MINNEAPOLIS — Editor's note: The video above first aired on KARE 11 on March 15, 2023.
The Metropolitan Council hasn't adequately enforced numerous aspects of its construction contracts on the Southwest Light Rail Transit project, according to a new report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor.
The June 2023 report is the second one released by the OLA this year after the Minnesota Senate approved an audit of the now decade-long project in 2022.
Among the findings outlined by the OLA were:
- The Metropolitan Council didn't hold its civil construction contractor accountable for requirements in its contract to estimate change order costs
- The Met Council settled change order costs while allowing potential schedule delays to remain unresolved
- The Council paid its contractor even though it could not fully validate the contractor had incurred the costs it claimed
- The Council paid its civil construction contractor the price the contractor initially set for change orders about half of the time, including instances when the Council’s Independent Cost Estimates for the same change orders were significantly lower
The OLA issued a series of recommendations to the Metropolitan Council, urging the agency to improve documentation practices, fully enforce its contracts and "reform its processes for determining and justifying final change order costs."
Responding to a draft of the report in a letter to Legislative Auditor Judy Randall, Met Council Chair Charles Zelle said several of the OLA's recommendations don't align with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Transit Administration guidance or construction law and aren't "appropriate for a project of this size and complexity."
Planning on the Southwest LRT project, which will connect Minneapolis to Eden Prairie, Hopkins, Minnetonka, and St. Louis Park, first began in 2011. The Met Council initially estimated service would begin in 2018. However, a civil construction contract wasn't awarded until late 2018, subsequently pushing the opening date back to 2023.
Now, the Southwest LRT service isn't expected to begin until 2027 and the project is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.
This first report, issued in March, found the Metropolitan Council wasn't transparent to the public about extra costs involved with the project and the number of delays.
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