Ken Block, Guest MINDSETTER™
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.
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…