I-35W Bridge

In this issue: Janecek's in the Mideast & The Inmates are Running the Asylum; Negative Identities: Senators Craig, Wellstone, Homophobia And Easy Messages; Phillips Incinerator Burning Down; Lively Green and the War on Drugs: Who Patrols the Border Patrol?; Bridge Charity Work; Bits & Pieces; Lobbyist Watch.

The number one topic of speculation on everyone's mind this week is whether Lt. Gov. and MnDOT Commissioner Carol Molnau should resign.

First, my reasoning. Second, my conclusion.

As I've written before, underfunding transportation infrastructure maintenance has been a decades-long problem, with no political party or person--including Molnau--to blame. Even if transportation infrastructure had been better funded over time, the I-35W Bridge was not on any of the "must do now" lists. The most recent news reports indicate the inspections problem may lie with the federal and the state government.

Never mind.

GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been quite clear that, in the aftermath of the bridge collapse, the transportation funding world changed. He would now support a gas tax increase as part of an increased transportation funding package. The Governor's communications director, Brian McClung, when talking about the Governor's change of heart on a gas tax increase, said, "[T]hese are extraordinary circumstances. The governor feels we need to come together and work as aggressively as we can to address these issues. He thinks that's the right thing for our state."

Under heated questioning from reporters about her long-time opposition to increasing the gas tax, and whether she would support the Governor, the Star Tribune quotes the following as Molnau's response, "On a gas tax, she said, 'we do need to look for resources we can count on long term.' But in order to solve the problem, she said, 'we would have to raise gas taxes 34 or 35 cents a gallon. I don't think the motoring public can sustain that.'"

While Molnau was absolutely dead correct in this answer, it's an obfuscating answer. In times of political crisis, an obfuscating answer is the wrong answer.

As Transportation Commissioner, Molnau serves at the pleasure of the Governor, who appointed her. That should have been her answer, "I serve at the pleasure of the Governor, he decides the policy and I execute that policy."

And therein lies the problem with what seemed to be such a good idea back in 2002 when Pawlenty appointed his Lt. Gov. to be his Transportation Commissioner, the "one-woman SWAT team at MnDOT." [Lost here is the fact that even then, Pawlenty recognized the decades-long problems at MnDOT.] Molnau's role has always been confused. Pawlenty selected Molnau to be his Lt. Gov. running mate at a time when he was facing a conservative credentials showdown for the GOP gubernatorial endorsement against another impeccably credentialed conservative candidate, Brian Sullivan. Her GOP-endorsing delegate bona fides were unimpeachable: An entire legislative record of the right votes on the social issues and the right votes on the fiscal ones, including no funding for the then-highly controversial light rail transit (LRT) and no increasing the gas tax. And, oh, yes, she wore a skirt, not slacks, and lived in the GOP-vote rich western suburbs while at the same time sporting a legitimate rural resume as a former dairy farmer.

As a legislator, Molnau had her own agenda. On transportation funding, that used to match Pawlenty's. Pawlenty changed his mind, or recognized the need for compromise. On LRT, and now, on increasing the gas tax. Molnau doesn't have the standing to somehow try to hang on to some semblance of staying consistent with her previous legislative record. She's not, in President George Bush's infamous words, "the decider." Pawlenty is.

All of which explains her problem at the Legislature, particularly with key Senate player, transportation Policy & Budget Committee Chair Sen. Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing). Understandably, he has never been sure he's dealing with former legislative adversary former House GOP Transportation Funding Chair Rep. Carol Molnau, a Lt. Gov., or the Governor's chief transportation policy point person.

Over the years, Molnau has been an exemplary public servant. Knows her stuff, smart as hell, heart of gold. All that. Molnau is the right person for one of the two jobs but not both. Combining the two jobs made sense back in the era of historic budget deficits, but not in the new era of the bridge collapse tragedy. The tough public policy debate ahead requires leadership that can be focused and free from political encumbrances.

My conclusion, then, is that Molnau should step down from the MnDOT job.

With everyone's best wishes, a collective fond remembrance of seriously and hilariously rattling former Independent Gov. Jesse Ventura by tapping his shoulder on the TPT's Almanac famous public policy couch, a clear understanding that the bridge collapse was not her fault, and the same clear understanding that life's not fair--and sometimes political life is exponentially unfair.

