- It was always a mess.

We have a culture of corruption for years with the Department of Transportation, it's gotta end.

- The Rhode Island DOT is putting people in charge who don't know the first thing about highway engineering or bridge building or anything.

- Because there's a deeper problem here.

It's a cesspool that needs to be cleaned up over there.

- When Alviti looked Cunha in the eye and said, "I don't know the name of the program manager," that rang completely wrong to me.

- It's got nothing to do with the lawsuit, it's got to do with covering their posteriors.

(upbeat music) - And welcome to this episode of Lively, I'm Jim Hummel, we appreciate you spending some time with us.

Joining us this week, political contributor and founder of Watchdog RI, Ken Block, and former Rhode Island Attorney General, Arlene Violet.

A lot of questions, but not a lot of concrete answers at last week's legislative oversight hearing into what led to the failure of the Washington Bridge.

Other than DOT director Peter Alviti, putting all the blame squarely on others.

We'll get to that in just a moment, but first up, with the second anniversary of the bridge closure right around the corner, I went to East Providence this week to check in with some business owners about how they're doing.

In the two years since the westbound side of the Washington Bridge abruptly closed, business owners in East Providence have gotten a crash course in adaptability.

- Yeah, we've had to pivot again, and so we are no longer open as our regular restaurant operations.

- [Jim] Sterling Spellman and her husband Russ, owned this restaurant on South Broadway.

After the bridge closed, walk-in traffic dropped dramatically.

- And so we are determined to find a way to shift and we're just grateful because we know of other local places that have not been able to shift gears.

- They don't have that option.

- They don't have that option.

- Their answer?

Going back to the food truck and events business they had before opening the restaurant three years ago.

- For Napoleon, - As a small business, was a big hit for me, and I'm sure for any other small business around here, it was a big hit.

- [Jim] Maggie Leitao has owned Taunton Avenue Bakery for two decades.

She used to have customers from the west side of the bridge drop in regularly.

- I had to like kind of reinvent in a way of like, what can I do to just supply to all my just local customers instead of having people from other cities coming here?

- [Jim] That has meant building a new base in the East Bay.

- It's unbelievable how East Providence, actually such a great community and they actually focus on you.

And a lot of people, they would know.

I'm like, oh my God, we drove by, but I never stopped in, I didn't know you served lunch, I didn't know you served sandwiches.

So that alone, just we expose ourselves in that way for lunch.

- At what point did the switch flip in your mind that we need to do something different?

- While we were looking back, to be very honest, we were looking back at March, right?

Like March beginning of our season and saying, listen, we have to do something.

- And if you want to see more of my interview, just go to the Ocean State Media YouTube channel.

So welcome to both of you, I know you've been following the bridge.

Before we get to the hearing, let's talk about the business owners in East Providence.

You feel for them because you think their whole world has been turned upside down.

- It's heartbreaking and thank heavens that these women are great entrepreneurs because they knew how to make the kinds of adjustments that they did.

But it's heartbreaking.

I also think though it impacts downtown Providence restaurants, also Federal Hill, et cetera, because I know I'm very hesitant to just go and eat there, there has to be some other reason why I have to cross the bridge.

- Yeah, my wife goes across the bridge every day for work.

She teaches in Providence and we live in the East Bay.

The real problem with the bridge, and I experience it when I go across it, is you don't know if it's going to take you 10 or 15 minutes to cross it or an hour and 10 or 15 minutes to cross it.

The uncertainty is what's deadly to people who commute, to businesses who rely on commuters for their business.

And I still have yet to hear anything from Rhode Island elected leaders that acknowledges this problem.

And if nothing else, just says, I feel your pain, we haven't even heard that from them.

- The closest we heard of that was Brett Smiley.

Mayor of Providence last year said, "Look, it's not under my control, but we feel for you."

And of course he has those businesses right over the Henderson Bridge on the east side.

- Absolutely right.

And yeah, it's a major impact.

I was even noticing today I have to go across the bridge to come here.

- [Jim] We all did, yeah.

- But the other side was even more crowded than I was.

And all I kept thinking was, those people must be saying, why did I accept a job on the East Bay?

As they sat in traffic going five miles an hour.

- Let's get to the hearing last week, five hour marathon hearing.

I watched most of it, saw the highlights as all of us did.

