SF Bay Bridge may have been lost jobs opportunity

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The span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is an engineering marvel. Its construction has been a sore point for some American contractors.

By Scott Cohn, CNBC.com

It is designed to be an icon ? and unlike any bridge in the country.

After years of debate and delays, the dramatic new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is finally taking shape.

At the heart of the project is a unique ?self-anchored suspension span? ? twin roadways linked to a soaring, 500-foot tower by a single, mile-long cable.

A little over a year before the bridge?s scheduled opening, the bridge is already a conversation piece, though not for the reasons planners had hoped.

Instead of marveling at the design, what many are talking about is the fact that the suspension portion of the bridge was made in China.

Critics say the decision to outsource the span ? the central tower and the two 1,500 foot steel road decks were fabricated in a specially-built factory in China and shipped to San Francisco Bay ? was a missed opportunity to create thousands of American manufacturing jobs.

California officials contend the U.S. does not have the manufacturing capacity or the workforce to build such a project on its own.

A CNBC Investigations Inc. review of the process has found miscommunication, misconceptions and missteps that have, at the very least, tainted what planners had hoped would be an architectural and engineering triumph.

?The Bay Bridge: 100% foreign steel,? proclaim billboards along the freeways approaching the bridge. To be accurate, the suspension span of the bridge is only about 80 percent foreign steel according to the California Department of Transportation (also known as CalTrans), and the entire eastern span, from Yerba Buena Island to Oakland, is about 20 percent foreign.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing, which sponsored the billboard campaign, says whatever the actual content, the decision to use Chinese steel was scandalous.

?I think every California taxpayer should be outraged by this,? says executive director Scott Paul.

But the outrage extends beyond California.

?What is it about American regulations, American taxation, American labor cost and attitudes that makes it cheaper to go to China,? asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich when asked about the bridge at a CNBC Republican Presidential Debate in November.

?It is good for America to have free trade,? said former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney ? now the presumptive GOP nominee ? at the debate. ?But China is playing by different rules.?

CalTrans Bay Bridge Program Manager Anthony Anziano told CNBC in an interview that the state had no choice but to go overseas.

?The largest companies in this country just simply didn?t have the capacity to be able to do that work in the time that we required,? he said.

That point remains a subject of bitter debate. And with the project now near completion, it is not clear the decision to outsource the span yielded anything close to the savings officials had hoped for.

Now budgeted at more than $1.75 billion for the suspension span alone, the section has encountered nearly $300 million in overruns. And while officials recently moved up the projected opening of the bridge to Labor Day 2013, it is still as much as a year behind the schedule that was planned when the contract was awarded.

In the end, the time and budget is nearly identical to the single bid the state received to build the bridge with American steel: a five-year, $1.8 billion proposal by a joint venture of American Bridge Company and Fluor Corporation that the state rejected in 2004.

There is no way of knowing what overruns that proposal would have encountered, and it, too, contemplated buying some of the steel from overseas. But independent steel industry analyst Michelle Applebaum says American firms have a better track record than the Chinese when it comes to bringing in large projects without major overruns.

?Just looking at dollars and sense, there was a much better argument for this to be done domestically,? says Applebaum, who describes herself as an ardent free-trader.?

And she says any cost advantage the Chinese might have had would easily have been made up by the benefits to the U.S. economy. She believes officials in California fell victim to a mindset that says China is automatically cheaper.

?We shot ourselves in the foot,? Applebaum said. ?We never even took seriously the domestic bid.?

Not so, says Anziano. But with only one domestic bid, which came in at more than double the CalTrans engineers? estimate, the state had a duty to look elsewhere.

?That?s telling you there?s something wrong. You?re not getting competitive bidding,? he said.

Opening the project to foreign competition was not a simple matter. It required some fancy legislative footwork that still angers some U.S. manufacturers, who saw the Bay Bridge as a unique opportunity to revitalize American manufacturing just as the nation was heading into a recession.

Early on, some in California saw the Bay Bridge project ? necessitated when the existing bridge was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake ? as a potential job creator.

Flush with wealth from the dot-com bubble, the state and Bay Area leaders mandated the new bridge be ?iconic? in its design. The costs ? and potential benefits to the winning bidders ?ballooned.

After lobbying from labor and industry groups, then-governor Gray Davis won federal funding for the bridge. That meant the project was covered by a 1982 ?Buy America? law requiring the state to give preference to American contractors.

But then the 2004 bid came in, just months after the new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, took office. Hit by sticker shock, the Schwarzenegger administration decided to regroup.

?One of the things that stuck out was the Buy America component,? Anziano said. ?That was restricting, and we heard this loud and clear from the construction community.?

So the administration reconfigured the funding formula for the 16 separate contracts that made up the Bay Bridge project. While most of the contracts would continue to receive federal funds and be subject to the Buy America requirement, the self-anchored suspension span ? the signature segment of the project and by far the most lucrative ? would be paid for with state and local funds, exempting it from the requirement.

Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban such a maneuver in the future. It faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Regardless, it comes years too late for some who had hoped to win the Bay Bridge project, until the state changed the rules.

?We thought it was gamesmanship, that it was a way of getting around the system,? says Thomas Hickman, a vice president at Oregon Iron Works outside Portland.

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His firm was part of a consortium, Bay Bridge Fabricators, that had been preparing a bid for the project. The proposal included a new, state-of-the-art fabrication plant to be built at the port of Vancouver, Washington. Hickman says the factory would have been a huge boost to U.S. manufacturing capacity, allowing American firms to compete for even bigger projects around the world.

?The impact on the economy throughout this country would have been tremendous,? he said.

