Sagging Bridge In Green Bay Shows Poor Walker WisDOT Priorities
Billions of fresh dollars for more lanes across the I-system in SE Wisconsin, and the imbalance in state highway spending shows up in a sagging Green Bay bridge.
The Journal Sentinel just the other day noted that Walker signed a budget that cut millions from state highway and bridge maintenance funding:
The state has struggled for a while now with how to pay for new capacity while properly maintaining current infrastructure. Gov. Scott Walker maintained the state's $32.8 million local bridge assistance program, which funds 80% of repairs on municipal bridges, in the last state budget.
But the budget did cut $51 million from the state highway rehabilitation program, which funds highway and interstate repairs, including bridge work, over the next two fiscal years. That may have been short-sighted.
3 comments:
Tim Pawlenty's political career vaporized in the famous Minnesota bridge collapse and yet Walker seems to have learned nothing. He just keeps doubling-down on failure.
The Right's fiendishly cunning plan to undermine confidence in government through deliberate incompetence does have it's drawbacks. Just ask Minnesota Republicans.
Don't know 100% exactly where the dip in on the bridge, however, the state spent $17 million on repairs on other work from May 2012 through July 2013.
http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/projects/neregion/43leofrigo/
This seems to take a little bit of air out of your argument that Walker's cuts had something to do with neglecting the needs of this particular bridge.
If you would actually read the article, the 17 million was for painting, repaving, and new entrance kiosks. None of which pertained to analysis or repair of actual structural deficiencies.
the problems with the structural piers COULD have been predicted, if there was funding for review and investigation of the condition of bridges structural conditions, running back to about the time Walker took office.
Of course, at that time, it was far more important to reward political glad handers and create do-nothing state wide agencies that pretend to care about economic development, but are more interested in rewarding cronies.
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