Your first takeaway from watching it, and they brought in Zach Cunha, experienced prosecutor to ask some pointed questions.

- Yeah, so there were moments where Cunha really put the screws to Alviti.

However, he gave him a lot of room to waste a lot of time with long running repetitive answers that didn't really address the questions that were out there.

For me, at the end of the day, it was utterly frustrating.

We didn't get the answers that we were looking for.

Alviti said some things that were easily provable to be false.

And I don't know that we're any better off for it.

And what I firmly believe is about to happen here is I think McKee's legacy will be cemented in place.

- Oh, there we go.

- By his inactions and his unwillingness to step in and help change how things are going right now, I think are going to be a huge problem for him.

- I like the job that Cunha did because I think he let Mr.

Alviti in effect hang himself because of those kind of responses.

What killed me though is the bragging about the process that they have there.

Oh, we have the best practices, we are supposed to lecture in other places and tell them what to do.

Yeah, right.

Fact of the matter is, the best practices are that the people paying the tab on behalf of the taxpayers, they have the expertise and there's an expectation that those engineers, before they put out any RFP request for proposal, have analyzed what the situation is, be it a bridge and, or a new road or whatever.

They use all the latest technology, infrared, they see if there's rocks and you have to go through bedding and whatever, and they put it out there and then they take the best competent bid to do the job.

He's got this thing totally reversed.

And I know back in the eighties when I was Attorney General, we investigated what was going on.

There were engineers, but it was a game.

He'd have the low bid contract, now I'd get it next, you'd get it next.

- Change order, right?

- It was a round robin.

- And the change orders, we used a hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars.

- And so it was back up to what virtually what the high bid was.

- So it was back up and it was right, and it was just a game that was played and there was corruption with nepotism, et cetera, with those kinds of engineers.

And they did such a poor job because they didn't come down on bad contractors because of campaign contributions, et cetera.

I know, like my office did an investigation on what the practices were.

We had an investigative grand jury.

Somebody in my office found out that with the Jersey barriers, it's one guy was earning $86,000 per mile because he only put one coat of white paint on as opposed to two, which was under the contract.

DOT didn't find that.

The guy that worked for Public Works in Lincoln prior to my hiring, he was the one who found it, and we indicted the guy.

So it was always a mess.

We have a culture of corruption for years with the Department of Transportation, it's gotta end.

- Right.

Well, Alviti has hollowed out the technical expertise within DOT.

We've seen news stories over the years where there were zookeepers and other people put into management positions over for projects that are wholly engineering and technically based.

- Yeah, so they ended up running a zoo.

- Right, right, I mean, it's just it's wholly wrong, it's not the right way to operate any organization.

You don't see Google or any of these other places putting people in charge who don't know anything about technology.

And yet the Rhode Island DOT is putting people in charge who don't know the first thing about highway engineering or bridge building or anything else.

- And here's how it's gonna come back to haunt us.

During the hearing, the issue came up with the Rhode Island manual that talked about engineers monitoring this kind of thing.

That was in there because the Federal Highway Administration, FHA requires oversight.

What Alviti did was acknowledge in effect, oh, we don't do any oversight because we can't.

- It's required.

- That is required.

It's going to eventually lead us to lose FHA money, et cetera.

We've already lost FHA money, for example, on Route 403 there, the engineer in quotes acknowledge that the PSI, which is the weight that the bridge can bear, it was like 26% below what it was.

And he said, well, I had to get the project finished.

- Done, yeah.

- 20% of the money was withheld at the end by FHA because they didn't do the job.

Now we have a DOT saying, "Oh, we have that in the manual, but we really don't do it."

- [Jim] Well, I thought the two- - Wait, what's gonna happen in the future with us getting federal funds?

- You heard it here first, I think the two things that I took away was that manual, and also saying, well, who's your project manager?

The guy who oversees all this?

And he couldn't come up with his name.

You have done some research about inspectors on the payroll.

So the big question was, is there anybody within DOT at the pay grade where they could be another eyes on?

So what did you find?

- Well, there are, we pay collectively about $320,000 to four inspectors annually.

That's their job title, bridge safety inspectors supervisor.

- [Jim] What do they do?

- So I have no idea 'cause Alviti told us they outsource all of it, so they should be at least exercising oversight.

But Alviti also told us that they're not doing that.

