On Saturday night a 1200-pound piece of concrete fell off the bottom of a Maryland Avenue bridge in St. Paul. On Monday morning, four DFL lawmakers stood before the press and proposed a 10-point package of bridge safety reforms that they say is a first step toward a bill they will introduce during next year’s legislative session.

The package has been in the works for weeks, and is in direct response to reports and recommendations contained in two independent studies on bridge safety that have been concluded in response to the I-35 bridge collapse last August — by the Office of the Legislative Auditor in February and the law firm of Gray Plant Mooty in May. But the harrowing incident over the weekend — in which a six-foot-by-nine-foot slab of concrete tore away from the underside of Maryland Avenue and fell into Highway 35E, damaging two vehicles and snarling traffic for eight hours — added urgency and gravitas to the legislators’ recommendations.

“We want safety not just driving across bridges, but driving under bridges,” said Sen. Jim Carlson (DFL-Eagan), an engineer and vice chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, who noted he was on I-35E earlier Saturday night before the concrete broke loose. Later, Carlson said that he knew of other bridges in the state that had similar problems with eroding concrete on their undersides.

Among the more prominent recommendations set forth on Monday was the necessity for bridges to be inspected at least every 12 months, and the setting and followup of specific performance targets at MnDOT, including the stipulation that an analysis be done by the agency whenever any of their goals or forecasts aren’t met. The package also recommends that the state salary cap be lifted for MnDOT engineers in order to assist with recruitment and retain quality personnel, and that either the commissioner or deputy commissioner of MnDOT be a professional engineer (an obvious slap at Goveror Tim Pawlenty’s previous appointment of his Lt. Governor, Carol Molnau, as MnDOT commissioner, needlessly politicizing the agency in line with Pawlenty’s no-new-taxes agenda).

MnDOT management would also be compelled to develop debt financing guidelines that limited the amount of debt the agency can take on. The organization structure of the agency would be made more transparent, and specific duties related to bridge inspection and repair on the part of MnDOT’s central headquarters and its district offices would be clarified. The commissioner would be encouraged to focus the agency’s research funding in three areas: bridge monitoring and inspection technology, improved inspection methods, and examining the long-term costs of deferred highway and bridge maintenance work.

Asked if legislators were micro-managing MnDOT, assistant house majority leader Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park) replied that “The Department of Transportation is a creature of the Legislature. We created it by statute. We fund it with taxpayer dollars. It is our responsibility to make sure that they are providing a safe transportation infrastructure.” That said, legislators say that they are generally pleased with new commissioner Tom Sorel, a civil engineer, and that they plan on working with MnDOT management to further refine their package of recommendations before introducing it in the next session.

At one point in the 35-minute press conference, Pat Kessler of WCCO-TV noted that in the time since Governor Pawlenty declared Minnesota’s bridges to be safe, four of them have been closed for extensive repairs and now a huge chunk of concrete has fallen off another. “Do you think our bridges are safe?” Kessler challenged the lawmakers.  This put the legislators in the position of making a soundbite that might seem hysterical and minimizing what has obviously become a chronic and potentially dangerous lack of maintenance in our infrastructure. Nearly all the lawmakers responded by praising the integrity and hard work done by MnDOT employees, and tipping their hat to Sorel’s nascent moves toward internal reform. “If you pushed me into a corner, yes, I’d say our bridges are safe,” Carlson said. But Hortman had perhaps the best response: “Yes I believe our bridges are safe. But I thought they were safe before the I-35 bridge collapsed.”

“Our job is to restore the trust and confidence of the public. We need to know that our roads and bridges are safe and that money is being spent in a rational and transparent manner,” said Sen. Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis), a member of the senate’s transportation and budget policy division.

That’s easier said than done. A report issued Monday by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials stated that 152,000 of the nation’s 600,000 bridges are either structurally deficit or functionally obsolete, and will require $140 billion to repair. And by MnDOT’s own calculations, even the massive omnibus transportation bill passed over Pawlenty’s veto last session solves only about a quarter of our state transportation funding woes.