MDOT Director Stands Firm in Bridge Dispute
Governor: State Will Not Strip MBA Powers
By Karen Gould

MDOTDirector Gloria Jeff makes her point at a St. Ignace meeting Thursday that she isn’t taking over the Mackinac Bridge.

Governor Jennifer Granholm promised Thursday, September 1, that Lansing is not about to strip the powers of the Mackinac Bridge Authority. Her State Transportation Director, Gloria Jeff, said she is not grabbing power, just conserving financial resources in tight times. To do that, she has told the Bridge Authority it cannot buy insurance and is no longer responsible for structural review and large-scale maintenance.

Some of those attending a public forum on the matter last week were left wondering if the two state officials agree or disagree.

The meeting was hastily called for Thursday evening at Little Bear East Arena in St. Ignace by State Senator Jason Allen (R-Traverse City), who sought public opinion on the broken relationship between Ms. Jeff and the Mackinac Bridge Authority, an agency under the umbrella of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). At the Authority’s August 12 meeting on Mackinac Island, Ms. Jeff, who is an Authority member as well as MDOT director, announced to other Authority members that MDOT would now administer nearly all of the Authority’s major functions, including engineering inspections and bridge insurance decisions, along with investment of $25 million in bridge toll revenues. She said she can do this because a 40-year-old attorney general opinion says she can, and she left the meeting, said some Authority members, with a fistful of power.

The Mackinac Bridge Authority, which first met April 24, 1950, and which always has enjoyed an autonomous relationship with Lansing, is left with the authority to raise and lower bridge tolls, daily maintenance, and planning bridge activities, such as deciding whether camera crews can film from it.

The August dialogue, which culminated almost a year of probing and testing between the Bridge Authority and MDOT, has since been expanded to include state legislators and even the governor, who sent word to St. Ignace last week that this isn’t her doing.

“I have been asked to assure everyone here that the Granholm Administration has absolutely no desire to take away the authority of the Mackinac Bridge Authority; it is not a Lansing power grab,” said Barbara Brown, the messenger. Ms. Brown is an administration law judge for the State of Michigan, the granddaughter of the Bridge Authority’s first chairman, U.S. Senator Prentiss M. Brown, and was appointed by the governor to the Mackinac Bridge Authority earlier this year.

“I have been asked to tell you that,” she emphasized. “I believe her. I believe she means it sincerely. It is her sincere hope and it is my sincere hope, as the newest member of the Authority, that from this moment forward, we can all view this bridge and deal with it as it has been dealt with for over 50 years, and that is with a spirit of nonpartisan cooperation.”

Director Jeff was not deterred.

“This is not a power grab,” Ms. Jeff said, a statement she repeated several times that evening. “These are extraordinary times from a financial standpoint for the State of Michigan. Just as we are looking at every part of state government to find savings, to find opportunities, to improve performance, to better utilize our capital assets, that’s the same thing we are doing here. Why we are doing it now is the extraordinary financial condition within which the State of Michigan finds itself. We are working very hard to make sure that we have the financial wherewithal, not just to meet the needs of the Mackinac Bridge today, but in 15 to 20 years when the issue of having to re-deck the bridge is there.”

Legislators attending Senator Allen’s town hall-style meeting included Senator Mike Prusi (D-Ishpeming) and State Representatives Tom Casperson (R-Escanaba), Kevin Elsenheimer (R-Bellaire), and Gary McDowell (D-Rudyard).

“The statement that I heard from the governor through Ms. Brown is that this is not a Lansing power grab,” said Representative Elsenheimer to Director Jeff. “The statement that I heard from you is that MDOT is not taking over the Bridge and yet, the statement that I later heard is that what you are doing, however, is taking over many of the major aspects of the management of the Bridge Authority. I’m not sure if someone is parsing words or not, but it sounds to me as this is a power grab.”

By the end of the two-hour meeting, which was also attended by six of the seven Bridge Authority members (Elisa Schaller of Petoskey was sick), attendees expressed only confusion and bewilderment with the comments of the governor and the MDOT director.

“I was very pleased with Barbara Brown’s remarks, which I understood represented the governor’s position,” said Mackinac Bridge Authority Chairman Bill Gnodtke on Monday, September 5, in an interview with The St. Ignace News . “I was equally perplexed by the statements of the director. I thought the problem was behind us, and then boom. We appear to be further behind than we were before the meeting.”

Mr. Gnodtke, like Mr. Elsenheimer, implied Ms. Jeff had blurred the distinction between the Mackinac Bridge and the Mackinac Bridge Authority.

“MDOT is not interested in taking over the Mackinac Bridge,” Ms. Jeff had said.

In assuming control of the Authority’s financial decisions, she referred to the state’s executive reorganization act in 1965, noting it put the autonomous Mackinac Bridge Authority under the oversight of MDOT. Ms. Jeff based her assumption of insurance and maintenance responsibilities on the 1965 Type 1 transfer of the Authority to the Highway Department and on her interpretation of a 1966 attorney general opinion written by Frank Kelley.

The attorney general’s opinion Ms. Jeff referred to at the town hall meeting was the same one referred to in August when a representative from MDOT’s Lansing office said it was an “internal document” and it would not be released. During last Thursday’s meeting, Ms. Jeff made copies available of a 1966 opinion to Frederick Tripp, who at that time was director for administration of Michigan Department of State Highways, now the Department of Transportation. Mr. Kelley addressed questions regarding the Type I transfer to the Highway Department, as it impacted on the Mackinac Bridge Authority, and other bridge boards, such as those at Blue Water and International Bridge, and opined that the highway department was ultimately responsible.