Look, when Alviti looked Cunha in the eye and said, "I don't know the name of the program manager," that rang completely wrong to me.

And I'm surprised that Cunha allowed that answer to effectively remain the answer to that question.

It's a hugely important position, in fact, it's a legally required position in terms of federal highway.

You have to have a program manager who has the ultimate responsibility for the bridge inspections.

That's how the regulations are laid out.

And Alviti's telling us with the lawsuit and everything else, he doesn't know the name of the person.

In my opinion, that was the probably, if there is no one serving- - [Jim] The most damning.

- If no one's serving the role of program manager, Alviti couldn't say, "We don't have it."

And what he said instead was, I don't know, which is how he didn't perjure himself.

- But we probably both heard, not able to confirm that person might not exist, they may be scrambling to, he didn't want to name a name because then if you name a name and that person's not doing the job.

- Well if he named the name- - Or he was covering up, okay?

But because there's a deeper problem here.

On the one hand, we wanna hang the engineers for not doing their job and everybody else, but the politics that has always been behind DOT with campaign contributions or whatever, there's a lot of frustrated people I found, and I continue to follow it, a lot of frustrated people who wanna do their jobs, but they can't lean on the big campaign contributors, et cetera, okay?

Look, it, it's a cesspool that needs to be cleaned up over there.

There a lot of people may wanna do their jobs, but they're not allowed to do it.

And the classic example of ho hum and the ultimate insult to me as a taxpayer, and to you who are watching this, although scupper is not being cleaned right, that Rob Cody found.

Just think about it, this bridge was a disaster.

And now on the side that everybody's traveling on, they're letting everything get into the scupper.

- And what does water do to a bridge?

- And, it's concrete melting, et cetera.

They could care less.

- And what happened last week, Rob, found and you put it on social media with the drain on the eastbound lane.

- Correct, so the piece of the Washington Bridge that's still standing, the DOT is not cleaning the damn drains.

And Cody took a picture of a clogged drain, sent it to me, I put it on social media Friday afternoon.

Friday night, the DOT went out on the bridge and they cleaned the drain.

So now the thing if it is, should Rob Cody be paid a million dollars for doing the inspector's job that wasn't done?

But more importantly, why is it that the only time we clean the drains is when the DOT has been shamed?

That's not the way it's supposed to work.

- Well, we pay attention to this for a living.

And we're so tuned in.

I talked to Sterling Spellman who we saw earlier in our story, and I asked her, "Hey, listen, you were able to watch a little bit of the hearing or read the news accounts, what did you think about it?"

Let's hear a little bit of her opinion on what happened at that hearing.

- Have you done any internal inquiry as to what went wrong here?

Where is the reckoning at RIDOT?

- We have functions that we need them to provide because they have the expertise.

We pay them handsomely for this.

In the case of inspections, $200 million over the last 10 years.

We expect them and we hold them to the standards of delivering on that basis.

- So for me, I'm thinking about where are the checks and balances?

Because I think about if I am in charge of something and I'm hiring outside people, we need to have either an internal person or a third party person to kind of check out and make sure what people are saying is true.

And I just feel like that didn't happen.

- What about the DOT's answer that they hired all these people, but they really, so it's not really my problem when it comes to looking at what the problems were.

How did that sit with you?

- I don't think that's acceptable because in any other field, it wouldn't be acceptable.

You know what I mean?

You can't just say, oh, well we hired people.

I think about when we were building here.

We had a contractor, but then we had, they wouldn't let us open until we had several inspections.

Several people come and look through to see that the contractors did what they were supposed to do.

So we need systems in place that doesn't allow tax dollars or whatever money that's allocated to this to just go into the breeze, 'cause at this point, that's what it is.

The scary part about all of this I'll just add is like, this is real life, people's lives at risk.

Because God forbid something did happen where this bridge just collapsed, then what?

Then what?

So it's not acceptable to say, oh yeah, we hired people.

- So this is somebody who is just casually paying attention.

And it's what you said, it didn't sit well with her, it didn't ring true.

- I love her and she's so accurate.

And we need more taxpayers like that young lady.

- [Jim] Who are clued in, right?

- And let's get to the heart of the matter.

We have been canonizing corruption in the Department of Transportation for years.

For years, because it benefits politicians, benefits relatives, in-laws, et cetera.

