Some environmentally concerned people have mentioned to me something they encounter a lot, the "precautionary principle" explored here, here, and here. There's more explaining the principle, but those links are sufficient to use in explaining the unrest I feel seeing Elwyn Tinklenberg's premature advocacy of taconite tailings in paving (especially with $94,280 of record from NRRI in the process) and in not heeding potentially drastic bridge problems made known during his watch at MnDOT.
That is separate from the unrest I feel seeing his opportunism on pointing the finger at others, after the bridge fell. That's a credibility problem, as with denying he is a lobbyist. He is a lobbyist. He registered as such, with State authorities. He splits hairs over it federally.
He's been lobbying.
The Internet is replete with minutes online from communities who hired him and Tinklenberg Group exactly for that function.
How do you trust what he does say, when he says he's not been a lobbyist?
Then he is seen implying he is without fault, with a bridge that was built with gussets thinner than engineers specified and problematic to the extent a few months after he left MnDOT there were photos of gusset bending that was obvious to the unaided eye - and the question, why were the photos taken and how would they be expected to differ at all from what things looked like before Tinklenberg left, when he was head of MnDOT?
Misjudging the severity of the situation - that probably was a good faith failure to follow the precautionary principle.
But fudging on lobbyist status as the term is commonly understood (without splitting hairs about the federal legislation's definition), and the finger pointing over the bridge without admitting things were to be seen but were overlooked or deliberately downplayed while he was MnDOT boss; that's different. It goes beyond lacking suitable precaution.
_________UPDATE_________
Based on things I explain in another later post, I cannot say Elwyn Tinklenberg had notice of cause for concern over the fallen I35W bridge while heading MnDOT. I stand by the remainder of this post, that he failed to heed the precautionary principle regarding taconite tailings use, and that he has been too circumspect about his lobbying status and too prompt to blame others for things, in ways where he may be at fault himself. I have noted that some studies during his tenure at MnDOT were not as severe as I first thought, yet I have no way of knowing all that he knew at MnDOT, or when he knew it. I have no proof he neglected a thing. But it was the same bridge then as built in 1967, but older while he was there, and only a few years older when it fell. I still cannot see cause for him to blame others for not seeing things he appears to not have seen himself, while heading MnDOT. And whether he mischaracterized Bachmann's position in his op-ed remains to be seen. It is for Bachmann, not me, to defend her position. But my view is that she sought funding in the past for a new Stillwater bridge, and talked about infrastructure needs in 2006 when Hastert was in St. Cloud helping her fundraising. So she is not against funding infrastructure, but against the earmark process - as it currently is done - which Tinklenberg's editorial did not defend as wholly proper. He actually talked of funding needs, not a need to earmark things, as currently practiced.