[The exchange between Molnau and Ventura happened on the Almanac couch, but not on Almanac, the show. The two appeared on a special edition of the now defunct NewsNight Minnesota on March 3, 2000. That night the show was hosted by Almanac co-host Eric Eskola and Almanac political reporter Mary Lahammer, so most people recall thinking the venue was Almanac. NewsNight discussion links are no longer active. However, an excerpt of the exchange lives online in the Almanac: At the Capitol archives. You can find this link by going here and clicking on the show from March 20th. The exchange can be found at the 23 minute mark of the show.]

MnDOT has released five documents on its website relating specifically to the I-35W bridge (bridge number 9340) which we have packaged into a zip file (35 MB). The files include an outside consultant review, a University of Minnesota Civil Engineering field report, two brief status summary documents, and, most troubling, a MnDOT "Fracture Critical" engineering summary which reveals in candid descriptions and shocking photographs the deterioration of many critical bridge elements. Here's my summary of the relevant parts of the documents, which we posted in our special Bridge edition of the Weekly Report last Friday:

A 299-page draft report prepared for MnDOT by the URS Corporation of Minneapolis entitled, "Fatigue Evaluation and Redundancy Analysis" for Bridge No. 9340, released July 2006.

MnDOT documents revealed that there were many warnings about the I-35W bridge. See the full story for more info. (this page is just a brief descriptor for this image)

Internet marketing guru David Erickson, who owns www.e-strategy.com, has a long and fascinating post on citizen journalism / citizen input about the bridge collapse. Several of David's most compelling conclusions:

Mainstream media still holds citizen journalism at arms length. With the exception of Minnesota Public Radio, almost all of the mainstream media treated citizen journalists as a resource for reporters to tap for their own reports, rather than treating citizens as co-equals who can tell stories themselves.

Citizen Journalists can be surprisingly competent reporters. I was struck by both the volume and the quality of the citizen reports. The eyewitness accounts were compelling with vivid details and more often than not lacked the melodrama to which amateur writing is often suspect. The citizen generated photos and video were equally compelling.

Flavor and Context. The eyewitness blog posts, the on-the-scene photography, and even the handheld and cell phone videos complete with their jerky motion and blurry, overcompressed images, all contribute far better than the mainstream media, to giving you a more accurate sense of being there. The videos, especially because of their amateur look, gave the viewer a powerful sense of the frantic chaos on the ground.

The bridge collapse--in what's sure to be an excruciatingly painful process--will put the spotlight on what anyone who has worked in Minnesota transportation policy has known for decades: the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is a mess. No one administration or political party is to blame. The Rudy Perpich (DFL) Administration (1982-1990), the Arne Carlson (R) Administration (1990-1998), the Jesse Ventura (I) Administration (1998-2002) and the Tim Pawlenty (R) Administration (2002-to present) have all made the same call. There are other, sexier things to fund rather than existing infrastructure and that's what's happened.

In recent years, "sexy" has meant $25 million in state bonding money for a new Guthrie Theater, located on the Mississippi River a mere several blocks from the collapsed bridge, and a new Twins ballpark. Funded with a .15% sales tax on goods and services in Hennepin County, it will be about half mile as the crow flies on the other side of downtown. Ironically, the ceremonial groundbreaking was scheduled for the night after the collapse but was canceled. And, let's not forget that the city of Minneapolis spent $3 million to move the Shubert Theater a few blocks (which stands vacant on Hennepin Avenue where it waits for state bonding money).

Those who have griped about the lack of adequately funding existing road and bridge infrastructure maintenance over the years, mainly the highway contractors, their subcontractors and the unions, never got very far because their interests seemed so self-serving. There was no traction among the general public, who thought new new theaters and stadiums were sexier than roads and bridges, too.

MnDOT has well-documented needs without the means to pay for them. Nationally, funding infrastructure needs has suffered the same "not sexy" problem, along with economics 101, funding guns v. butter. In Minnesota, there are no guns to pay for, but there are people funding needs that weren't in most of the government budgets of the 20th century. There was no "E" for early in the current E-12 education system and funding formulas (the funding of which consumes about half the state's current budget). There was no sense that government needed to provide health insurance for myriad categories of people.

Back to the Pawlenty Administration. There's added transportation funding rancor there that exceeds not just raising the gas tax. When Pawlenty first named Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau to be his Transportation Commissioner, hopes in the transportation community were high. As a legislator, Molnau chaired a transportation funding committee in the House. She "got" the MnDOT mess. The expectation was that she would straighten it out. She did not, for reasons I simply don't know but surmise to be the ones outlined above--no strong political direction to do the dirty work.