Ms. Jeff said the reason she is exercising that opinion now is because the state is facing tough financial times. The Waterways Commission, Aeronautics Commission, and other agencies lost their independence years ago as Type 2 transfers. The bridge authorities and the Mackinac Island State Park Commission are the few remaining Type 1 transfers.

“We need to bring in lessons learned from other parts of state government,” Ms. Jeff said.

She explained that she transferred the $25 million the Authority had been managing to the State Treasury to save $47,000 in management fees being charged by a private firm.

“These funds are not used for the general fund,” she said in response to charges she would use the money to trim the state’s budget deficit. “They are, my words, firewalled, in a way that they can only be used to address the needs and activities on the Mackinac Bridge. They go nowhere else. They are not shifted anywhere else.”

The money in that fund is generated from bridge tolls, not tax money, she said, and, “They cannot be used for any other purpose,” than for the Bridge. Some of that money will be used to re-deck the Bridge, a project that had been scheduled for 2017, but pushed back to 2020 by Ms. Jeff during the Authority’s August meeting. Her reasoning, she said, was based on advances in preventive maintenance products and procedures. The savings by the delay would be great, she pointed out at the August meeting.

Ms. Jeff also said the Authority now would be allowed to view bridge inspection reports in a controlled environment. Last month, Ms. Jeff said Authority members would only receive summaries of maintenance reports because of security issues since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Regarding employees of the Bridge, Ms. Jeff said, “Their jobs will remain unchallenged and not in jeopardy by any of the actions we’ve taken here.”

Authority member Murray Wikol said, “The best thing for the community and the Bridge is an independent authority. We need to have checks and balances.”

“I’ve got to admit, I’m leaving here tonight more confused than when I came in,” said Representative Elsenheimer. “I’ve been in Lansing about nine months now, and I’m a new representative, but I can hear Lansing-speak and know it when I hear it. I’m hearing it tonight. I think there is some confusion out there that needs to be addressed. The fact of the matter is that steps are being taken by this department in this administration that were not taken by the Engler, Blanchard, Milliken, Romney, or Swainson administrations over the last 40 years. I still have not been given a good reason why,” he said.

“There is still a tug of war going on between MDOT and the Mackinac Bridge Authority,” Senator Allen told T he St. Ignace News after the meeting ended.

Authority board members are a nonpartisan group who are appointed by the governor. The board consists of three Republicans and three Democrats in addition to the director of MDOT. Ms. Jeff was appointed to her MDOT post by Governor Granholm.

At Thursday’s meeting, St. Ignace Mayor Bruce Dodson address the issue of MDOT setting up a self-insurance fund for the Bridge. Another St. Ignace area landmark, the Father Marquette National Memorial and Museum, had been self-insured by the state, but when lightning struck the museum and it burned, the state said it had no money to rebuild it.

“Our Father Marquette Museum burned about seven years ago,” said Mayor Dodson. “You can go down there and look at it. It is just a piece of dirt on the ground. Nothing has been done to this day to replace the Farther Marquette Museum.”

Art Underwood, chairman of the St. Ignace Planning Commission, who served in state government under Governor John Swainson, said MDOT plans to bypass the city planning when it builds a bus station in St. Ignace.

“They are going to take a prime piece of real estate and they don’t feel they have to come to the planning commission, as the law requires of all public agencies, to tell us what they are doing. That, to me, is arrogance,” he said. “I see the same level of arrogance with what is happening now with the Mackinac Bridge Authority.”

Former Senator Walter North, who is a former comptroller at the Mackinac Bridge and was the executive secretary there from 1982 until 1993, said the interpretation of the attorney general opinion is weak.

“Attorney General Frank Kelley wrote that opinion loosely, so that differences could be worked out,” he said.

He stressed leaving the Authority alone.

“If it ain’t broke,” he said, “don’t fix it.”

In a September 5 interview with The St. Ignace News , Mr. North noted, “The attorney general’s opinion has been there for 40 years and other directors have delegated these responsibilities with the Bridge Authority.”

Representative Gary McDowell said he would like to see the two entities work out their differences and continue to work together to keep the bridge safe and well maintained, the bridge fare low, and continue to more forward with the re-decking project in 15 to 20 years.

“The governor says she doesn’t want a Lansing takeover, and I expect her to keep her word,” Senator Allen said Friday, September 2. “It’s my intention to fully explore all options, legal and legislative, to restore the power of the Bridge Authority. This may require legislative corrections.”

U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee), said in a September 1 news release that Mr. Allen was playing partisan politics by holding the meeting that night “to challenge MDOTs authority.”

“It’s simply another example of Republicans fighting the Governor tooth and nail against any measure where she might be able to turn the state’s budget around,” he said. “They are allowing blatant partisan politics to blind them from seeing positive policy changes.”

Congressman Stupak said Ms. Jeff is cutting costs and saving money by switching from private contractors to governmental investment and self-insurance plans, and he questioned why Senator Allen would oppose saving money for the state, suggesting that rising costs could contribute to higher bridge fares for commuters and businesses.

Nevertheless, Mr. Stupak said he sent a letter to Ms. Jeff asking what, exactly, she is doing with the Bridge Authority and why, and what the financial impact of her actions has been.