... the 'track' at DOT

Because of the historic and, unfortunately, continuing involvement of politics in the state Department of Transportation, it's tempting to look at a critical state audit of the agency with, "Oh, here we go again ..." in the back of one's mind. That wouldn't be entirely fair in the case of State Auditor Les Merritt's examination of three years of DOT projects, an audit that found 73 percent of the projects (between 2004 and 2007) didn't make their projected start dates.

Merritt makes some valid points to be sure -- that the department doesn't focus strongly enough on tracking the successes or delays in its projects, and that delays obviously are costly. The audit put the extra costs due to delays specifically at $152 million. As far as the business of tracking goes, Merritt's report, released Thursday, states, "The lack of performance management practices has been pointed out to DOT before." That's not good, although the department says it has improved, thanks to revisions in its business practices.

That said, the responses of department officials to some of Merritt's points seem legitimate. For example, officials note that Merritt's office counted as the start date on projects the day funding was approved for preliminary engineering to begin. The problem with that, say DOT officials, is that preliminary engineering is just that, preliminary. Problems may arise that couldn't have been foreseen by engineers, leading to changes in actual start dates and completion delays.

The department also says it saves money by bringing in projects on time or ahead of schedule. In short, the audit raises valid issues. But the DOT response has merit. So to speak.