Transportation dept dubbed “broken”

By Dennis Geisinger

Rep. Bernie Lieder (DFL-Crookston), a retired engineer and the chair of two House transportation committees says that Governor Pawlenty’s vetoes of transportation funding over the last several years caused a shortage of bridge inspectors and compromised the safety of state road infrastructure.
“I think that [the governor’s refusal to sign funding bills] relates to personnel shortages in the Department of Transportation quite a lot,” said Lieder. “One year wouldn’t have been bad, but the last couple of years we reached a real low point as far as funding goes.”

Bart Andersen, a Minnesota bridge inspector and president of the state’s largest transportation employees’ union, told the U.S. House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit on Oct. 23 that Minnesota’s transportation system “is broken.”
Despite the Department of Transportation’s assertion that it has 200 employees who work on the inspection of its some 4,500 bridges, including those on the state highway system as well as local bridges that need extra attention, Andersen said the work of ensuring that the aging structures are safe is too much for the 77 full-time “level two” inspectors—the only ones trained to inspect and analyze bridges.

“MnDOT doesn’t have enough full-time bridge inspectors to keep motorists safe,” Andersen said in prepared testimony. He urged lawmakers to support a new national bridge inspection and maintenance program.

Minnesota Congressman Jim Oberstar introduced legislation on Oct. 30 to authorize $2 billion through 2009 to identify and fix the nation’s most dangerous bridges. Called the National Highway Bridge Inspection and Reconstruction Act, the bill would create tougher new standards for bridge inspections, calling for better training for bridge inspectors and mandating that all structurally deficient bridges be inspected annually. States failing to meet these requirements would not be eligible for federal bridge funding.

“The collapse of the I-35W bridge has demonstrated that we have to act decisively on this issue,” said Oberstar on his website. “We owe it to the 13 people who lost their lives on August 1st.”

Oberstar had originally planned to temporarily raise federal gas taxes to 23.4 cents a gallon (up from 18.4 cents) to generate about $25 billion over three years for a larger program that would have established a national bridge trust fund. But President Bush opposed the proposal, enabling what Oberstar called “a small minority in the Senate” to impose rules to stall and defeat the plan because of its cost. The $2 billion for the emergency bridge-fix bill would come from discretionary funds already inside the nation’s transportation budget and could not be earmarked or diverted to other purposes by Congress or the Administration.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it would cost over $188 billion to fix all of the nation’s 73,784 structurally deficient bridges, according to Oberstar’s office.

Much of the fallout over any failure of state government to adequately manage its transportation department has fallen squarely in the lap of Transportation Commissioner Carol Molnau. In her dual role as lieutenant governor and head of the state’s Department of Transportation, she has carried Pawlenty’s “no-new-taxes” banner even after the governor’s sudden—and short-lived—change of heart in the hours following the bridge collapse, saying in recent interviews that she’d support an increase in the gas tax to pay for fixing state transportation if it is “offset with a reduction in the lowest rate of income tax.”

Her recitation of Pawlenty’s “squeeze it till it squeals” regimen has sparked a call among the DFL leadership, including House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher (DFL-Minneapolis) and Rep. Lieder’s co-chair on the newly formed bipartisan bridge investigation committee, Senate Transportation Committee Chair Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing), for Molnau’s immediate resignation.

“I would say a lot of senators feel that way,” said Sen. Murphy’s legislative assistant Kelly Russell. “Sen. Murphy plans to contest her confirmation in the upcoming legislative session,” said Russell.

Even Pawlenty’s former chief of staff David Gaither has been quoted as saying that Molnau stepping aside “might be the right and most noble thing to do … ”
And yet Bernie Leider is not so quick to lower his sights when assigning a place for the buck to stop.

“Carol Molnau is a good friend of mine,” said Lieder. “I served with her in the House—we took turns chairing the Transportation Committee. She’s very knowledgable about transportation,” Lieder said.