CURTIS: PROACTIVE PLANNING IS CRITICAL TO SUPPORTING UTAH’S GROWTH

A transcript of the exchange between Senator Curtis and Mr. Duffy can be found below and video can be found here.

Senator Curtis: Representative Duffy, I had the honor of serving with you in the House. And, from that experience, we didn’t serve on the same committees, but I certainly know of your reputation and I’m pleased for your nomination here today. And if you handled your work in Transportation like you did in the House, we’re in good hands.

But I must tell you, as a father of six, I’m even more impressed by what’s on display today. I don’t think I could take my six kids anywhere and have them sit anywhere for over an hour as well as these kids have. And I’m willing to give the bulk of the credit to your wife. But no doubt you had something to do with these kids. So, very impressive. And, I will tell you, though, all that said, I do note in your remarks you read their names as you were introducing them. And I get it, like, if I were to introduce my kids in a setting like this, I would read their names too.

But when you and I travel to Utah on your way to these other states, I’m going to grill you a little bit and see if you can give me their birthdays. And if you can give me their birthdays, I have an even harder question and that is their teachers’ names.

Mr. Sean Duffy: Senator, I do know their names. But I was fearful that I could be so stressed out I didn’t want to forget them. I knew I was going to read them as well, and I might have someone point that out.

Curtis: So, I think I would just say—so impressive. What I mean, you can judge a person by a lot of things, but I’ve always felt like you can judge them by their family and their kids, and congratulations. Very, very impressive.

Duffy: Thank you.

Curtis: So, I appreciate our meeting that we had and your vision for the Department of Transportation. I enjoyed sharing Utah’s priorities with you. And if you have any takeaways from my few minutes with you today, it’s of the growth rate in Utah. By a lot of measures, we’re the number one or certainly way up there in the size of growth.

In our state, we’re expecting a half a million new people in the next few years. Now, depending upon some states, that’s not a big deal. Utah, with 3 million people—that’s a big deal! So, clearly the infrastructure is a very important part of what we’re doing.

Managing that growth, there is both a state role and a federal role. And I’m really proud of my state. I think we do things very well and realize the state responsibility. But I look forward to partnering with you on the federal responsibility to deal with that growth.

And as you know, in the past, we talked in our office about some of the things Utah has observed with the Department of Transportation is that sometimes they’re more responsive to the states that didn’t plan well and have a crisis than the states that plan well and want help with long term preparation. And it feels like sometimes the dollars go to those folks and not to the people who’ve done the long-term preparation. And I’d just like to invite you and your administration to kind of join me and Utah in rewarding good behavior by planning and helping those projects get funded as well—as high of a priority as those that seem to be a little bit more in crisis.

Duffy: Yes, and I think in the meeting as well—the passenger rail between Salt Lake City and Provo and one other city?

Curtis: Ogden.

Duffy: Ogden. How important that has been. What kind of passengers actually ride that rail and how effective that’s been of reducing congestion and moving people efficiently and rapidly between the cities. I think those are the kind of projects that I would look at as the success stories that, again, probably because your communities have planned, are now being implemented incredibly effective in population centers that truly need and use the infrastructure.

Curtis: Thank you for bringing that up. That was on my list. As we mentioned in my office, the vast majority of that runs on a single track, one track, meaning that when two trains come together, one of them has to wait someplace and you can see the inefficiencies in that.

And Utah spent a lot of money, but we will need some federal help getting that dual track going. And 80% of our population lives within those three cities, which is less than 100 miles. So, we’d love to have your help working on that.

Duffy: I’d love to work with you on that. And I think you said something about skiing at Alta or something?

Curtis: Yes, that is part of the package still, as we entice you to that. I feel like these other states have to get a commitment from you to go but in Utah, everybody just wants to go.

Duffy: Right, exactly. Hawaii, though, too, is pretty good.

Curtis: In just a few minutes, let me bring up the Olympics. We talked about that. Utah had the opportunity of hosting the Olympics previously. This will be our second Olympics. I think we were, you know, a model for how Olympics can be hosted, but once again—a real federal role and a real state role. And we’d like to invite you and ask, as you go into this new role, that we can brainstorm on how to make Utah a showcase to the world on transportation.

Duffy: We welcome that opportunity, Senator.

Curtis: Thank you. Yeah. And then, just finally, out of time, but one thing I mentioned—we did a project near my home as a state. We expanded our interstate there, our federal interstate. The state spent $1.7 billion of their own money, didn’t take a dollar from the federal government because it increases the cost of projects by roughly 30%.

So, we’d love to work with you on deregulation and spending those dollars well, and with that, I regret that I’m out of time.

Duffy: Just maybe one other point on that is some studies have indicated up to 40% of the cost is in the permitting and the studies that are done.

Curtis: Duplicative.

Duffy: Absolutely. So, making sure we speed that up, I’ll be your partner.

Curtis: Thank you.