New MnDOT commissioner: This time around, Pawlenty errs on side of PR savvy

Gov. Pawlenty has basked in wide praise over the last 24 hours because his pick to lead MnDOT, Tom Sorel, is an actual transportation expert — not a political hack like former commissioner Carol Molnau or a PR flack like interim MnDOT head Bob McFarlin. But Sorel (pictured above with former commissioner Carol Molnau on a November 2007 panel), a 30-year Federal Highway Administration vet who moved to the agency’s Minnesota office from its outpost in Utah, appears to know his own way around public relations — as befits a man slated to head an agency that has recently seen fit to drop $550,000 on a PR firm.

In fact, managing public perception is a central concern of Sorel’s, judging by articles he and others have written on his Utah work. In a 2004 piece that he authored, Sorel puts purposeful PR firmly among the prerequisites for the success of big transportation projects. One such project, Utah’s massive I-15 highway rebuild (for which Sorel led the Major Projects Team) required a PR plan in its request for design-build proposals, just like the I-35W bridge. A separate report on “Marketing Mega Projects and Public Trust,” which he cites, credits Sorel — who seems to be a social as well as literal engineer — with the concept that “quantitative measures …to gauge public trust” are “paramount” for transportation megaprojects.  Gaining public trust requires honesty and forthrightness — the very qualities Sorel admires in the PR for a highway project in Colorado. There, what could have been a devastating tale about the extermination of 50 prairie dogs to make way for a road for humans instead turned into a feel-good story about people not killing 100 other, luckier prairie dogs. It’s a win-win for both species. Do the math.