In the Weeds: Zachary Kolodin, Michigan Chief Infrastructure Officer

Editor’s note: This story is part of Governing’s ongoing Q&A series “In the Weeds.” The series features experts whose knowledge can provide new insights and solutions for state and local government officials across the country. Have an expert you think should be featured? Email Web Editor Natalie Delgadillo at ndelgadillo@governing.com.

There is more federal money available to states and cities for infrastructure investment than at any time in recent memory. But that’s not to say it’s easy to get. Winning federal grants requires extensive planning, documentation, and usually at least some type of match funding — a heavy lift, especially for small towns with few public employees.

Most states have named infrastructure coordinators to help direct statewide investment strategies. But some have gone farther than others to assist cities with grant applications.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer created an Office of Infrastructure in 2022 to help implement a series of infrastructure investment plans developed by state agencies. In 2023, Michigan launched a technical assistance program with $25 million in funding approved by the state Legislature, which is distributed to cities as match funding for federal grants. Recently, the city of Detroit used $2.2 million from that program to win a $10 million federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant — one of four Michigan localities pulling in $35 million from the most recent round of awards.

Zachary Kolodin, the state’s first chief infrastructure officer, recently spoke with Governing about the office’s role in bringing federal infrastructure investment to Michigan cities. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The Michigan Infrastructure Office is still fairly new. What is it for?  

The Michigan Infrastructure Office aims to help Michigan pull down the maximum amount of federal dollars that we’re eligible for in order to revitalize our infrastructure and lay the foundation for a 21st century, clean-energy-driven economy. The way we do that is by coordinating efforts across state agencies to ensure that we’ve got a solid plan for accessing competitive federal grants. We provide resources to state agencies sort of as surge capacity, because getting competitive federal grants can take a lot of effort, and not every agency is equipped to drop everything they’re doing and go pursue those dollars. And we offer technical assistance to local governments as well, both in the form of grant-writing resources and match funding to help them come up with the required non-federal match for their applications.

Four cities in Michigan recently got $35 million in Safe Streets and Roads for All grants from the federal government. What was the Michigan Infrastructure Office’s role in helping to get those grants? 

The program is designed to reduce injuries and fatalities on the roadways through infrastructure upgrades like pedestrian bump-outs and rumble strips that alert drivers that they may be inadvertently changing lanes and going off the road. And there are all kinds of other mechanisms that can be used to make traffic flow more smoothly while keeping people safe.

We participate in two ways. We raise awareness of these grants among communities that are eligible for them. And we provided match funding for the city of Detroit’s Gratiot Avenue safety improvements. In that case the city would not have been able to apply for a $10 million federal grant if not for the $2.2 million in match resources that they got from the state.

The kind of education we try to do is basically say to communities: What you need to pull down federal dollars for this program is a safety action plan. If you don’t have one, the federal government will give you dollars to draft one. If you do have one then you can apply for a grant and you have a really solid chance of winning anywhere from $5 million to $25 million to help implement that safety action plan. We’re helping communities climb onto that ladder of readiness for safety improvements on the roadways.

To what extent are you setting a statewide infrastructure investment agenda that’s based on Michigan’s particular needs and interests, versus just reacting to the opportunities that are available from the federal government? 

The governor sets the agenda for infrastructure priorities at state agencies, whether that’s the Clean Water Plan that the governor released, or the Building Michigan Together Plan for infrastructure. It really starts at the top. And in a lot of ways agencies reflect the governor’s priorities through the investments they make. [The Michigan Department of Transportation] MDOT, for example, has a five-year plan outlining the investments in Michigan road and highway infrastructure that they believe are most critical for that period. The Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy produced the Healthy Climate Plan which charts a course for decarbonization.

The Michigan Infrastructure Office is really an enabler of those plans. We help those agencies access federal dollars to make those plans a reality. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) give us critical resources that we need to repair our aging infrastructure and also drive toward the creation of new assets that help support changes in the economy. There’s a lot of work to do, and the grants available from the BIL and the IRA make that investment possible.

Has the state been able to build more relationships with local leaders through these processes? 

Yes, especially within the last year. We hired a director of our Technical Assistance Center, Kris Brady, in the fall of 2023 and she’s been fantastic at reaching out to local leaders, educating them about opportunities, educating them about the work and resources that we have available. Those partnerships develop when there’s alignment between a particular funding opportunity that we’re offering support for and a local priority. In basically every case the local leaders know what their infrastructure needs are but they may not know what funding sources are available and they also may not know how they can find the human resources and financial resources to put a project together for federal funding. So we can help them bridge that final gap.

Communities across the state that have proactively planned for their infrastructure needs, starting even before the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was passed, have been the most successful in the state. Kalamazoo, for example, put together a comprehensive downtown revitalization plan that involved the conversion of one-way streets to two-way streets, pedestrian improvements, stormwater management improvements to make the community more resilient in storms, and safe street improvements, including the $25 million they were able to win through this most recent opportunity. I really believe that it’s due to the coordination among Kalamazoo stakeholders to align around a vision for infrastructure. I think the city of Detroit has also done a fantastic job at pulling together resources behind a unified vision, and they’ve been able to win an incredible amount of funding from the federal government.

I would encourage every citizen, every local leader, to think about what their infrastructure needs are for the future. Opportunities like this infrastructure law don’t come up every year — this is really a once-in-a-generation infrastructure bill — but the federal government does offer competitive grants for infrastructure development virtually every year. Communities that are ready are the ones that are most likely to win.

Is the Michigan Infrastructure Office going to be a permanent feature of state government? 

As [the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] IIJA winds down over the next couple years, Congress will need to take up again the question of how to fund our infrastructure and pass a new five-year authorization. I very much hope they do that and I hope they recognize that the IIJA was designed to help close the infrastructure maintenance gap but only by about 10 percent. The infrastructure maintenance gap in this country is quite substantial and it’s not something that you’re going to be able to address in just five years. I would advocate for another bipartisan infrastructure law that helps us continue to close that gap. An infrastructure dollar invested today to maintain an existing piece of infrastructure saves us at least six dollars in 10 to 20 years, because bringing a road that is in fair condition back up to good condition is so much less expensive than bringing a road that is in poor condition back up to good condition.

We have a five-year funding authorization ourselves, and as of right now our authorization does not go beyond 2026. I can’t predict the future and what the Legislature will decide to fund. But I do believe that an office like this that has the ability to coordinate among agencies from the perspective of the governor’s office is extremely helpful in moving work forward and ensuring the state has a competitive response to federal opportunities.