This has got to stop.

We are entrusting a billion dollars a year of monies for contracts.

And allegedly, nobody is watching what to do.

That's like having the students teach in the classroom instead of the teacher.

There has to be accountability.

And he felt perfectly comfortable saying, there's no accountability, we gotta rely on them.

- Right, so Helena folks has said, look, clear house, and if you do that, but then what do you do?

I mean, it's easy to say, let's clear it out.

What's the model you use?

- Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to put competent practicing engineers who know about bridge building, who know about highway building in charge.

- And who can read an inspection report and say the scuppers are clogged, right?

- Director Alviti freely admits he doesn't know anything about building bridges, that's not in his background, that's not what he's trained to do.

So I just don't, the whole DOT is not configured correctly to be a successfully professional organizations that engages in highway building and bridge building.

You gotta clean it all out, anybody who's in management there ultimately in my opinion, needs to go.

You need to bring in professional engineers to run it who also have the right people skills and then you have to pay attention to it.

And the executive branch of Rhode Island government is as at fault as Director Alviti is because Governor McKee is allowing this to happen and has done nothing to rein it in.

- We need a governor like a Ken Block that won't allow it to happen.

The culture has to change, it's that basic, okay?

What has Mr.

McKee said since this came out?

- We have crickets.

- Right, he wants to have a, we don't blame me, we know nothing.

You know, like that comedy show that used to be on TV.

It is a comedy show, but it's a comedy show that taxpayers are paying through the nose for.

- Arlene, we've had you on a couple of times talking about, you were on with Joe Larissa, both attorneys talking about the comparative negligence.

Do you think that Director Alviti was basically trying to protect the lawsuit here?

- Oh, please, if anything, he harmed it.

For example.

- In what way?

- If you bring, first of all, if you bring a lawsuit and it's based on competence and professionalism, he's supposed to have witnesses that will say, these people were unprofessional.

So who in the, he just said there was nobody in the department who could determine that.

So now we're bringing it for malpractice as it were, against all these other people.

Although he said there was nobody in the DOT who could say it was malpractice.

So he hurt the case, he didn't help the case.

Secondly, all of that stuff is discoverable anyway.

So it's got nothing to do with the lawsuit, it's got to do with covering their posteriors.

- All right, let's shift gears.

Let's do a little bit of national, in the time that we have remaining.

Some interesting developments, the whole Jeffrey Epstein file has been, we could do a whole show on that, but it would probably make me throw up.

Ken, a little crack in the Trump armor, do you think with some of the stuff that's been going on with a little bit split in MAGA at this point or not?

- So yeah, there are some definite fissures that are out there.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has reached the end of her rope.

And even at the grassroots level, people are having trouble tracking the inconsistencies, the wild shifts in policy.

And ultimately, I think everybody's feeling the effects of the tariffs and things have gotten very expensive.

And we were assured that others are paying the tariffs and not us.

That's just not true, that was always not true, but now we're seeing it happen.

- And while the president says everything's down, everything's down.

When you go to the grocery store, you know it's not true, right?

- Yeah, so there's cumulatively, I think he's in for a much more rocky road coming up, yeah.

- He still has his 45% of MAGA people who think it's a great strategy that he raises tariffs, prices go crazy, and then he lowers them and they say, oh, that's his strategy, as opposed to the reality, which is he made a mistake.

I'm not so sure of Ken's position, I'd like to think he's right.

The problem becomes the intimidation factor.

Going after people, weaponizing the Attorney General's office, et cetera.

We're seeing that left and right.

Now, he, today, as we film this, he's put in a proposal that takes away whistleblower protection, particularly for senior people who are the people who would know best.

So this man in my view as President is really taking apart seam by seam, the fabric of democracy.

And it's that serious in the United States of America for his own personal profit.

- But you've also seen a little bit of chipping away.

The James Comey prosecution looks like it's falling apart.

The federal judge is kind of appalled.

The tariffs are ultimately gonna make it to the Supreme Court.

And so the checks and balances, Congress has totally abdicated its responsibility, the Republicans in Congress, but the courts are beginning to come through.

So I wonder if that chip, chip, chip away has a cumulative effect.

- I personally think it does.

And as far as the question of the constitutionality of tariffs, of course you should be saying this, you're the lawyer, I'm not.

But ultimately - I think it's gonna, they're overruled.

