Minnesota Had Money Available For Bridge Repairs
Ed Morrisey has been all over the story of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, which is hardly surprising since it is a local story for him. Today he points out that despite the bloviating about infrastructure and spending that is going on, Minnesota had the money to effect repairs - but the engineers from the Minnesota Department of Transportation did not believe the repairs were needed right away.
In the rush to point fingers, we have heard from experts on local and national television about the neglect of our infrastructure. Our local crank at the Strib decided to write a column blaming everyone from Tim Pawlenty to David Strom for killing the victims of the collapse. Instead, it looks like the engineers at MnDOT simply decided that the bridge did not appear to have sufficient problems for immediate intervention.
That was not a question of money. MnDOT officials, according to the Strib, acknowledged that they had the money in the budget to pay for the suggested repairs. In fact, MnDOT was the agency that made the determination that the I-35W bridge would not need an overhaul or replacement until 2020. Those recommendations were forwarded to the state government, which didn't have any reason to reject the evaluations supplied by the MnDOT engineers.
Once again, it is the state that is responsible for the upkeep of the bridges. While there are real infrastructure issues in the US, those issues have been well publicized for decades now. In this case, the judgment of the engineers was either flawed or they missed something completely. Money was not a factor.
By feeblemind, Friday, 3 August , 2007 @ 12:39 pm
I fear this will be an excuse to hike the gasoline tax another 15 cents or so per gallon, “…to save the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.” Who could vote against that?
By Cyrus (Little General), Thursday, 9 August , 2007 @ 11:55 pm
Its incredible how the media are so clueless that I could be a journalist myslef and do a better job. At the press conference today, a reporter ask Bush should we increase gas tax to pay for the bridge infrastructure of this country. Its incredible that these reporters, who cut and paste their information from the internet, didn’t research this particular news.
Funny how the Liberal wants the Federal government to bail everybody out. The State of Minnesota had money but wanted to save that money to build a staduim for their sports team. That is a disgrace. I’m just glad Bush stood by his ground not to bail out those default loan of the housing market by speculative buyers/investors.
When are we going to realize that the government is not our parent. We need to be responsible for our own action. Learn from your mistakes. You know what to do. Just do the right thing. Running to mommy and daddy will not solve the problem.