‘How does that man survive?’: McKee’s loyalty to Alviti contrasts with past governors in crisis

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Gov. Dan McKee's support of his top transportation official has been unwavering throughout 10 months of criticism over the Washington Bridge fiasco.

In the early days of the crisis, the Democratic governor became visibly frustrated during a televised news conference when a reporter asked if he'd fire R.I. Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti, a holdover from his predecessor Gina Raimondo's administration.

McKee has stood by Alviti and his team since then despite a series of botched timelines, cost miscalculations and procurement failures, culminating in a first-ever community meeting about the bridge on Friday night that lasted fewer than 10 minutes.

The meeting evoked sharp criticism from McKee, who said "it is an understatement to say that I am disappointed in how the community meeting was managed last night." He quickly ordered Alviti to hold a second meeting Thursday night, saying he'd join in personally.

However, while one poll over the summer showed just 29% of voters approved of how McKee was handling the bridge crisis, the governor said earlier this week he has never taken any action against a state employee over what went wrong.

"I don't think it's called for at this point and time," McKee told reporters at a news conference.

McKee's loyalty to Alviti is an outlier compared with other recent governors when they faced their own high-profile crises and often made personnel changes as a result. And for the leaders who worked through those times, the lack of internal accountability over the Washington Bridge is striking.

"I'm shocked Alviti is still there," former Gov. Lincoln Chafee told Target 12 on Thursday. "How does that man survive?"

Chafee's successor as governor, Democrat Gina Raimondo, repeatedly sacked personnel when things went awry.

One memorable example was in 2016, when the state was mocked from coast to coast for the rollout of a "Cooler and Warmer" tourism campaign that featured video from Iceland. Raimondo parted ways with her chief marketing officer within days .

The following year, Raimondo pushed out an even more prominent member of her administration, Health and Human Services Secretary Elizabeth Roberts, amid intense public criticism over to the infamous IT debacle known as UHIP.

Roberts, who had previously served two terms as lieutenant governor, was well-liked at the State House. But Mike Raia, Raimondo's spokesperson at the time, told Target 12 that managing a crisis across any sector oftentimes requires making personnel changes to send a signal to the public.

"It's not that different than why sports teams make coaching changes after a bad season," said Raia, who now owns a private communications firm. "It's not like it's all the coach's fault, but sometimes you need to do a refresh to rebuild the public trust."

Raia emphasized that he wasn't commenting specifically on the McKee administration or the Washington Bridge crisis.

Chafee faced a similar moment in the first year of his administration, when he dismissed Keith Stokes as director of the R.I. Economic Development Corp. amid the collapse of the video-game company 38 Studios. Stokes had helped engineer a $75 million taxpayer-backed loan to lure the company, founded by former Red Sox star Curt Schilling, to Rhode Island.

"The state should have never done it," Chafee told Target 12, adding that he's glad most of the EDC board also agreed to resign at the time. "We were going to start fresh."

"It was a bad investment and I wasn't surprised in the end," added Chafee, an independent-turned-Democrat who had publicly opposed the deal during his campaign for governor.

During Gov. Don Carcieri's tenure, the Republican's administration came under intense scrutiny after the state's medical examiner was slow to identify dozens of people who died in the devastating Station nightclub fire in 2003.

Jeffery Grybowski, who was Carcieri's chief of staff, said the pace of identifications frustrated many families as they tried to find their loved ones, and led to an overhaul in the medical examiner's office. Carcieri ended up firing his health director the following year, he added.

"Job No. 1 of a leader is accountability," said Grybowski, who has been critical of the McKee administration. "Setting goals and being accountable for them – that has to flow down through the whole organization on what the expectations are. That's how you set standards and that's how to make sure you're doing what the people of the state expect out of government."

Carcieri later fired his Emergency Management Agency director after a devastating snowstorm in 2007. (Carcieri was visiting the Middle East at the time.) Grybowski said making leadership changes also sends an important message internally because it warns other directors and employees they will face accountability. Otherwise, he said, they may think they can do no wrong.

"No one has one of these leadership jobs because they're entitled to it," Grybowski said. "They serve at the pleasure of the governor and the governor serves the people of the state. There's a point at which people rightly have questions about the leaderships' ability to deliver, and there has to be accountability for repeated failures at some point."

Like Chafee, Grybowski said he couldn't understand why Alviti was still serving as transportation director. He pointed to the bridge failure itself, along with the unrealistic expectations the state initially set out for when a new bridge would be built. The procurement effort based on those parameters failed to draw any bids.

"I'm personally shocked there's been no accountability at the Department of Transportation for the failure," he said. "I think the Department of Transportation is directly responsible for the maintenance of bridges. It's one of the fundamental jobs to maintain the safety of bridges and they failed."

In 1991, newly elected Gov. Bruce Sundlun entered office and immediately faced the state's biggest-ever banking crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people couldn't access their accounts at state-chartered credit unions, which ultimately resulted in businesses shutting down, people losing their jobs and the sales tax increases to make up for loss revenue.

Sundlun – who had been a business executive before running for governor – quickly fired his banking commissioner, who was a holdover from his predecessor Ed DiPrete's administration.

Sundlun also went on to fire his head of the Depositors' Economic Protection Corp., an entity created to clean up the credit union mess, after news emerged that the leader had treated his staff to a steak dinner while thousands of families couldn't access their own money.

Like Sundlun's banking commissioner, Alviti is a holdover from the prior administration. But that hasn't made McKee any more willing to move on from him, and political observers have noted Alviti also has powerful allies in Senate President Dominick Ruggerio and leaders of the Laborers union.

Both Alviti and McKee also argue their newly unveiled revised strategy for demolition and reconstruction of the Washington Bridge now has the state headed in the right direction. And they both insist RIDOT has been successful in delivering on most of their other bridge projects.

The men highlight that Rhode Island's national rankings have moved up from bottom for bridge quality in recent years, and Alviti expressed confidence this week "he'd be delivering for the governor [and] for the people in Rhode Island" on the Washington Bridge.

"We have fallen short on a couple of issues here – stumbles and missteps," Alviti said.

"But we've experienced similar kinds of setbacks on many other projects, several hundred bridges that we've rebuilt over the past several years," he continued. "Each of those challenges that my team has faced, they've met them, they've corrected them, and we have completed those projects successfully, safely, and economically. In all of those cases 99% of our projects on time and on budget."

Yet Chafee said he doesn't see how the state can move forward unless the governor makes changes in order to install a new team that can start rebuilding the public trust which he believes has been lost.

"I know he's tight with the Laborers and all that and I'm sure that's a factor, but it's a disaster," he said. "I don't want to drive to Providence anymore. Nobody does."

Eli Sherman ( ) is a Target 12 investigative reporter for 12 News. Connect with him on Twitter and on Facebook .