Block: Alviti’s Lies, Lack of Legislative Leadership - Washington Bridge Fiasco Gets Worse

Block: Alviti’s Lies, Lack of Legislative Leadership - Washington Bridge Fiasco Gets Worse

Rhode Island’s Department of Transportation (RIDOT) is an out-of-control mess. Director Alviti has spent the better part of a year lying, deflecting, and generally obstructing any effort to understand how his organization failed to detect that a major bridge deteriorated to the brink of failure.

The RIDOT solicited bids for a major procurement to build a new bridge, but no company bid on it (an almost unheard-of situation). The state is suing nearly every substantial company capable of building large bridges in our state, and it wonders why companies are not flocking to do business with it.

In keeping with its spirit of secrecy and opaqueness, RIDOT recently held a “community meeting” that lasted nine minutes and did not allow community members to ask questions. RIDOT’s transparency is so lacking that when reporters asked Alviti for the name of the person who filled a key, federally mandated position within the RIDOT, he refused to name the employee.

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We just learned that RIDOT will not award a contract to build the new bridge until June 2025. If someone actually bids this time, it will be years before the job is completed.

No one within our state government has stepped up to provide the adult supervision the RIDOT lacks.

Under Governor Dan McKee, the executive branch has done nothing to illuminate what is happening within the RIDOT. Incredibly, McKee has allowed Director Alviti to keep his job even after he exhibited poor judgment, lied, screwed up the maintenance of the bridge, failed to detect the bridge was failing, and botched the new bridge procurement. Alviti would be out of a job almost anywhere else that isn’t RI government.

The legislative branch, under RI’s most powerful political figure, Speaker Joe Shekarchi, has done little to rein in the RIDOT circus. More than enough has gone wrong to justify the speaker empowering his oversight committee to issue subpoenas and haul in everyone at the RIDOT to testify under oath about what is happening. Shekarchi has said little about the bridge disaster despite the RIDOT’s ineptitude, which cost us hundreds of millions.

With Gov. McKee clearly abdicating his responsibility to get the RIDOT under control, we need the speaker to do so instead. He has all the tools necessary to get to the bottom of everything. Will he? McKee and Shekarchi have taken vast sums of money from the Laborer’s union, which seems inextricably tied to much of what happens at RIDOT.

While Alviti ducks, dodges, and deceives, the bridge's eastbound span, which now carries eastbound and westbound traffic, deteriorates. A considerable bump (technically called a deflection) exists where the bridge meets land on the eastern side of the river. I went over the bridge yesterday, and my SUV seriously bounced as I hit the deflection. This has worsened since Rob Cote publicly identified the problem over a month ago. Alviti has stated that the deflection was nothing to worry about and that both Cote and I have been wrong to have any concern about it. Yet it is getting worse.

Alviti is very much a ready, fire, aim kind of guy. His foremost mission appears to be protecting the DOT’s reputation, and anyone with questions or statements he perceives as an attack receives an often erroneous counterattack. His primary mission must be keeping drivers in Rhode Island safe. Instead, it appears to be protecting his DOT brethren.

Who in the Rhode Island government will be the public’s knight in shining armor? The politician who provides accountability to the public and helps to clean house at RIDOT would be making the most compelling case imaginable to be RI’s next governor. Anyone? Anyone?