There's going to be another inquiry into why the bridge fell. On top of the NTSB, the Legislative Auditor, and the Governor Pawlenty-hired consultants, we're going to have the Minneapolis law firm of Gray Plant Mooty looking into things on behalf of a bi-partisan State House-Senate committee.
One wonders why we need another such investigation. But it's not too hard to figure out if you read the comments of the politicians who oppose its formation. One needs to look only as far as our head politician for the answer. Governor Pawlenty said that the purpose of the investigation was "to make political hay out of a tragic situation."
I agree whole heartedly with the governor, but not because it's wrong to make political hay here, but because it would be wrong not to. Here's why: the bridge didn't fall because we didn't know that it needed repair. The bridge fell because we knew it needed repair and someone made a political, or, to be generous, a budgetary, decision not to make the repairs. That's what I'd like to find out: who made that decision to play dice with the chances with the lives of the thousands of people who drove over that bridge every day?
Applying Occam's Razor (which is a principle of investigation which states, in essence, that the simplest possible solution to a problem is most often the correct one) I'm going with Pawlenty's appointment of Carol Molnau, an anti-transportation, anti-tax ideologue, as transportation commissioner as the proximate cause.
That political decision trumped all the engineering and maintenance recommendations that might have saved the bridge. And that's hay that should be cut, baled and stacked for all of us to see every time we drive over a Minnesota bridge.