- [Michelle] Tonight, a special edition of Rhode Island PBS Weekly, Breaking Point, the Washington Bridge.

- What happened here was absolutely a failure of government to do its job.

- It has taken far too long.

I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that.

- In Rhode Island, our leaders were like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to Rhode Island PBS Weekly.

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

Tonight we are devoting our entire program to the Washington Bridge.

It's been 15 months since the westbound bridge abruptly shut down, upending people's lives.

- Yet more than a year later, no one has been held accountable for the bridge's failure and critical questions remain unanswered, including how did the bridge's condition become unsalvageable and how long were people's lives at risk?

Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee promised there will be a day of reckoning, but when?

Tonight, taxpayers, state lawmakers, and government watchdogs weigh in.

(traffic humming) A vital bridge in Rhode Island closed and demolished.

It's a major inconvenience for the many who depended on it.

- It slows everybody down.

People don't come to visit us because they don't wanna go over the bridge.

- As much as I can, I avoid it.

I'm older.

My vision isn't as good as it used to be.

- [Michelle] The westbound Washington Bridge carried traffic on Interstate 195 over the Seekonk River from East Providence to Providence since 1968.

But in December of 2023, it was abruptly shut down after RIDOT, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, says a young engineer who was working on a preexisting project to rehabilitate the bridge noticed broken anchor rods that put the westbound bridge at risk of collapse.

- Folks really wanna know, why did this happen?

- [Michelle] Rhode Island state lawmaker, June Speakman sits on the House's oversight committee.

She represents constituents in Bristol and Warren on the east side of the bridge.

- We're grateful that the bridge did not fail and that it was caught on time, but still, it was very close to failing and we still don't know why.

Why it was almost failing and why a young engineer discovered it instead of the regular inspection processes of the Department of Transportation.

- [Michelle] In February, members of the state's Senate and House Oversight Committees questioned RIDOT Director Peter Alviti.

- There are so many ways that they can build this bridge.

- [Michelle] It was the first oversight hearing since it was decided the bridge needed to be demolished.

But many questions about the bridge were off limits.

- As much as we all might like to discuss some of the issues pertaining to causation and that accountability aspect, the lawsuit essentially precludes us from doing that.

- [Michelle] State Senator Mark McKenney cited the state's lawsuit against 13 companies that provided design, construction, and inspection services related to the Washington Bridge.

- People are genuinely nervous about driving over bridges in this state.

- [Michelle] State Senator Jessica de la Cruz is the minority leader of the Rhode Island Senate.

She described the more than two and a half hour hearing as ineffective.

- In your mind, has there been accountability so far with the way the bridge handling was done?

- No, and the reason for that is because we don't have parody between Democrats and Republicans.

- [Michelle] In Rhode Island, Democrats have the majority in the State Senate and in the State House, and then there's Democratic Governor Dan McKee.

John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island says one-party government can lead to lapses in providing checks and balances.

- I think there has been a desire on the part of the legislature, maybe not to embarrass the McKee administration as much as it could if they were of different parties.

- [Michelle] Marion says oversight hearings were more aggressive while Donald Carcieri, a Republican, was governor.

- Politicians are always looking to the next election and they don't necessarily wanna give the Republicans, you know, an issue that they could use to try to claim the executive branch.

And so they might not be as aggressive in the questioning.

They might not call for, you know, Alviti's resignation.

- [Michelle] The newer eastbound bridge, which opened in 2008 was reconfigured to get traffic moving in both directions, but the congestion has caused people to change when they work and in some cases, where they're looking for work.

- My plan is to search for jobs on the other side of the bridge, on the side of the bridge that I'm at.

So I'm looking to look into Southeastern Massachusetts for work as opposed to look for work in Rhode Island.

- [Michelle] 15 months since the bridge was shut down, many questions remain unanswered, including how did a bridge that was inspected in July of 2023 deteriorate to the point of being unsalvageable later that year?

- What role did the Rhode Island DOT play in this disaster?

- [Michelle] Ken Block has his share of questions he wants Director Alviti to answer.

Block is a former two-time candidate for governor.

He's also the chairman of Watchdog RI, a nonprofit that uses data analytics to inform public policy.

- Was the lack of routine maintenance a cause of this bridge failure?

How come you didn't detect that this bridge was failing until it was basically ready to fall into the river?

- [Michelle] At a news conference on March 14th of last year, the same day Governor McKee announced the bridge would need to be replaced, he promised there would be accountability.

