The Columbus Dispatch

US House should pass infrastruc­ture bill that will benefit all Ohioans

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One of my favorite tasks as executive director of the Mid-ohio Regional Planning Commission is meeting with each of our 75 local government members every year.

These visits allow me to listen to community leaders from rural, suburban and urban communitie­s across the region about local challenges they face and opportunit­ies to improve the quality of life for their residents and businesses.

Our conversati­ons are often about basic but urgent community needs on various topics, including strategies to make broadband access available to everyone, connecting our workforce to public transporta­tion and repairing roads and bridges. These issues remind me of the common challenges we all face and the role government can play in making our communitie­s a better place for all our residents.

It is for these reasons that MORPC enthusiast­ically supports the bipartisan Infrastruc­ture Investment & Jobs Act that recently passed the U.S. Senate. Although national politics can be polarizing, that is not reflective of the greater central Ohio community as we work together to grow better as we grow bigger. Our leaders in the U.S. Senate reflect this value.

We applaud Sen. Rob Portman for leading this birules partisan effort and Sen. Sherrod Brown for ensuring funding to repair and replace nationally and regionally significant bridges that were included in the bill.

Passage of the Infrastruc­ture Investment & Jobs Act will help address these issues in our region. I strongly encourage lawmakers in the U.S. House to vote in favor of the Infrastruc­ture Investment & Jobs Act. It will impact the prosperity of our communitie­s and the lives of residents for generation­s to come.

William Murdock, MORPC executive director, Columbus

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