STATE OF MINNESOTA

Office of Governor Mark Dayton

130 State Capitol 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard
February 23, 2012

Saint Paul, MN 55155

The Honorable Betty McCollum Congresswoman U.S. House of Representatives 165 Western Avenue North, Suite 17 St. Paul, Minnesota 55102 Dear Representative McCollum:

Via Hand Delivery

I need to correct a statement attributed to you in yesterday's Pioneer Press story about the March 15, 2012 deadline for federal approval of the Stillwater bridge. In it, you are quoted as saying, "The governor's letter is a signal that it is time to take Transportation Secretary (Ray) LaHood up on his offer of a working group and come to the table to reach a compromise." It needs to be very clear to everyone that, according to MnDOT Commissioner Tom Sorel and his depar inent, any redesign of the bridge, through your proposed working group's "compromise" or anything else, will cause significant delays. As I stated in my February 21 st letter to Representative Bachmann, "Furthermore, if new bridge designs or routings are to be considered, the project will have to return to the beginning of the process, with new state and federal environmental impact assessments, new design and engineering studies, etc. Such a restart would most likely consign any new bridge to another decade of debate, with no assurance of a better outcome at the end." MnDOT, working with numerous stakeholder groups, completed the design of the currently proposed bridge before I took office. While I would personally favor certain modifications, it was made very clear to me from the outset that the only two real-world options were to either proceed with the bridge as currently proposed, or go back to the drawing boards and the starting point, where the project existed when I went to the US Senate 11 years ago. Those still remain the only two options. Commissioner Sorel and I would be glad to discuss this project with you at any time, should you so desire.

Mark Dayton Governor cc: Senator Amy Klobuchar Representative Michele Bachmann Senator Ray Vandeveer Senator Ted Lillie Representative Matt Dean Representative Bob Dettmer Representative Andrea Kieffer Representative Kathy Lohmer
Voice: (651) 201-3400 or (800) 657-3717 Fax: (651) 797-1850

Website: http: / /governor.state.mn.us

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