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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Maine Tops New England for Worst Bridges

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Wednesday, April 8, 2015   

AUGUSTA, Maine - If your morning commute takes you across a bridge in Maine, a new report finds that you could be traveling across a span that is likely to have more structural issues than your neighbors' bridges in other New England states.

Alison Black, chief economist for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, said 15 percent of the bridges in the state's inventory in Maine are ranked as deficient in the group's new report.

"There are 364 bridges that are classified as structurally deficient," she said. "So, that means either the superstructure, the deck, or the substructure is rated in 'poor' or worse condition."

Nationwide, more than 60,000 bridges are structurally compromised, the report indicated, and many of those connect the most-traveled interstate highways.

Black said Congress faces an end-of-May deadline for funding the Highway Trust Fund, and many states are in a holding pattern waiting on a clear signal about whether federal funds will be forthcoming.

"So, when there is that uncertainty, that certainly impacts the pace of some of this work, as well as getting new projects out the door," Black said. "For many New England states, they are very highly dependent on that federal aid program for their capital investment."

The nation is underfunding road work at all levels, Black said, adding that a big concern is that even as states play catch-up on bridge work, it often comes at the expense of pavement needs in many states.

The report is online at slideshare.net.


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