Assuming they can meet their own deadlines, Governor Dan McKee and Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti Jr. could soon be out with a recommendation on how to fix (or rebuild) the westbound side of the Washington Bridge, which has been closed since December.
McKee and Alviti have repeatedly said the decision would come in late February or early March, but our clocks sprang forward over the weekend with no announcement. Both officials have suggested that a decision could be this week.
Now it appears that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is making plans to visit the Ocean State — and something tells me McKee won’t let him leave without making a stop at the bridge.
Details are scarce, but the Associated Press published a story Saturday morning that President Biden and his top aides have started “barnstorming the country to aggressively sell his vision for a second term to voters.”
The story from Josh Boak, Seung Min Kim, and Will Weissert singled out Buttigieg, who will be “traveling to Philadelphia and Rhode Island in the coming weeks to promote bridge repairs and other infrastructure improvements.”
Biden probably doesn’t have to worry about Rhode Island in this election (he thumped Donald Trump by nearly 21 percentage points here in 2020), but he certainly doesn’t want a blue state governor mad at him for any reason. And we know McKee has talked to Biden directly about the bridge.
Buttigieg has plenty of relationships of his own in Rhode Island. He and Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos were Rodel Fellows together in 2014, and he was endorsed for president by House Speaker Joe Shekarchi in 2020 (when Shekarchi was still majority leader). Former Providence mayors Joe Paolino and Jorge Elorza both supported Buttigieg in 2020 as well.
Rhode Map Live: On March 20 at 6 p.m., Steph Machado and I are hosting a free, in-person discussion on the state of Rhode Island’s public schools (from PK through college) with Postsecondary Commissioner Shannon Gilkey, Deputy RIDE Commissioner Lisa Odom-Villella, and Central Falls Mayor Maria Rivera. We hope to see you there. You can RSVP here.
This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you’d like to receive it via email Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.