- The day of reckoning for those who are responsible for the position that we're in and the position that the people in the state of Rhode Island are in, that day is coming and is coming very soon.

- [Michelle] That was more than a year ago.

So far, no one has been held accountable for the bridge failure.

We reached out to Governor McKee multiple times for an interview.

He declined to talk with us.

In a statement he said in part, the state, quote, "initiated a lawsuit to hold responsible parties accountable.

Rhode Island is making great progress toward a modern, soundly constructed bridge that will outlast our lifetimes".

When we followed up and asked the governor's communications team, if anyone in state government bears responsibility for the bridge failure, spokeswoman Olivia DaRocha said, quote, "The state is pursuing legal action against parties whom we believe bear significant responsibility for the bridge failure".

- What responsibility in your mind does RIDOT bear for that?

- RIDOT bears the ultimate responsibility for making sure that whatever system they have put in place for inspecting the bridges works.

So if there were multiple failures in that system, the responsibility rests with the agency.

- [Michelle] Senator de la Cruz agrees.

- They are the watchdog.

They are, you know, supposed to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollars, and if the work wasn't done properly, then they could have gone back to the contractor and said, nope, this wasn't done correctly.

You need to go back and fix it.

- [Michelle] The demolition process has also been called into question.

Block says he does not understand why the state would award Aetna Bridge Company the contract to demolish the bridge when it's one of the contractors being sued by the state.

- It's one of the reasons it's hard to take this lawsuit seriously.

It's either they're a trusted contractor or they're not, but you can't treat them as both.

- [Michelle] While Speakman wants to get to the bottom of how the bridge reached this breaking point she says RIDOT has been forthcoming with the public.

On its website, for instance, people can find inspection reports for the westbound bridge dating back to 2015.

- To DOT's credit, they do have a lot of information available on their website about the status of the bridge project, about traffic patterns.

They are very good at letting us know if there are going to be changes in traffic patterns at night, for example.

- [Michelle] On June 6th, Alviti says the state will know who's going to build the new bridge, how much it will cost, and how long it's going to take.

Marion says there's an urgency to get answers about what went wrong with the old bridge before building a new one.

- We're about to engage and spend a half a billion dollars or so in building a new bridge and we are trusting the same people who did oversight over the failed reconstruction of the old bridge to do that.

And until we know the full extent of how they, you know, succeeded or failed in that oversight, I don't think you can really have confidence they're gonna do a good job of overseeing spending another half billion dollars.

- [Michelle] Drivers also want to know that the mistakes made with the westbound bridge don't repeat themselves.

- It does worry me that the other bridges in this state may not have had the level of inspection that we might have expected them to.

- [Michelle] The governor spokeswoman, Olivia DeRocha said the state has added additional bridge engineering staff to its bridge inspection program.

As far as not repeating the mistakes made with the westbound bridge elsewhere in the state, DeRocha said the design of the old bridge was unique.

No other bridge in the state was designed that way.

She went on to say the state has asked the two companies competing to build the new bridge, quote, "to not include any post-tensioning components or other difficult to inspect or maintain elements, such as those used on the old bridge".

Senator de la Cruz says finding out what led up to the bridge failure is less about pointing fingers and more about ensuring a similar situation does not happen again.

- Obviously there's fault here as well with the McKee administration, but I think that everyone assumes that it started before his tenure.

Even with Raimondo, maybe possibly even before that.

So timeline would be, I think, the first thing that I would ask for.

When did we know that there was a problem?

- Why is this day of reckoning so important?

- The day of reckoning is the day that we will find out who is ultimately responsible for the failure of the Washington Bridge and for making sure that all of our other bridges are safe.

- Block says he believes people's lives were at risk before the bridge was closed and he wants the state to be transparent.

- What happened here was absolutely a failure of government to do its job and they must be held accountable for the failure to keep us safe and to keep this bridge, a very expensive piece of infrastructure, in working condition.

- Now, state transportation director Peter Alviti agreed almost two months ago to sit down for an interview to address questions about the failure of the westbound Washington Bridge.

But three days before our interview, Alviti's office canceled, a spokesman citing the state's lawsuit over the failure of the bridge, even though the lawsuit was filed many months before.

Rhode Island Department of Transportation, or RIDOT, did not respond to subsequent messages.

