{"id":89502,"date":"2025-04-11T04:14:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T09:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89502"},"modified":"2025-04-11T07:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T12:25:17","slug":"just-in-time-to-start-another-audit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89502","title":{"rendered":"Just In Time To Start Another Audit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>An audit of the Southwest Light Rail project &#8211; which is years late, and running at well over double the original projected cost, and (this is my longtime prediction) <em>will\u00a0<\/em>end up over $3 Billion when it finally lurches to completion, got a hearing at the Legislature earlier this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A years-long audit of the construction of the embattled <a href=\"https:\/\/kstp.com\/tag\/southwest-light-rail\/\">Southwest Light Rail line<\/a> has concluded the Metropolitan Council had issues with \u201cnon-compliance\u201d and a lack of \u201cinternal controls\u201d managing the mega project, which is now expected to cost taxpayers $2.86 billion.<\/p>\n<p>The presentation by the Office of the Legislative Auditor also gave frustrated lawmakers another opportunity to tee off on <a href=\"https:\/\/kstp.com\/kstp-news\/top-news\/emails-reveal-heated-exchange-between-auditor-and-contractor-over-critical-southwest-light-rail-report\/\">Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t blame it on anyone else, blame it on the consultant, you are the decision maker,\u201d said Sen. Mark Koran (R-North Branch) at the hearing on Monday morning.<\/p>\n<p>The audit highlighted huge discrepancies in estimating the costs of hundreds of change orders on the project, including one for the construction of a barrier along the Kenilworth Corridor, which drove up the price of the project by more than $40 million.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>How about we just start the next audit now, to save time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An audit of the Southwest Light Rail project &#8211; which is years late, and running at well over double the original projected cost, and (this is my longtime prediction) will\u00a0end up over $3 Billion when it finally lurches to completion, got a hearing at the Legislature earlier this week.\u00a0 A years-long audit of the construction [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-trains-and-automobiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89502"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89515,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89502\/revisions\/89515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}