Jergeson presses transportation commission to increase transparency

The Montana Transportation Commission agreed Thursday at its meeting in Havre to release additional information about highway projects after Commissoner Greg Jergeson of Chinook raised concerns about transparency of estimated budgets for Montana Department of Transportation projects.

Montana Department of Transportation Director Mike Tooley acknowledged that at a Montana Transportation Commission meeting earlier this year Jergeson raised questions on the transparency for the budgets that were available to the public, the numbers available online being rounded to the 100,000th or even the nearest millionth. Jergeson wrote an essay to the commission expressing concern that this was in violation of the Montana Constitution's policy of the public having a "right to know."

During the meeting Thursday when the committee was voting on passing the most-recent Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan, or STIP, plans for 2018 through 2022, Jergeson said that he would not oppose the motion to pass the document but wanted to discuss information available in it.

Jergeson told the committee about issues he had found with the STIP document, such as that projects approved by the committee but inactive the following year would not be listed in the STIP document that same year, although remaining in the budget.

Jergeson said that the document might satisfy the "feds," but since February he has voiced his resistance to the planning document "for the work that we commissioners, and the responsibility we commissioners, are suppose to exercise."

He added that some of the issues could be blamed on information-technology and software issues, but the commission needs to hold a deeper discussion on the issues. Jergeson said he sees clarity issues with everything from the website to the description of job responsibilities written by the legislative auditor.

Jergeson added that he thought the commission needs to have some extensive work on transparency because that is what the commission needs in the planning process.

"We have engineer's estimates down to the dollar," Jergeson said. "When you go online for the STIP thats available for the public, its in a range."

He said even though the committee has improved the ranges, generally with narrower scopes like $2 million to $4 million, it is still vague when estimates are more than $20 million. Jergeson added that if a project is $30 million or $50 million, estimates of "over $20 million" doesn't give a sense of the magnitude of what's going on.

Jergeson said that the estimates include dollar amounts. He added that these numbers are set to change over time with adjustments, but when people go online they only see the estimates in ranges.

Jergeson said that in the past, commission members were told not to disclose the engineer's estimates because of the fear that it would contaminate the bidding process. He said that, constitutionally, the public has the right to know, and that it violates this constitutional right to know to withhold from the public information that the commissioners and the top personnel in the department have.

"How do we tell them ... how do we tell the public that they are being afforded their right to know when they don't get to see what we have," Jergeson said.

"That's an age old history that we've dealt with, within the agency," MDT Chief Engineer Dwane Kailey said. "There was a fear many, many years ago about releasing our estimates and that should those estimates get out to the contracting community it would skew the bidding process."

Kailey added that they have dealt with it nation wide, and that they have researched into the issue. He said that the department at this time has taken a stance that the only estimate that the department will not disclose to the public is the board of review estimate, developed right before the project goes to advertising. Kailey continued to say that the issue is an urban legend.

MDT Planning Administrator Lynn Zanto, Kailey and other staff have been working diligently since Jergeson's essay to produce a new document and webpage that will answer any concerns, Kailey said. That information will be designed to be easily understood by the public.

Kailey said that STIP is not a document meant for the public or for the committee to read, but a bureaucratic document meeting federal guidelines.

"What we need to do is use this for what it's designed for," he said.

Jergeson asked if it would be acceptable if the physical STIP document was given to the public.

MDT Director Mike Tooley said, "Absolutely."

He said that was one of the changes made over the past several months since Jergeson made his suggestions in his essay sent to the commission members, although in the past commission members were discouraged from giving that information.

Tooley said that although the fear was that contractors would jump to the conclusion of their bids, it never happened, and the information should have always been available, although there are still small pockets of resistance.

The full STIP is now available upon request, he said.

The commission passed the STIP and agreed to open a disscussion about transparency and disclosure during its August meeting.

Jergeson said there still is a lot of work to be done and although there was a small victory there are still many issues of the public's right to know.