- Ted, welcome back.

State lawmakers recently questioned why RIDOT Director Peter Alviti over the closing of the westbound side of the Washington Bridge.

This was during a joint Senate and House Oversight Committee hearing at the State House.

And look, this hearing lasted almost four hours, and yet, I think the public and lawmakers were still left with a lot of questions surrounding the closure of the bridge.

- Absolutely, Michelle.

I mean, over and over when RIDOT Director Alviti was asked about, you know, when should they have known that the bridge was in such a state of disrepair, or who dropped the ball, or will the bridge need to be rebuilt?

He said, "We're waiting for those reports.

We're waiting for those reports.

There's a forensic analysis that's been commissioned on how long the bridge has really been in trouble.

There are the engineering reports on whether the bridge can be saved and what has to happen if not."

So, until those reports are done, I think a lot of those questions are gonna remain unanswered.

We should start to see those come out the end of this month or early March.

- There were some interesting exchanges during the hearing.

Senate Oversight Committee Chairman Mark McKenney talked about how before the bridge was even shut down, RIDOT was investing $78 million in rehabilitating the bridge's deck.

It's noteworthy that project did not include work on the rods, which we now know, of course, led to the shutdown of the bridge back in December.

Let's take a listen to that conversation between McKenney and Alviti.

- I'm just trying to figure out with a bridge that, as you noted, is at the end of its useful life.

- [Peter] Yep.

- Almost 60 years old.

- [Peter] Yep.

- We're spending a huge amount on that contract, which is, as you said, to look at the deck primarily.

- [Peter] Yeah.

- Why wouldn't they at least look at what's below the deck and look at those rods?

- That in fact was the basis on which the decision was made to do the deck was that the rest of the structure would have lived the similar time period that the new deck that they were placing on it.

- I'm still having a tough time figuring out why they wouldn't.

- And we know now that, well, we're trying to figure out, because we know now that, that was wrong, right?

- And Ted, I think that the point that McKenney raised was shared by several committee members, which is, look, are these inspections that RIDOT employees are doing, are they thorough enough to assess the quality of the state's bridges?

- Right, because, you know, again, as McKenney says, and as you said, they knew this bridge had a lot of problems that's why they were spending $78 million to redo the deck.

The part people drive on, but they weren't touching anything underneath.

And when McKenney said, "Well, why not?"

Alviti said, "Well, we trust the companies we hire to inspect the bridge.

And they didn't raise any issues about these rods."

- Even though that's where the problem is.

- Exactly, they just didn't find anything.

And I think that goes to the core of the concern.

Lawmakers have no one disputes that the bridge with these problems needed to close, but are they inspecting these bridges thoroughly enough to then make $78 million investment decisions, because they thought those rods were gonna last another 25 years and they were already broken now.

- Right, there was a term that kept getting thrown out that was surprising, at least for me, as it relates to bridges, pigeon debris.

Why are we talking about pigeon debris as it relates to bridges?

- Yes.

So, when they put out the inspection reports for the Washington Bridge, the one from last July, which was the last routine inspection, found the inspector said they couldn't look at all of the bridge's components, because there was too much pigeon debris in the way.

Again, lawmakers said, "Well, you know, they understood that, that could be dangerous to inspectors, but why isn't there a plan to get that out of the way so they can do a more thorough inspection rather than just say, "We can't look at it."

Again, Alviti acknowledged, "Yes, they're concerned about that and they're gonna look to maybe revamp, change the inspection process now."

So, that was another thing I think that lawmakers were a little worried about as they looked under the hood.

- And ultimately, Alviti remains in the spotlight.

He's been at the helm of RIDOT since 2015.

I think for people who know him, they were probably surprised that he got emotional toward the end of the hearing.

Let's take a listen.

- When I wake up every day and I go to sleep every night, that's all that's on my mind.

- Ted, despite all the questions that were thrown at Alviti, for now at least, it seems that he still very much has the confidence of Governor Dan McKee.

- It does, Michelle, you know?

Alviti, of course, the Governor has expressed some concerns about how he and RIDOT have handled this, but overall, there's no sign yet at the moment that the Governor is moving on from Alviti.

And I think a lot of it comes down to what we talked about at the beginning.

All those reports that we expect to start coming out about what went wrong with the bridge starting in late February, early March.

If they show serious, you know, failures at RIDOT, I do think the heat will turn up on Alviti, but if it turns out this was just a very strange situation, perhaps he can survive and continue.

- Thank you very much, Ted, appreciate it.

- [Ted] Good to be here.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (no audio) (no audio) (no audio)