(September 2015) Rebuilding America’s decrepit infrastructure requires a new permitting system. We propose a dramatic reduction of red tape so that infrastructure can be approved in two years or less, not, often, ten years.
(March 2017) Permitting for infrastructure projects can take a decade or more. To eliminate unnecessary delays, we must give officials authority to enforce deadlines and resolve lawsuits in expedited proceedings.
(May 2018) In 2015, Common Good published a report, “Two Years, Not Ten Years,” which concluded that delays associated with infrastructure permitting in the United States impose costs that are comparable to those required to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure.
(May 2016) Two new rail tunnels need to be built under the Hudson River to alleviate a critical rail bottleneck and permit overhaul of century-old tunnels.
(October 2017) America’s infrastructure is crumbling. These numbers explain the problem, the causes, and the solutions.
(December 2016) To bring its infrastructure back to acceptable levels, the US will need over $3 trillion of infrastructure investment by 2025, including major investments in the following categories.
(June 2017) In September 2015, Common Good issued a white paper – “Two Years, Not Ten Years: Redesigning Infrastructure Approvals” – which called for streamlining review and approvals to two years.
(September 2017) Common Good responds to CRS and DeFazio critiques of our “Two Years, Not Ten Years” report.
(October 2017) For too long, New Yorkers have lived with the unintended consequences of New York’s Labor Law §240, a 19th-century statute commonly called the “Scaffold Law”: enormous legal settlements, prohibitive insurance rates, and, as a result, materially higher costs for infrastructure and building projects.
(February 4, 2019) This essay, adapted in part from Try Common Sense, was prepared for a February 19, 2019 forum co-hosted by the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and Common Good.
(January 28, 2017) Executive power is toothless, as James Madison observed, if the President has no practical authority over personnel: “If any power whatsoever is in its nature executive, it is the power of appointing, overseeing, and controlling those who execute the laws.”
(November 16, 2016) Americans now have a historic opportunity to reimagine government. The key is to abandon the centralized operating philosophy which, in thousand-page rulebooks, purports to tell everybody how to do everything.
(2006) The recommendations in this report are designed to help frame public policy debate and to promote health system improvements that benefit both patients and health care providers.