With Alviti unwilling to talk our Ian Donnis turned to the man representing the state in its lawsuit over the bridge, Attorney General Peter Neronha.

- [Ian] In the early evening of December 11th, 2023, Peter Neronha was on the road when he heard about the sudden emergency closing of the Washington Bridge.

- I was really startled by it and I remember my first reaction being, this must be pretty bad for them to be acting this way with so little notice.

They being, you know, the governor and Peter Alviti.

- [Ian] Neronha wasn't the only one startled by the abrupt closing, but there were warning signs long before December, 2023, and the state last year sued 13 companies that did work related to the bridge.

The Providence Journal reported in April that there had been warnings about the condition of the bridge as far back as 2009 continuing through 2015.

Does that show that the state should have been monitoring the status of the bridge more carefully?

- The position that we've taken, as the attorneys for the state, in our lawsuit is that when we hire experts to do the work, that we're just not, we're just not capable or trained to do, that's why they're called experts.

In any kind of litigation, you are relying on those experts to tell you one of two things.

Either it's fixable and here's how to fix it or it's not fixable and you better get ready to replace it.

And our position in the litigation is that that didn't happen.

- The state's lawsuit says the defendants failed to act in a timely way to address worsening structural issues that led to the abrupt emergency closing of the bridge.

Why was it not the state that had to be ultimately more responsible for that?

- That is the battleground on which this lawsuit will play out.

This is why you hire an expert.

If you hire an expert to tell you something about the condition of the bridge, what its future looks like, whether it needs to be replaced, if it needs to be repaired, how, then they're ultimately responsible if they don't give you the kinds of answers that they should have given, you know, based on their expertise and knowledge.

That's why we hire them.

- What do you say to Rhode Islanders who question why some of the companies being sued by the state as part of this lawsuit, like Aetna, are continuing to work for the state?

- Whether or not the state has confidence in them is a question best left for the governor.

I will say that the governor has had some difficulty getting this plane off the ground, and maybe that's why he's gone in the direction he did.

- RIDOT director Peter Alviti spoke a couple of weeks ago to a joint legislative meeting of oversight committees.

He was not sworn in and he was kind of given a pass to not talk about what went wrong with the bridge and how it happened because of the lawsuit.

Did that process make sense to you?

- The better approach is to put witnesses under oath.

That's how you get truth out of them.

- Is it your view that putting someone under oath is a better path to the truth because they could face consequences for perjury if they're found to be dishonest?

- Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

The legislature, in my view, should not be giving witnesses the out of not being put under oath.

- [Ian] Neronha says the state's bridge lawsuit does not block RIDOT director Alviti from doing interviews about the situation.

- Well, I think he has to be careful.

You know, there are certain things as part of our litigation strategy, we want those things to play out in court.

We don't want them to play out in the press.

But I think general questions about the state's approach to how it ensures that Rhode Islanders can feel safe on their roads and bridges, you know, is fair game.

- The bridge has been arguably the top story in Rhode Island since the abrupt emergency closing.

Director Alviti has generally avoided long form interviews to talk about the situation.

Do you think that's the right approach for a public official in his position?

- Well, look, I think it's the right approach for any public official is to be accessible to the media.

You know, I prefer long form because I feel like the decisions that I make, I wanna be in a position to explain them.

I think the public has that right and I think it serves the office well.

I can't speak for others, but whether it's Mr. Alviti or the governor, accessibility shouldn't be based on the timing of the public official.

The media is the means by which we speak to the people who elected us, and it's why I think the better approach is to be always accessible.

- When will Rhode Islanders get accountability for what went wrong with the bridge?

- It depends on what Rhode Islanders and we mean about accountability.

- [Ian] Neronha says if accountability is about what went wrong with the structure, it will come through the state's lawsuit.

- When we're talking about how the Department of Transportation should have functioned in this environment, that's really a question for the governor.

It's one of his executive agencies to determine whether or not he feels like the people running DOT, over this period of time that he was governor and and beforehand, if he inherited it, warrants a change or a change in approach.

- What is the timeline for the state's lawsuit to move forward and ultimately be resolved one way or another?

- I think short of settlement, if there's a trial in this case, my understanding is that we're probably looking at summer into 2027, which for your everyday Rhode Islander is gonna seem outlandish, but the reality is, whether it's a civil case or a criminal case, cases move very slowly through our state system and there's a lot of defendants here and a lot of discovery still to take, a lot of motion practice still to do, a lot of depositions to take.

