The Bridge: There Are No Heroes — Ken Block
Ken Block, Guest MINDSETTER™
The Bridge: There Are No Heroes — Ken Block
Governor McKee is no hero. He promised us a “day of reckoning.” Then he abdicated all leadership for the failure of the Washington Bridge, deciding instead to shield state workers at the RI Department of Transportation (RIDOT) from any blame for the crisis. Let’s call this what it is: McKee is hiding behind a lawsuit against many RIDOT contractors who worked on the bridge to protect labor darling and RIDOT Director Peter Alviti and his minions.
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Director Alviti is no hero. He is the anti-hero, a cartoonish bad guy who gets in a lather when defending the indefensible failure of the RIDOT to detect that the bridge was failing, and who allowed the bridge to fail – a multi-hundred-million-dollar failure. Alviti has been in charge at RIDOT for a decade. He owns the bridge mess, although he oafishly tried to cast the blame for the crisis on two former and deceased governors, Sundlun and DiPrete, claiming they decimated the ranks of RIDOT engineers and maintenance workers back in the 1990s. I guess Alviti has forgotten he is the guy who has been hiring zoo workers, interior designers, and former salespeople into leadership roles at RIDOT.
Speaker Joe Shekarchi and Senate President Val Lawson are not heroes. Legislative oversight committees have twice “overseen” the bridge situation and accomplished little. There is zero chance either of them wants to conduct an oversight hearing where the results will anger organized labor. How do I know this? Just look at the results of the first two hearings.
Attorney General Peter Neronha is no hero. He is pressing the lawsuit against bridge contractors, despite RIDOT holding the ultimate responsibility for anything related to the bridge. Abundant evidence indicates that contractors repeatedly warned RIDOT about the bridge's health. But Neronha’s case gets worse.
An audit investigating the bridge failure, ordered by RIDOT and completed in early 2024, was finally released this week, not by RIDOT or the AG’s office, but via a leak. This audit states bluntly that ultimate responsibility for the bridge lies with RIDOT, and that RIDOT failed to acknowledge the extent of the bridge's deterioration. If the bus driver steers it off a cliff, is it the fault of the passengers who are yelling at the driver to turn the wheel?
Incredibly, RIDOT hired Wiss, Janney, Elstner (WJE) to produce the audit report and then failed to provide WJE with critical information, specifically the work performed (and not performed) by Cardi Corporation in 2019. News reports this week filled in the gap: Cardi sent RIDOT an email requesting guidance on completing 19 tasks that had not been finished. RIDOT told Cardi not to do most of them. The problem with these decisions? Cardi was told by RIDOT not to waterproof critical joints, not to replace and clear clogged drains, and not to fortify load-bearing concrete. As a result of these decisions, since Cardi left the bridge, rainwater had been pouring onto the infamous, corroded, and broken rod.
Why did RIDOT not give this information to WJE? Was RIDOT providing selective information to get a desired audit result? If WJE had the Cardi specifics, would their analysis have reached a conclusion far more unfavorable to the state’s case? Not only is RIDOT withholding information from the public, but it is also withholding information from its auditors. Worse, RIDOT’s 2019 decisions harmed the bridge.
McKee and Alviti need to keep a lid on any blame landing on RIDOT until after the 2026 election. This is politics intruding on public transparency and engineering decisions. It isn’t the first time this duo has done this. They initially aimed to have a new bridge built by August 2026, which is when the gubernatorial primary is scheduled to take place. This was a silly deadline that was impossible to meet. Not a single company bid on this project, resulting in a delay of more than a year, during which RIDOT had to rebid the project.
We deserve so much better than what Governor McKee and RIDOT Director Peter Alviti have given us. We need McKee to exhibit leadership and assert his executive powers to demand accountability – and heads. The rot in that metal rod comes from the same source as the dysfunction within RIDOT. That rot starts at the top.
Fire Alviti and his second in command, John Igliozzi. Clean house and remove anyone at RIDOT who made or communicated decisions that led to the bridge’s demise. Replace them with transportation and engineering professionals, not hacks who are beholden to labor and who value politics and power above safety and competency.
It comes down to leadership, engineering sciences, and transparency. Unfortunately, most of Rhode Island’s elected leaders have failed the hero test. Are there no heroes left in this state?
