David Morris: Paying the costs of a disaster

On Aug. 1, a bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. Thirteen people died. More than a hundred were injured. Rebuilding will cost $234 million.

Two weeks after the bridge collapse, a flood inundated several small southwestern Minnesota towns. Seven people died. Scores were injured. Rebuilding will cost $150 million to $250 million.

How big a community should pay the recovery costs?

All Minnesotans are picking up 75 percent or more of the bill from the flood. A special nine-hour session of the state Legislature appropriated $157 million, $30 per Minnesotan, to extend a collective helping hand. Which makes sense, because in this case the capacity of individuals and the tiny towns that dot the area was insufficient to rebuild before winter arrives.

Washington will pick up about 20 percent of the flood cost. Why? Because the president declared southwestern Minnesota a disaster relief area. By law, he could only do so after Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had declared the state incapable of fully responding.

Of course, Pawlenty knows that Minnesota was perfectly capable of shouldering the responsibility, as the special session demonstrated. But without his little white lie, Minnesota would not have been eligible for free money from Washington.

For the first 150 years of the American republic, federal disaster relief was an ad hoc affair. Not until the 1930s did the federal government agree to bear a portion of the disaster losses, as opposed to paying to rebuild damaged infrastructure. The Disaster Relief Act of 1950 for the first time created a permanent relief fund and granted presidents broad discretionary power to decide what constituted a disaster eligible for federal aid. Dwight Eisenhower signed the first such declaration in 1953 following tornadoes in Georgia.

Since 1953, presidents have issued over 1,700 disaster declarations and have signed several thousand "emergency relief" statements, allowed by disaster relief legislation enacted in the 1970s and 1980s. These enable smaller federal commitments to affected areas.

Today disaster declarations, and states' solemn promises that they are too poor to care for their own, are a weekly affair. Especially during reelection years. Bill Clinton set the existing record with 75 in 1996; not far behind are George W. Bush's 68 declarations in 2004.

Some disasters, like the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew, are of a scale that warrants and demands federal intervention. Most are not.

In the case of the collapse of the I-35W bridge, Pawlenty requested and was granted a presidential disaster declaration. Then, too, he swore that Minnesota lacked the capacity to rebuild. In this case, however, the governor's request amounted to much more than a white lie. Why?

First, unlike the flood, this was not a natural disaster but a man-made disaster. Second, twice in the past three years, the last time just months before the bridge fell, Pawlenty had vetoed a gas-tax increase to improve maintenance and construction of roads and bridges. In between those times, albeit by the narrowest of margins, Minnesota reelected him.

If the governor had approved the 5 cent gas-tax hike passed by the Legislature, sufficient money would have been generated in 2006 and 2007 to pay almost 100 percent of the costs of rebuilding the I-35W bridge and repair the flood-damaged roads and bridges in southwestern Minnesota. Minnesota has not raised its gas tax, 20 cents a gallon, in almost 20 years. The tax is lower than in the neighboring states of Wisconsin, North and South Dakota.

For more than a decade, state officials had known of problems with the metal holding up the I-35W bridge. As a result, the bridge was inspected annually. A 2006 report recommended the bridge be reinforced with steel plating. The state demurred, asking for cheaper options. A low-cost resurfacing was going on when the bridge crumpled.

Minnesotans and their elected leaders refused to take responsibility for our bridges and roads. Ironically, they never had to answer for their irresponsibility. Within 48 hours of the collapse, Jim Oberstar, a 33-year veteran of Congress and chair of the House Transportation Committee, had persuaded both chambers of Congress to ante up $250 million, sufficient not only to rebuild the bridge but expand it from eight lanes to 10 and possibly to build broad shoulders to support future bus or light rail lanes.

No special session was called. There was no need. A Democratic Congress had bailed out a Republican governor.

Some argue that the people of southwestern Minnesota were similarly irresponsible and don't deserve to be bailed out by a larger community because most had failed to buy flood insurance. However, newspaper investigations in the aftermath of the flood found that many had tried to buy flood insurance but their real estate agents mistakenly told them none was available.

The response to the flood seems reasonable. The damaged households and businesses and their insurance companies will bear a significant part of the cost of rebuilding. The larger community, the state, will pay the vast majority of the uninsured costs. The federal government is playing a minor role, although it is unclear whether any role by the entire nation is warranted.

The response to the bridge collapse, on the other hand, seems unreasonable. Why should the nation pay what might amount to 90-100 percent of the costs of rebuilding when the state itself consistently refused to pay what was required to keep its citizens safe?

David Morris is vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, based in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.