RIDOT slow to respond to queries

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — At a time when Governor Raimondo is seeking unprecedented trust in the R.I. Department of Transportation to raise — and prudently spend — upwards of $600 million from controversial new truck tolls, the department has taken a perplexing approach to inquiries from both the public and the Federal Highway Administration. 

In response to one in a series of long-standing Providence Journal inquiries, the RIDOT last Friday produced a pile of "New Jersey Transit Corporation" documents, including the per-diem reimbursement rates for staff travel across the Garden State.

The Rhode Island agency's response to questions posed in a May 29 letter from FHWA Division Administrator Carlos Machado is also a head scratcher.   

In the letter, which led some Rhode Island lawmakers and trucking-industry lobbyists to question how much homework had gone into the administration's weeks-old tolling proposal, Machado responded to the RIDOT inquiries with a number of his own questions, including "the exact location ... [of] the 20 bridge reconstruction/replacement projects being contemplated for tolling."

Among his other questions: "Does [RIDOT] intend to use any federal funds on any of the bridges? ... How will your truck size and weight enforcement program address diversion of truck traffic to other roads in the state? What is RIDOT's expectation from FHWA? Is this a request for approval of your proposal, or a request for feedback on the issues that might exist?"

Machado also asked the RIDOT to "describe how and where toll revenues will be used." 

The RIDOT did not provide this letter to The Providence Journal until July 31, a full six weeks after the newspaper's June 18 request for all correspondence with the Federal Highway Administration relative to the tolling proposal Raimondo rolled out in the final weeks of the legislative session. (By then, the federal agency had already made public a copy of the letter, which The Journal published, online, in June, in time for lawmakers to talk about it.)

What happened next was even stranger.

On Aug. 20, The Journal asked the RIDOT for its responses to the questions Machado posed in his May 29 letter to Peter Alviti, the former program administrator for an arm of the Laborers' International Union, who now heads the RIDOT.

This was the first response from RIDOT legal assistant Nancy Ricci at 1:28 p.m. that Thursday: "The Rhode Island Department of Transportation has nothing responsive regarding your request."

At 3:12 p.m., Ricci sent a followup email that said: "Upon further review, please see the attached ... ."

Attached was a letter, dated that day, from Alviti. It began: "Dear Administrator Machado, In response to your letter dated May 29 ... The Rhode Island Department of Transportation has been in the process of reviewing the [FHWA] questions.

"In the near future, RIDOT will be providing a detailed response ... We appreciate your patience in this matter."

On Tuesday, FHWA spokeswoman Nancy Singer confirmed the federal agency has not, in the interim, "received a formal response to the May 29 letter but has been in communication with the state about numerous bridge issues ... and it’s really up to RIDOT to determine when to respond."

The context: Raimondo is still pushing for House action on a Senate-passed bill giving the RIDOT authority "to fix, revise, charge, and collect tolls for the privilege of traveling on Rhode Island bridges to provide for replacement, reconstruction, maintenance and operation of Rhode Island bridges." Tolling locations — and amounts — are left up to the RIDOT. 

But the agency that would accrue these new dollars has been slow to respond — if at all — to requests for documents within the 10 business days required by state law. The law allows a public body "an additional twenty business days," but only if it can demonstrate, for example, "the voluminous nature of the request" or the difficulty in retrieving the records.

At this point, the RIDOT has not yet provided any documentation of the work that traffic-consultant CDM Smith has produced for the state since the Raimondo administration approved a $250,000 "change order" on May 8, seeking "funding alternatives and traffic analysis" from the company for the toll proposal.

Asked why no documents had been provided, RIDOT spokesman Charles St. Martin said on Tuesday: "The change order anticipated a 'potential white paper on revenue options'." 

The RIDOT has not produced any emails to or from RIDOT former chief financial officer Robert Farley about a squelched plan to execute a $400,000 "change order" to allow another consultant already on board — AECOM — to redesign the way the RIDOT operates. (AECOM won the contract when it was subsequently put out to bid, but then pulled out last week.)

Asked why the emails that were made public between Farley, RIDOT's deputy director Peter Garino and others did not address this "change order," Martin said: "RIDOT provided all public records related to this request on Friday, September 3." (He would not specify which documents were withheld.) 

As for the New Jersey documents, he said: "You asked for all correspondence between Garino and Farley, this was one of them." 

Which email? It remained unclear.

—kgregg@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7078

On Twitter: @kathyprojo