Shailen Bhatt, AECOM senior vice president, planned and moderated this panel discussion, held before a packed room at the 2022 AASHTO Washington Briefing. First, Bhatt introduced panelists: Jim Gray, secretary of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet; Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, commissioner of the New Jersey DOT; Roger Millar, secretary of the Washington State DOT; and Toks Omishakin, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency. Each speaker discussed a separate topic related to implementing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA, enacted into law in November 2021. Bhatt twice served as a state DOT chief executive – first at Delaware DOT and then at Colorado DOT – and noted that “the idea of the discussion was to step back and think about what the IIJA looks like 20 years from now, 30 years from now, and what will people say and what do you want them to say?”
