Wednesday, May 02, 2007

WRA on DOT

I really liked this WRA editorial on the I-84 fiasco. They gave credit, where credit was due:

It is to the credit of Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal that the state will get compensation for most, possibly all, of the costs associated with fixing the drainage system and other defective work on I-84 between Waterbury and Cheshire.
But appropriately offered a scathing rebuke of what appears to be a lack of desire to fix this (mis)management problem so that it does not recur:
it seems incredible that nobody is pursuing those in the state Department of Transportation who failed to call the contractors to account when there was still a chance to get the job done right...This is a familiar scenario. The state ran down the offending contractors but appears uninterested in finding out what went wrong in the state bureaucracy, let alone prosecuting or firing those responsible.
Rte 42 and I-84 may be the tip of the iceberg.

The DOT's Taj Mahal in Newington needs a good spring cleaning.

Tim White

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't it possible union leaders at DOT knew this was going to fail and told everyone to keep quiet so they could use this as an expensive hammer against "privatization" of state contracts... which of course was sought since the in-house staff was thought incapable of getting the job done?

It would explain why DeStefano made the stink since he was owned and operated by the AFL-CIO?

Anonymous said...

Rell kept Rowland loyalist, Stephen Korta, on the job eventhough it was pretty clear that Korta privatized work but didn't really show any savings for it becasue he maintained redundancy. ConnDOT had a trailer on the job (fully staffed) despite early denials to the contrary by Rell and Carpenter.