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Panel can reshape road policy
Published 12:00pm Monday, August 27, 2007The special I-35W bridge panel that state Rep. Terry Morrow has been appointed to is a group that could most affect change in Minnesota’s transportation system.
Morrow, a Democrat from St. Peter, has been appointed to a bipartisan panel of eight representatives and eight senators to investigate the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in the Twin Cities.
Their first job will be to review 40 years of bridge inspections to help them decide if the Minnesota Department of Transportation made decisions that contributed to the collapse.
What the panel won’t be doing is trying to find the structural cause of the collapse. That job is rightly in the hands of the National Transportation Safety Board. But the legislative panel’s job is no less important.
The bipartisan panel — if handled correctly — should be able to provide consensus on how well MnDOT is operating under the financial conditions it finds itself in. It not only needs to provide a strong and detailed recommendation on how MnDOT can improve but also how much that improvement will cost. Then Minnesotans will need to determine the best way to pay for that improvement.
— The Free Press of Mankato