- There are a lot of originalists, self-described originalists on the Supreme Court where they literally take the Constitution at its original words and taxation of which tariffs are, should be the realm of Congress, not the prerogative without Congress for the President.

And I think that the tariffs will fall because of that.

- Yes, so should the Declaration of War.

And yet he talks about he hasn't decided what he, whether he's gonna send troops into Venezuela or not, and there's a big giant silence in Congress.

- Yeah, I mean you remember 50 years ago or more, it was the Republicans who went to Richard Nixon that said, "Look, the writing's on the wall, you need to resign."

It's not here, and I look at these boats being blown up in Venezuela, nobody's, does that not bother you just as a human being?

Even if they were drug people, what happened to due process?

And I think it's kind of, I think the argument's a little hollow about, bringing drugs in on these small boats.

I just, I look at that and I think where's our humanity?

- And those drugs, generally are headed to another direction.

- [Jim] Through Mexico, they come in over the border.

- Exactly, yeah, and they don't come in small boats.

I know a lot about drug trafficking from my background as Attorney General and my constant contact I have with law enforcement people, they come in on container ships, they come in the bellies of planes, et cetera.

It's a mass movement, not these little boats out there.

- I wonder at what point, Ken, from a political standpoint, where the Republicans who are scared of Trump become more scared of as they should of their own constituents.

And when SNAP dries up and healthcare becomes unaffordable and they're facing midterms, they're gonna be like, you know what, president Trump, I've gotta get reelected.

- Well, that was- - At what point does that... - Well, that, that was my answer.

I think the 2026 midterms are going to provide that wedge, if you will, that will break open some of these fissures.

I mean, you talk about empathy and you talk about just common decency, threatening and upsetting the basic need of health insurance for those who don't have the money to really be able to afford proper health insurance is a terrible problem.

And it's a bipartisan problem, right?

You have as many people who are in need who are Republicans as you do who are Democrats.

So I think that could be very much one of the big wedge issues.

And we just have to, food, and I mean, all of it.

- Feeding people.

- We need better from what we're getting out of the government right now.

Efficiency is one thing, but putting people into desperate situations is not what the role of government should be.

- Well, and I'm very concerned about what's happening with the military and the attempt really to silence them.

Loyalty oaths, all of this kind of business.

Time will tell, but I really hope from your mouth to God's ear, you are correct.

- Yeah, you were talking about trying to get, as a self-employed person and a business owner, health insurance for you.

Now you can nip and talk and fortunately we can afford it if you have to pay a little extra.

You look at somebody who's doubling their healthcare costs.

But even for small businessmen like you.

- Look, for a family plan, I was quoted over $40,000 a year for four members of my family: myself, my wife, and my two, almost under 26.

- Under 26.

- Under 26.

- I call them almost adults.

And it's a huge, huge problem.

It's one that I have to think very carefully about on what to do with.

How can most people look at that cost and say, "Yeah, we're gonna buy it," right?

It's very difficult, it's very upsetting and I think it's gonna lead to massive problems across the country.

- Yes, and remember, these are the working people on Obamacare.

They're the lower income working people that we want to have them get where they're going, right?

And my concern is, it's the ripple effect.

Unless people have health insurance that really covers them, the hospitals take a dive because they don't have enough money then to run their services for people.

So it goes on and on and on.

People then lose jobs, hospitals and rural areas close up.

It's a never ending ripple effect through the entire economy.

So it's a much bigger issue than even just "insurance."

- Just quickly, the eight Democrats came together to, to break the log jam on the federal shutdown with really no assurance other than we'll talk about it.

Do you think there's gonna be some movement at some point on healthcare or you think that was a hollow promise?

- I think that it's unlikely we're going to see this Congress do much of anything.

- Yeah, they're talking about giving the money to people.

That, by the way, has been tried on a trial basis, and it's a disaster because people go for the cheap insurance.

- And it doesn't cover what they need.

- It doesn't cover what basically they need.

They get in a car accident, they think they're 30, they're not gonna have any sickness.

And the next thing you know, they have bills of $500,000 in the hospital and they can't pay it.

- Arlene and Ken, thank you.

- Thank you.

- What a quick half hour, appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us.

Be sure and check us out on Facebook, X, Instagram, and on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel.

We'll see you next time here on Lively.

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