Americans want accountability when it comes to infrastructure.

A poll commissioned by Building America’s Future, a bipartisan coalition of elected officials dedicated to improving federal investment in infrastructure, and conducted by Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, shows widespread and bipartisan support for infrastructure investment with accountability measures.

During a conference call about the survey—where participants included Polly Trottenberg, executive director of Building America’s Future, and group co-chairs California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg—Frank Luntz announced that the results showed “key national findings that stand out in this survey, that I have not seen in 15 years.”

Highlights of the findings are as follows:

• The attribute the public is looking for in all of this is accountability, with 61% of Americans naming that as their top priority;
• Americans have “personalized it.” Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research uses a five-point scale in terms of how concerned respondents are on various issues. Sixty-nine percent expressed their level of concern regarding infrastructure as either “extreme” or “very,” which falls at a similar level to the issues of health care and education with the belief that there is something wrong and needs to be changed; and
• The American people are prepared to pay for a change in infrastructure. In fact, 81% of Americans are prepared to pay 1% more in taxes to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.

“By more than two to one, the public is concerned that each of these programs has accountability, transparency, oversight and measurable results. Those are the words that came back to us, with accountability No. 1,” Luntz said. “So as important as this is for jobs, the public wants to make sure that the investment is made now, that it is effective and that the dollars are spent in the way that there are those four elements.”

“We’re going to make some changes,” Trottenberg told Roads & Bridges. “The states are going to have to account for the money. There will be a database that the public and media can search. I think it’s going to be a huge public confidence booster. I think when the public sees where the money is going, it will give them a greater investment in the program.”

Luntz awarded Washington’s handling of infrastructure an “F”, saying that doing so was necessary when only 22% of the public said it has done an effective job.

Rendell added, “Ten years ago, I was head of an organization called Rebuild America. We did a poll on infrastructure. Interestingly, only about 65% of Americans indicated they would be willing to pay more in federal taxes to rebuild America’s infrastructure. The public is way ahead of us. They understand that we need to have our infrastructure rebuilt and revitalized.”