ARLENE VIOLET - AAA poll: Are people this dumb?

AAA of New England reported earlier this month that a survey of more than 2,200 of its members said that the state does not spend enough money on its roads and bridges. How can this be? Are they living under a rock?

Rhode Island spends plenty of money on road and bridge projects. The problem is that the contractors get away with shoddy work and the state Department of Transportation (RIDOT) looks the other way. Take, for example, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the IWAY. For the last 2 1/2 years the structure’s defective railing has been protected by jersey barriers. Apparently, improperly installed steel designed to reinforce how the rail was attached to the bridge was inconsistent with the contract drawings. CDR Maguire Engineering, as reported by WPRI, documented that the steel reinforcement bars were apparently cut and that anchor bolts were installed after the reinforcing steel was already placed.

By now RIDOT has dished out close to $200,000 in the rental of the jersey barriers from the very contractor implicated in the error. In a letter to Cardi Construction RIDOT “respectfully requested that the work begin immediately.” Of course, Cardi Construction has taken no responsibility to pay for the retrofit and delay is on its side because it continues to get rental monies from the state without any expenditure of its profit to fix the bridge. In fact, it is eschewing responsibility and the state acts befuddled as to what to do as cost of repairs rise. Citizens who pay attention may recall that chunks of concrete fell from that bridge into the river below, with impunity. As it stands many millions of dollars will be necessary to repair the structure with no end in sight as to who will pay or when the work will begin.

Many other transportation road projects were similarly scarred as documented here in past columns. Yet, the beat goes on. RIDOT just grins and bears it and rehires the malefactors again and again. Hundreds of millions of dollars pass through that department each year and there is very little to show for it. Roads are pockmarked with gouges. Asphalt spits up from “fixed’ holes and the winter isn’t even here yet.

Good money after bad is thrown into road repair without accountability from the contractors or the overseers. The last thing we need is more money to be spent as it has in the past. That’s what makes the survey of AAA members so discouraging. Presumably, they have some upper income and smarts enough to protect their cars with road repair insurance. This isn’t Joe Schmoe who is oblivious to all around him/her. For them to countenance the fact that all we need is to spend more moolah is enough to bring one to the precipice of despair that citizens just don’t get it.

There certainly were some debatable aspects to the entire AAA survey questions. One can only hope that the error of its design prompted such an untoward response. Otherwise, if 80 percent of ordinary folks think that spending more for less is the solution then the state is, indeed, in a load of trouble.

Violet is an attorney and former state attorney general.