Bridgebusters, Inc.

LITTLE ROCK — IT WASN’T exactly news. It couldn’t have surprised anyone who’s followed the long, winding saga and now approaching end of the Broadway Bridge connecting the two Little Rocks. But the story was worth the front-page coverage (“Bridge renewal gets state rebuff”) because it confirmed the obvious, which is that the state’s highway department is bound and determined to tear down the old bridge, not to say hell-bent. Which is why the department’s “planners” aren’t about to let mere facts, let alone mere numbers, stand in their way. You can almost see the wrecking ball swinging now.

At this stage of the vigil for the old bridge, the highway department is still making a show of consulting the public and its officials-preparatory to ignoring whatever they say if it doesn’t coincide with the department’s own aims. And chief among them is to tear down the storied old bridge. So it can be replaced by a new, modern, thoroughly mediocre one.

Many of us have long suspected as much, but now the suspicion has been confirmed by none other than the director of the state’s Highway and Transportation Department himself, Scott Bennett. He was responding to a study indicating that it would be far more economical to repair the old bridge than replace it. Director Bennett’s response deserves a place in the bulging annals of government waste. It was a classic, for it says far more about his attitude, and that of our bureaucracy in general, than he may have intended. To quote him:

No matter what the numbers are, we do not recommend the rehabilitation of this bridge.

No matter how much money might be saved, no matter how long it might take to tear down the old bridge and replace it with a less distinctive one, no matter how many years traffic might have to be tied up (the term “traffic nightmare” keeps popping up in news stories about the highway department’s plans), no matter what the public or its elected officials have to say, no matter that a better location might be found for a new bridge, or a better use for the old than turning it into wreckage . . . none of that matters. For nothing is going to get in the way of the state highway department’s three top priorities: Spend, spend and spend.

WE HASTEN to add that those priorities come with an important caveat. The money spent has to be in the form of federal grants. Then it’s not real money. Or at least the spenders don’t seem to consider it real money, taxpayers’ money, the kind a responsible public agency would try to save. It’s not as if Arkansas were part of a federal union, and Arkansas taxpayers weren’t U.S. taxpayers, too. Forget all that. Just spend the money. No matter what the numbers are, we do not recommend the rehabilitation of this bridge.

Whatever the director’s response says about the wisdom of saving or destroying a single bridge in the middle of a single state in the America of the second decade of the 21st Century, it says a lot, an awful lot, about how the whole country has gotten into the fiscal mess it’s in.

Yes, a couple of mayors might have had a good word to say for economy, for respect for the past and its picturesque architectural heritage, or just for simple prudence. But what can elected officials know compared to our appointed autocrats?

Little Rock’s mayor, Mark Stodola, is clearly an amateur when it comes to wasting the public’s money, or destroying his city’s historical legacy. His words have an incorrigible innocence about them: “What’s wrong with an old bridge if it’s good and serviceable?” Which shows you how naive he is. What’s wrong with the old bridge is that it stands in the way of spending still more millions in public funds, and acquiring still more federal debt.

If only Arkansas’ highway department were in charge over there in backward Europe! If it were, do you think Florence would still have that unwieldy Old Bridge across the Arno? Talk about antiquated! The Ponte Vecchio dates back to the Romans, for gosh sakes. It’s needed replacing for centuries now by somebody who understands highway planning. Or can get a federal grant for it, which is not necessarily the same thing.

Mark Stodola’s counterpart across the river, Mayor Patrick Henry Hays of North Little Rock, sounds almost as naive as Little Rock’s mayor. “Let’s don’t rush to judgment if we don’t have to,” he advises. But, Mr. Mayor, the highway department isn’t rushing to judgment. Its course throughout this whole sad but telling affair has been a rush to misjudgment.

FIRST THE highway department dismissed the idea that the Broadway Bridge be replaced with some striking structure that might prove a national landmark. Now it’s come out against keeping the old bridge as a pedestrian walkway and building a modern replacement a little way upstream in a location that makes more sense.

Such ideas never get anywhere with this highway department. They’re way too economical, or too imaginative, or too sensible. Most unacceptable of all, they stand in the way of spending all that federal money, and spending it now. For it’s important not just that those millions be spent, but spent right away.

When these mayors say they’re just trying to exercise a little fiscal responsibility and due diligence, they don’t seem to realize those are fighting words to every big spender in state government, and Lord knows there are plenty of them. Now the spenders’ whole attitude has been summed up in one simple sentemce: No matter what the numbers are, we do not recommend the rehabilitation of this bridge.

As summer and this year’s presidential campaign both heat up, the air is going to be heavy with partisan rhetoric, including the accusation that this administration is responsible for letting the national debt balloon to an unsustainable $15 trillion and threatening the country’s whole economic future, not to say its present.

But that accusation isn’t entirely fair. Washington did not get us into this fix by itself. It had plenty of help from all those state and local and regional bureaucracies who don’t care what the numbers are. They just want to tax and spend.

The Scott Bennetts of government are Legion. They can be found at every level-federal, state and local. Consider the folks who are eager to add another coupla-three hundred thousand people to the state’s Medicaid rolls regardless of the cost either now (hey, it’s only federal money) or later. Don’t stop to weigh the costs, just take the money! Those spenders don’t seem to care what the numbers are, either.