So, I would say that we're probably looking at 2026 or 2027 for a trial date.

- [Ian] Neronha's time as Attorney General will end in January, 2027 due to term limits.

He says if the lawsuit is settled out of court, it should not restrict the public's right to know.

- Hopefully it'll be resolved before I leave office, but you know, we're coming, for me, it's coming close.

But yeah, my view would be that they would be public records and the public should be allowed to see them.

- You are involved with some of your fellow Democratic Attorneys General in a lot of litigation with the Trump administration.

How confident are you that Rhode Island will ultimately receive the money appropriated for the bridge under the previous Biden administration?

- My confidence level is mixed, I guess I would say.

I worry that if this money is not obligated already by the federal government in a way that would allow us to recover it, we may be left holding a very empty bag.

So it does concern me.

You know, the governor has assured the public that that money will be there in the end.

I hope he's right about that.

I hope he's been diligent enough in trying to make sure that it does come.

- In conclusion, what is your view of when the new Washington Bridge will be online and when Rhode Islanders will get the full story of how the closing of the bridge, what led to that and what went wrong?

- I think it's gonna take some time.

You know, I really do, on both things.

You know, I think as the litigation proceeds, certainly there will be some public expose, I think, of what went wrong here.

The actual delivery of the product?

Really frustrating for me as it is for many Rhode Islanders.

It has taken far too long.

I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that.

The track record here, frankly, isn't very good.

- Attorney General Peter Neronha, thank you for sitting down with us.

- Thanks, Ian.

- Finally, we turn to Rhode Island's first female Attorney General, Arlene Violet, who shared with us her thoughts on the Washington Bridge.

This segment is part of our continuing My Take series.

- If Nathaniel Hawthorne were to award a Scarlet Letter for the quintessential example of mismanagement and perhaps corruption in Rhode Island, that Scarlet letter would be a W, a W for Washington Bridge.

He'd have to hang it around the necks of some Rhode Island Department of Transportation employees, governors, past and present, and the leadership in the Rhode Island General Assembly.

(Arlene clapping) Hello, I'm Arlene Violet and this is My Take on the Washington Bridge.

You know engineers depend on maintenance for a bridge.

Yet here in Rhode Island, year after year, we never cleared off the salt brine after the winter.

That salt brine then leached into the structure of the Washington Bridge.

It would've cost only $2,000 a year to clear off that salt, but it was never done.

Repairs, of course, were sometimes made to that bridge, but sometimes it was totally deficient.

Rhode Islanders will remember giant chunks of concrete falling into the Providence River because it was substandard concrete.

As a matter of fact, the federal government refused to give the last millions of dollars for that project on the Washington Bridge because the siding was also deficient.

But yet Rhode Island made up that money that the Feds withheld with that contractor by renting, for two and one half years, his orange barrels and his jersey barriers.

Serious structural problems were identified in 2020.

Yet in Rhode Island, our leaders were like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

They did nothing.

The report was greeted with a giant yawn.

The cozy relationship between RIDOT and the contractors continues unabated.

There was a company hired to make some repairs on the Washington Bridge, but that company had been cited in Massachusetts for inferior work.

It was also a defendant in the lawsuit brought by our Attorney General for the work that it had done here in Rhode Island.

And it was a no bid contract that started off at $40 million and then grew to $80 million, all without any bid.

The governor, of course, bragged when he announced his reelection, that he had secured $240 million from the Biden administration toward the bridge.

Yet he neglected to get the money out of the Biden administration to Rhode Island, and now that money is jeopardized after Mr. Trump won the election.

The Rhode Island General Assembly held a farcical, quote, unquote, investigation.

Witnesses were called but not put under oath, and the legislators who were on that investigative group were told not to ask any questions negatively toward the Department of Transportation because they don't wanna let the contractors off the hook.

Accordingly, there are people in the DOT who are going to get a free ride.

We don't know what corruption may or may not have occurred.

The statute of limitations is running and it will run out, and those people will be able to retire with their full pensions.

I wonder whether Nathaniel Hawthorne ought to give all of us taxpayers a Scarlet W. W for wimps because we acquiesce to all this nonsense.

(Arelene clapping) I'm Arlene Violet and this has been My Take on the Washington Bridge.

- That's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We'll be back next week with another edition of Rhode Island PBS Weekly.

Until then, please follow us on Facebook and YouTube and visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly.

Or you can listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Goodnight.

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