The I-35W Bridge Collapse: Don’t Politicize This Disaster With Mischaracterizations and Lies

So, it looks like there is a liberal movement to scapegoat Gov. Tim Pawlenty for the I-35W collapse.

First I heard about this angle through mailing lists and friends.

Then I heard of Nick Coleman’s STrib article, which climaxes at these phrases: “In a word, it was avoidable. That means it should never have happened. And that means that public anger will follow our sorrow as sure as night descended on the missing. For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes.”.

Then there is Brian’s post, which made this wildly unfair assertion: “It needed to be replaced. But it wasn’t. Because that would have required- gasp- a tax increase. Which wasn’t going to get past Republican governor Tim Pawlenty:”

And now here’s “Countdown”, which I normally like quite a bit, but is simply off base here:

And there are all kinds of other cries like this from Democrats in Minnesota (cite).

These characterizations are blatantly and wildly unfair. What they miss is that the Minnesota legislative and executive branches have been at each other’s throat since at least the Ventura administration, and they are so unable to work with each other that budget years usually result in governmental shutdowns. It’s been an incredible mess. At first, people blamed this on Ventura. Then people blamed it on Republican vs. Democratic partisanship. But having a Republican governor and a Republican house hasn’t seemed to help much: even when the partisan bickering can reach a compromise, there’s usually a veto pen waiting in the wings.

This was the case with Pawlenty and the transportation bill. Pawlenty and the Congress both agreed highway funding needed to increase (cite), but they disagreed on how to do it — the Congress wanted to hike the gas tax, which Pawlenty considered ridiculous in the face of record-high gas prices which were already hurting the gas-hungry Minnesota economy. Increasing gas prices inordinately hurt farmers and the middle class, who were precisely the people that needed relief.

But Congress wasn’t willing to consider that plan at all. And so Pawlenty vetoed the transportation bill, because he, the Governor, wasn’t even consulted when it was being drafted. Congress thought they had support to override the veto he warned them about, but that support vanished at the last minute, and the veto wasn’t overridden. And instead of bringing Pawlenty into the conversation, the Congress went to recess. Pawlenty did not call them back for a special session. And so both Pawlenty and the Congress, although agreeing that we needed more funding for transportation, walked away from increasing funding because they weren’t willing to compromise.

So the transportation bill not passing is because of a failure of the MN government to compromise in order to reach shared goals. It is not just Pawlenty’s fault, or the Republican’s fault: I don’t want to hear that crap anymore, and I encourage anyone who does hear that crap to pitch this article into the fray.

What’s even worse is the implied argument that “If there was just more money for transportation, this wouldn’t have happened.” The argument is usually not explicitly made (because it’s simply wrong), but it’s necessary for the failure of increased transportation funding to be the cause of the I-35W bridge collapse. (If more money wouldn’t have solved the problem, then having more money available through the transportation bill wouldn’t have solved the problem.) This argument is just flat-out wrong. The bridge seemed safe for use for more than another decade (cite), and as sexy as it is to call it “Half Chance Bridge” or “Structurally Deficient”, the reality is that it seemed fit for use, if needing minor repairs. In the last few years, MNDoT has taken on a large number of voluntary traffic improvement projects, most significantly rebuilding the Crosstown (Highway 62) to 35W interchange and building the Light Rail Transit line on the Highway 55 Corridor. There is obviously plenty of money in the MNDoT budget for voluntary projects — if anyone knew the I-35W bridge was in deep trouble, that would have been a higher-priority, involuntary project for MNDoT to undertake. Indeed, there was an expansive study which concluded: “The research helped determine that the fatigue cracking of the deck truss is not likely, which means that the bridge should not have any problems with fatigue cracking in the foreseeable future. As a result, Mn/DOT does not need to prematurely replace this bridge because of fatigue cracking, avoiding the high costs associated with such a large project.”

Even more, Governor Pawlenty didn’t sign the “No New Taxes” pledge during his most recent run (cite), and we’re running a budget surplus (cite). Although that budget surplus didn’t stop the Senate Democrats from trying to give us the heaviest top-tier tax burden (cite). In any case — money is simply not the problem in this state.

So will the liberals, who like to label themselves as “reality-based” and political inheritors of the scientific method, please stop with this nonsense? It’s partisan BS, and it’s driving me nuts.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I want to note a couple caveats to the generalizations in this post.

As I researched a bit for this blog, one of the things that astounded me was the reasonably sane approach taken by some popular diaries on Daily Kos: specifically this one and this one. The former is analyzing why Pawlenty might be in trouble, it’s at least an informed and more-or-less fair approach: politically, Pawlenty is in trouble if funding seems like a cooling feature, because people aren’t going to remember the stand-off, but just his veto. The latter actually opens with these words, which made me fall out of my chair: “I’ve seen a lot of diaries about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis and how it’s ALL THE REPUBLICANS’ FAULT. This is a completely unfair, cherry-picking kind of attitude.” (Although it does say “Not enough taxes to perform maintenance of infrastructure leads to collapse of roads, bridges, tunnels, etc.”, implying the fallacious arguments addressed above.) The comments on these diaries are not as well-thought-out or fair, but you expect that from any kind of free exchange.

Also, the condemnation-by-association is a bit harsh on Nick Coleman, who did say in his article: “I’m not just pointing fingers at Pawlenty. The outrage here is not partisan. It is general. Both political parties have tried to govern on the cheap, and both have dithered and dallied and spent public wealth on stadiums while scrimping on the basics.” and “And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through…”, but only after bashing Pawlenty by name and neglecting to mention Pawlenty’s alternative funding scheme.

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