Finally, while on the subject of Minnesota transportation commissioners, one of the lowlights this past week was former Jesse Ventura Administration Commissioner of Transportation Elwyn Tinklenberg. Mere hours after the bridge went down, he was being interviewed on KARE-11 TV (our local NBC affiliate) standing in front of the dark Capitol building blathering (there is no better word) about MnDOT's "constant deterioration of the budget, constant layoffs, failure to replace people," etc. Most of what he said was not only not true, but it was crass in the immediate aftermath of the bridge falling down. And for the record, the collective opinion on Tinklenberg in the transporation job was much worse than Molnau's.

For those who don't live in Minnesota, we have one locally owned television station, KSTP TV, which is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc.

Stanley S. Hubbard, chairman and CEO of Hubbard Broadcasting, deserves nothing less than a standing ovation.

KSTP TV started reporting on the bridge in its Wednesday six p.m. newscast with the first live chopper shot at 6:22. The station stayed on the air covering the story live for the next 25 hours straight. I cannot begin to calculate what that cost. Never mind the costs of the employee overtime, or the expense of keeping helicopters live in the air for 13 hours straight, there were no commercials. None. The first commercial break was a short one during last night's ten p.m. newscast.

Old man Hubbard, himself, was in the news room Wednesday night, observing his hard working news team. At no time was cost an issue in terms of coverage. He just let his team run, and run, they did.

Thank you, Stanley Hubbard. That was some gift you gave to Minnesota.

Shame on the Star Tribune’s Nick Coleman and the rest of the left who are laying the blame for the tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge on GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

We don’t even know the number--let alone the names--of people killed. Doesn’t matter to Coleman and his ilk. Take any shot to smear a Republican.

Writes Coleman:

For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

"No New Taxes" has nothing to do with what happened, yesterday.

A few facts for Coleman. In general, the major bridges the federal government has built become the responsibility of states to maintain, and states routinely seek and are granted federal funding to help with the maintenance. The maintenance work being done on the I-35W bridge by Progressive Contractors, Inc., out of St. Michael, Minnesota, was on the list of projects of the 2007-2009 State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) list. Right there on page 116 of the report is the I-35W bridge. The $3.3 million price tag was being paid mostly by the federal government ($2.97 million) and not the state ($330,000).

The National Bridge Inventory conducted by the federal government in 2003 reported that the bridge had a "sufficiency" rating of 50% on a scale of 120. That’s not great, but that’s where about 80,000 of the country’s bridges stand. The significant finding of that Inventory, however, was that structurally, the bridge "meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as-is."

The federal government didn’t flag structural issues; neither did MnDOT.

Pawlenty could have raised the gas tax $50 a gallon and nothing would have happened. The structural condition of the bridge was not on anyone’s radar screen. At this point, that appears to be the real issue: All levels of government may have failed us.

But, specifically, Pawlenty and his administration have not. Those who blame Pawlenty and the Republicans for not raising the state’s gas tax since 1988 may want to review their legislative history. From 1988-1996, the Democrats controlled both houses of the state legislature. Transportation funding increase efforts stalemated among Democrats because urban DFLers wanted a permanent funding source for transit (the state gas tax is constitutionally dedicated to roads).

From 1996-2006, the Republicans controlled the House and the Democrats held the Senate. To be sure, "no new taxes" prevailed during those years. The last several years, the Legislature has sent funding increase packages that have been too rich in tax increases. The last one included a ten-cent gas tax increase along with an option by local governments--not the people--to raise the sales tax for transit.

These weren’t realistic packages.They were meant to embarrass the Governor.

Nevertheless, no matter how much money government has, it can’t fix a bridge that’s not on a list of bridges that need fixing.

For the record, in the 1990s, I did some work for the state’s highway construction companies. We lobbied to increase the gas tax by a nickel, and obviously, we lost. I believe the state does need to raise the gas tax (I happen to like to drive). If Democrats were serious about increasing transportation funding and not political grandstanding, they would send Pawlenty a a simple nickel increase bill. Bet he’d sign it…even before this tragedy.

Finally, thoughts and prayers to everyone at Progressive Contractors (P.C.I.). Owner Mike McGray runs a fine construction business, and from all we know at this point, it appears he lost at least one worker.

Some additional material: The I-35W bridge was completed in 1967. Many photos taken by the public have been posted on the Flickr service tagged under 'bridge collapse'. The new Minnesota 2020 thinktank quickly released a report by longtime Strib reporter Conrad deFiebre (who covered transportation) entitled "451 Minnesota Bridges 'Functionally Obsolete'."