ICYMI: AP: Rick Scott’s Administration Ordered Key Change to Bridge

Sun Sentinel Editorial: Scott Trying To “Duck Blame” As He Has With Other Tragedies

In response to new reports demonstrating Rick Scott misled the people of Florida and that his administration had a “integral” role in the tragic FIU bridge project – and a new editorial highlighting how Scott is trying to “duck blame” for the bridge collapse like he did with the nursing home tragedy and the Parkland shooting — spokesman Sebastian Kitchen of the Florida Democratic Party released the following statement:

“Rick Scott is continuing his clear pattern: misleading Floridians and looking out for himself whenever there is a tragedy under his watch. There is now indisputable evidence that, despite Scott’s blatant effort to deceive Floridians, his administration played a ‘key role’ in this bridge project. Scott and his administration should be focused on finding answers and preventing future tragedies – instead he’s pushing his typical self-serving and dishonest politics at Floridian’s expense.”

See for yourself:

Associated Press, 3/20/2018, FDOT was not only intimately involved in the bridge project, but ordered changes

• “Documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public-records request show that the Florida Department of Transportation in October 2016 ordered Florida International University and its contractors to move one of the bridge’s main support structures.”
• “Difficulties began in late 2016, when the Florida Department of Transportation emailed project officials saying they needed to move the bridge’s signature pylon to allow for future widening of the road, according to the documents.”
• “While the NTSB is in the early stages of its investigation, multiple engineers who reviewed the documents obtained by the AP said moving the tower after the bridge’s initial design invited errors.”

Sun-Sentinel: 3/20/2018, State wrong to duck blame in pedestrian bridge collapse

• “Barely after rescuers had begun searching for bodies under Florida International University’s collapsed pedestrian bridge last Thursday, Gov. Rick Scott’s administration had begun its own political rescue mission.” 
• “Last September, it was 12 dead residents at a Hollywood nursing home after Hurricane Irma. The governor had made a point of giving his private cellphone number to such facilities, but the nursing home said its calls went unanswered”
• “Last month, it was 14 dead students and three dead staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Though Scott immediately blamed the FBI for failing to follow up on a warning about gunman Nikolas Cruz, the Florida Department of Children and Families also had contact with Cruz and didn’t intervene.”
• “And now it’s six dead people because of the FIU bridge collapse. All those victims in those three tragedies — and questions about what the state did or didn’t do — present a potential problem for the famously anti-regulation governor if he runs this year for the U.S. Senate.” 
• “Like those nursing home deaths and like the Stoneman Douglas shooting, the bridge collapse was preventable. It’s not just an FIU investigation. It’s an FDOT investigation.”

News 13 Orlando, 3/19/2018, Questions on FDOT involvement in FIU bridge project mount

• “While the department initially downplayed its role in the bridge project – pointedly telling reporters ‘this is not an FDOT project’ – recent revelations have shown it played an integral part in the design phase and missed a red flag that the bridge was in jeopardy of collapsing.”
• “FIU officials say that, far from being passive observers, FDOT staffers were members of a panel that approved the selection of the companies that would design and build the bridge.”
• “FDOT itself has revealed the existence of a voicemail, left on a department staffer’s landline by a project engineer, that warned of ‘cracking’ in the bridge. The voicemail was left last Tuesday but not discovered until the staffer returned to his office from a field assignment on Friday, the day after the collapse.”

VIDEO: Rick Scott: “Clearly, FIU picked everybody.”