White House advisor touts infrastructure investments during Upstate homecoming

BUFFALO, N.Y. — It was a homecoming Tuesday for one of the president of the United States’ top advisors.

Western New York native Tom Perez, the White House director of intergovernmental affairs, spent the first half of the day in Syracuse before traveling home to Buffalo as he toured projects in part funded through the bipartisan federal infrastructure law.

“The thing about Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester is gritty cities that have had challenges and what these cities and so many others have in common is this is a moment of incredible opportunity,” Perez said.

Capital Tonight’s Ryan Whalen followed along throughout the day and spoke one on one with Perez in both cities. In total, the communities are utilizing hundreds of millions of federal dollars on the projects; chief among them a tear down of the I-81 viaduct in Syracuse and a partial covering of the Kensington Expressway.

“New York has fared well because New York has competed well. The project in Syracuse is a compelling project. I mean, the president has referred to that. When he introduced this notion of reconnecting communities, as you know, Syracuse was one of the prime examples he used,” Perez said.

Local leaders said both the I-81 viaduct and the Kensington Expressway in Buffalo divided communities, contributing to racial inequity and poverty. Perez said the trip wasn’t just about seeing the infrastructure but talking to people in those communities divided.

 “It’s both seeing how it’s being spent but it’s also listening to the community to see what the next steps are and of course the community doing its job definitely alerted my attention to the fact that there’s unfinished business. There are grant proposals that are pending in various agencies and they will get a full and fair review,” he said.

Perez checked out several other infrastructure projects in Buffalo including the expansion of an initiative to return cars to Main Street and improvements to the Jefferson Avenue streetscape on the city’s impoverished east side where he also visited the site of the racially motivated mass shooting at a Tops Supermarket. The two year anniversary of the tragedy is next week. He said equity is a major part of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

“It’s not simply racial communities, racial populations. It’s rural America,” Perez said. “There are pockets of rural America that have been historically disenfranchised and so you see unprecedented amounts of investment.”

In an election year, the administration is touting its achievements including the infrastructure bill and the passage of the CHIPS and Science act. Perez was in Syracuse less than two weeks after Biden made his own visit.

He said the trip to a traditionally safe Democratic state wasn’t politically motivated though.

“It’s not about red and blue,” he said. “It’s about red, white and blue and Gov. Hochul, Sen. Schumer, Senator Gillibrand have been incredible partners in this remarkable moment in time we have.”

Perez said New York has strong representation within the federal government. On top of the president getting his law degree from Syracuse University, he said he has a long relationship with the governor and her family and speaks to her weekly and New Yorkers lead the Democratic conference in both the U.S. Senate and Congress.