Met Council Not 'Fully Transparent' About SW Rail Failures: Auditor

MINNEAPOLIS — A report released Wednesday by Minnesota's Legislative Auditor blasts the Metropolitan Council for massive cost overruns and delays in the Southwest Light Rail Transit project.

The Council has "not been fully transparent about the project’s delays and cost increases," the report states.

The Council also obligated itself to spend more money than the funds committed to the project, and did not hold its civil construction contractor accountable for failures to provide an acceptable project schedule, according to the auditor.

When construction on the line began in 2019, the Council estimated the project would cost $2.003 billion in total and open in 2023.

But as of March 2023, the Met Council now estimates the project will cost $2.767 billion to complete and won't open until 2027.

“Today’s presentation reiterated our concerns over the mismanagement of this project by the Metropolitan Council," Sen. Scott Dibble and Rep. Frank Hornstein — who chair the Senate and House transportation committees — said in a joint statement.

"The lack of prior planning, an enforceable schedule, competitive bid process, and peer review process all led to increased costs and long delays. The Metropolitan Council knew that problems were present yet did not share these concerns until much later."

The two Democrats also said the Council "has no mechanisms to feel accountable to the public in any way whatsoever" and renewed their call for the agency's leaders to be elected rather than appointed.

State Republicans went further, openly calling for the Council to be dissolved.

"One thing is clear after the audit today: the wasteful spending and obfuscation by the Metropolitan Council during the planning and construction of Southwest Light Rail, and their slowness to comply with the OLA requests, means their time wasting our taxpayers’ dollars should come to an end," said Sen. Mark Koran, co-chair of the Legislative Audit Commission.

"I’ll be taking the next step to re-introduce legislation to end the Met Council and put oversight of these major projects where it belongs – with locally elected city, county, and legislative bodies that must meet necessary transparency and accountability measures."

Sen. John Jasinski, the ranking Republican on his chamber's Transportation Committee, said "there should be absolutely no more state dollars" going to what he called "a boondoggle of historic proportions."

Read the entire Legislative Auditor report on the project here.