Reduce federal involvement in local infrastructure decisions

Research notes

• partial and not done under §3’s open-ended-ask rule, and because the record cuts both ways: while FHWA was withdrawing planning and performance requirements, DOT was canceling grant awards it judged misaligned and creating a Secretary’s-discretion program for the District of Columbia in the FY2027 Budget — federal involvement in local decisions redirected rather than reduced in those instances. The note on #1722 records the same tension.
• The NEPA assignment notices are cited as a class; Texas’s renewal (2025-06-20 and 2025-07-18), Nebraska’s application (2025-12-12) and Ohio’s renewal (2026-03-05) are the others, all Federal Register notices under the same program. Georgia joined the class on 2026-10-02, with two FHWA notices: its application to the Surface Transportation Project Delivery Program with a proposed NEPA assignment MOU (FR 2026-20210), and a proposed MOU assigning categorical-exclusion determinations to the state (FR 2026-20209). These are proposals in a class the 2025-07-03 event already carries, so there is no new event. Known from the abstracts (scan triage, eleventh run).
• DOT Order 2100.7 of 2025-01-29, read in full 2026-09-03 — considered and deliberately not made an event. Ensuring Reliance Upon Sound Economic Analysis in Department of Transportation Policies, Programs, and Activities (transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2025-02/DOT_2100.7-Ensuring_Reliance_Upon_Sound_Economic_Analysis_in_DOT_Policies.pdf) is the Secretary’s own department-wide instrument on this subject and #1724 did not previously cite it. Its §5.e is squarely on the ask’s words: “DOT-supported or -assisted programs and activities, including without limitation, all DOT grants, loans, contracts, and DOT-supported or -assisted State contracts, shall not be used to further local political objectives or for projects and goals that are purely local in nature and unrelated to a proper Federal interest”, and should instead prioritize projects “consistent with the proper role of the Federal government in our system of federalism”. But the very next paragraph cuts the other way. §5.f directs that the same grants, loans and contracts “shall prioritize projects and goals that”: use user-pay models; “direct funding to local opportunity zones where permitted”; “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average”; “prohibit recipients of DOT support or assistance from imposing vaccine and mask mandates”; and “require local compliance or cooperation with Federal immigration enforcement and with other goals and objectives specified by the President … or the Secretary”. §6.c.2–3 then orders every operating administration to rewrite all Notices of Funding Opportunity and grant agreements and to unilaterally amend existing ones to match. Withdrawing federal money from purely local projects is less federal involvement; attaching five federal policy conditions to every dollar that remains is more. The Order therefore redirects federal involvement in local decisions rather than reducing it, which is the same tension the bullet above records, and it does not move the rung. It is recorded here with both halves quoted so a reader sees the whole instrument rather than the convenient paragraph.
• Read with #1722 and #1723 on p. 629; the rescission package cited on #1723 is the same program seen from the states’ side rather than the localities’.