Cuomo budget sees $15B for infrastructure

ALBANY -- The numbers are big: $15 billion overall for improving New York State's infrastructure, including $5 billion-plus for a new Tappan Zee Bridge to be built alongside the existing span linking New York City's northern suburbs.

The figures included in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's $132.5 billion budget proposal are being cheered by New York's heavy construction companies, the ones that build the state's highways, bridges and other major infrastructure and employ tens of thousands of workers.

But some wonder where the funding will come from in a state that closed a $10 billion deficit in its last budget and has to eliminate a $2 billion gap in the spending plan released by Cuomo earlier this month.

"We're all very concerned on where the money is coming from," said Jeff DiStefano, vice president and chief operating officer of Harrison and Burroes Bridge Constructors, a state contractor based in Glenmont, outside Albany.

Still, he referred to Cuomo's transportation initiatives as "absolutely a breath of fresh air" for the construction industry.

Segments of the transportation portion of the governor's spending plan will call for "design-build" contracts that would enable faster design and construction of infrastructure projects and reduce the cost of those projects.

"It allows us to get shovels in the ground and get construction going much, much quicker," said Michael Elmendorf, president of the Albany-based Associated General Contractors of New York State, which represents about 1,000 firms that bid for public and private large-scale construction projects.

Another of Cuomo's proposals: Allocate $1.3 billion in state funds to leverage billions in private-sector investments that would create thousands of jobs and bolster the state's crumbling infrastructure, and another $1.1 billion in new funding for the New York Works program to accelerate capital investment in infrastructure projects.