation and smart growth programs would average out to about 2.4% over the life of the bill. See our press release and fact sheet for more details on the policy and funding included in the bill.

Although the allocations in the chairman's mark fell short of the 10 percent included in CLEAN-TEA (S. 575), it is a great improvement upon the House bill (HR 2454), which included a 1 percent cap on such allocations. Thank you to Senators Carper (D-DE) and Specter (D-PA), sponsors of CLEAN-TEA as well as co-sponsors Senators Bennet (D-CO), Cardin (D-MD), Gillibrand (D-NY), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Merkley (D-OR), and Nelson (D-FL) for championing transportation funding in the bill and also to Senators Boxer (D-CA) and Kerry (D-MA) for their leadership to reduce our country's greenhouse gas emissions through a comprehensive climate bill.

SGA continues to build support for these bold provisions that recognize the growing impact of transportation on our climate, along with securing additional funding. 

House: On June 26, the House voted 219-212 to approve the groundbreaking American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454). The bill is a comprehensive cap-and-trade program aimed at combatting climate change by setting hard targets for reducing emissions. It also recognizes the growing impact that transportation has on our climate, though, unlike the Senate bill, will not require that any percentage of the revenues be spent on cleaner transportation options.

The House bill does include similar provisions that will potentially help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.  The bill allows states to use up to 10 percent of funding they will receive through the State Energy & Environment Development (SEED) accounts for clean transportation options — things like public transportation, vanpooling, and bicycle and pedestrian projects. Unfortunately, that represents a meager 1 percent of the overall revenues raised by the bill. And in the House bill, spending that 1 percent on those strategies is entirely optional.

Representatives Jim Oberstar (D-MN), Peter Defazio (D-OR), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), and Anthony Weiner (D-NY) were instrumental in making these policy and funding advances possible.

(The Senate bill was largely modeled on the House version. While the Senate bill is stronger currently, we owe that success to those who helped insert those provisions to the House bill.)