Section 1:  Lewis and Clark – authorizes $11,500,000 in appropriation bonds to pay for Phase 3 of the Lewis and Clark project.  Phase 3 includes extending to Worthington, constructing a reservoir in Nobles County and a meter building in Worthington, and “acquisition and installation of a supervisory control and data acquisition system”.  Requires a nonstate match of $9,000,000.  Appropriates up to $855,000 to make debt service payments on these new bonds.

Sec. 2:  Transportation Facilities Capital Program - Establishes a new competitive grant program for transportation facilities.  Eligible projects are those that: (1) support the programmatic mission of the department of transportation; (2) extend the useful life of existing buildings; or (3) renovate or construct facilities to meet the current and future operational needs of the department of transportation.

Sec. 3:  Crude Oil and Hazardous Materials Rail Safety Account – Establishes a new competitive grant program for reducing risks of transporting hazardous material by rail.  Funds projects with bond proceeds. May be used for capital costs for public highway-rail grade crossing improvements on rail corridors transporting crude oil and other hazardous materials.  The program may be used to fund upgrades to existing protection systems, the closing of crossing and necessary roadwork, and reconstruction of at-grade crossings to full grade separations.

Sec. 4:  Establishment of Quiet Zones – establishes a new competitive grant program for improving and rehabilitating railroad rights-of-way and other public and private rail facilities, including safety-related capital improvements at grade crossings in quiet zones.

Sec. 5:  Early Childhood Learning and Child Protection Facilities - makes changes to an existing competitive grant program that funds early childhood learning and child protection facilities. Sec. 5 makes the following changes to the current program:

·         removes “crisis nurseries, or parenting time centers” from the list of facilities that can receive grants                 under this program;

·         removes a requirement that 80% of grants be distributed outside the metro (and instead makes this a                 factor in prioritizing the grants);

·         permits general fund grants under this program to go to tribes and nonprofits;

·         makes changes for prioritizing Youthbuild projects, and

·         removes permissive priority for programs that increase workers’ wages.

Sec. 6:  Water Infrastructure Funding Program – expands the existing wastewater infrastructure program to provide supplemental assistance to government entities receiving funding under the drinking water revolving fund program.  (Under current law, the program only provides this supplemental assistance to government entities receiving funding through the clean water revolving fund program or the USDA’s Rural Economic and Community Development Water and Waste Disposal Loans and Grants.)  Adds specifics to the calculation of the essential project component percentage eligible for this program.  Increases the caps for the grants from $4m to $5m per project and from $15,000 to $20,000 per existing condition, whichever is less.  Removes certain provisions relating to loans:  eliminates permission for governmental units to defer payment of assessments to repay loans; eliminates a provision that specifies the amount and timing of loan repayments.  

Sec. 7:  Point Source Implementation Grants – makes changes to the point source implementation grant program.  Increases the cap from $3,000,000 to $7,000,000 and up to 80% of the project cost for grants under the point source implementation program and makes other technical changes. 

Sec. 8:  Drinking Water Revolving Fund – makes changes to the Drinking Water Revolving Fund program.  Qualifies one of the permitted uses of the fund. Changes that are conforming to the expansion of the wastewater infrastructure program to cover drinking water in Sec. 6 of this article.

Sec. 9:  Public Facilities Authority – increases the cap on PFA’s bonding authority for issued and outstanding bonds from $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

Sections 10 and 11:  Housing Finance Authority – eliminates authorization to use housing infrastructure bonds to acquire or rehab abandoned or foreclosed properties.

Section 12:  HFA – authorizes HFA to issue $70 million in new housing infrastructure bonds.

Section 13: HFA – pays the debt service on the new HFA bonds from the general fund. This is capped at $5,600,000 annually.

Sec. 14:  State Roads – amends 2015 law to increase the fiscal year 2017 transfer from the general fund to the state bond fund.

Sec.  15: Repealer – repeals authorization for the sale and issuance of bonds for the cooperative secondary facilities grant program.