But when state officials announced in 2005 that the suspension span would no longer be subject to the Buy America requirement, the plan died.

?At that point, we all looked at each other and said it's really time to go home,? said Hickman, ?Because they're determined to go to China, or Korea, or somewhere other than the U.S. for this bridge.?

?That was not part of the thinking ? let?s just send it overseas,? said Anziano. ?It was the reality of the market.?

Nonetheless, Schwarzenegger and his administration began actively courting foreign bidders. In 2005, Schwarzenegger traveled to China on a trade mission. During the visit, state transportation secretary Sunne Wright McPeak ceremonially presented officials with a set of CDs including bidding specifications for the Bay Bridge project.

From the state?s standpoint, the strategy worked as planned ? increasing competition. When the project was rebid in 2006, the American Bridge-Fluor joint venture won out. Unencumbered by the Buy America law this time, the group bid $1.43 billion, nearly $400 million below its 2004 bid. After winning the contract, the group promptly subcontracted the steel fabrication to ZPMC, a Shanghai-based firm whose primary expertise is building cranes.

?I don't believe they ever really took a fair look at what was available here in the United States before they made the decision to effectively abandon the U.S. as a supplier of the structural steel for the bridge,? Hickman said. ?I don't mean that to sound harsh, but at the same time, that's really exactly what they did.?

CNBC.com: Worst jobs?for?2012

His firm did win a contract to build some components of the Bay Bridge, but he says it is nothing compared to the contract for the suspension span.

State officials say the bidding results proved the U.S. did not have the capacity to build the bridge on time and at a reasonable cost, and they could not rely on a hypothetical U.S. factory to build such a vital span. But it is not clear China had the capacity either.

Soon after winning the contract, ZPMC built its own new factory in China, just as Hickman?s consortium had planned to do in the U.S. And more than 200 American experts and engineers traveled to China to help supervise the project.

?Building a new facility, which they had to do, training their people, which they had to do, all of those were an investment in China that in my mind should've been done here,? Hickman said.

?It's not quite that simple,? said Anziano, who says it is unfair to blame CalTrans for the work going to China. ?You have to keep in mind, first of all, that the capacity situation that we have in this country is something that has evolved over decades. You can't fix it overnight. You really can't fix it on the back of one single project.?

Besides, the Chinese managed tobuild their plant in just eleven months, American Bridge?s then-CEO Robert Luffy told a Congressional committee in 2007.

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?Believe me, they have the capacity,? Luffy testified. ?It is beyond your comprehension if you haven?t been there.?

But he acknowledged that had the state approved the venture?s initial bid in 2004, it would have added the capacity in the U.S.

?A lot of additional capacity,? he said.

Today, one more major Bay Bridge contract has yet to be awarded: a five-year, quarter billion dollar project to tear down the existing bridge. Among the rumored bidders: a firm from China.?

This story originally appeared on CNBC.com.

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CNBC's Scott Cohn looks at the controversy surrounding how some of the parts of the spectacular structure were built overseas and why those decisions were made.

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Losing faith in Democrats' religious outreach

WASHINGTON (AP) ? In 2008, Barack Obama took aim at the "pew gap," the overwhelming Republican edge among voters who regularly attend church.

The Democratic presidential nominee came nowhere near closing it, but he didn't have to. He just needed an extra percentage point or two among traditional GOP constituents, and he got it.

The Democratic National Committee is promising a repeat performance in 2012. But some religious leaders and scholars who backed Obama in 2008 are skeptical. They say the Democrats have, through neglect and lack of focus, squandered the substantial gains they made with religious moderates and worry it will hurt Obama in a tight race against Republican Mitt Romney.

The DNC's faith outreach director, the Rev. Derrick Harkins, said the party has strong relationships with religious groups. But as evidence of their concerns, critics point to the public debate that followed Obama's endorsement of gay marriage, a decision the president said was based in part on his Christian faith.

No prominent clergyperson was sent out as a surrogate by the administration to explain the religious argument in favor of same-sex relationships. Instead, the main religious voices connected to Obama in the public sphere were the ministers who serve as his personal spiritual advisers and generally oppose gay marriage. Those ministers who were willing to comment ? many weren't ? said they were struggling with Obama's decision.

[Related: Only 20 percent of super PAC money comes from women]

"I think there is a viable religious left who can be persuaded by a carefully articulated religious argument, but no one is making it," said Valerie Cooper, a religious studies professor at the University of Virginia and Obama supporter. "I'm concerned that the administration has not followed through on the promise of 2008."

Cooper recently attended a White House briefing for academics on the work of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She and other religious scholars say they understand that pressing issues such as the economy had to be the priority. Still, they argued more could have been done to broaden the party's tent.

"I get frustrated when I talk to evangelical friends or students and they ask, 'How can you be a Christian and a Democrat?'" Cooper said.

David Kim, a Connecticut College religious studies professor, helped advise the 2008 campaign when videos of incendiary sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former Chicago pastor, threatened to derail the nominee. Kim, who attended the briefing with Cooper, described the administration's faith-based work as "ad hoc" and "with no long-term strategy."

"I didn't really get a clear sense of what the mission is," Kim said.

In 2008, the Obama campaign sought ways to cooperate with religious moderates and conservatives and make them feel more welcome among Democrats. Many political veterans dismissed the idea as quixotic. For the past decade or so, exit polls have found that the more often a voter attends church, the more likely he was to back a conservative candidate, earning the GOP the nickname "God's Own Party."

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The Obama campaign built grassroots support among religious voters by organizing "faith house parties," sending Roman Catholic and evangelical surrogates on the campaign trail, and holding faith caucus meetings at the party's national convention. Cooper remembers a conference call the campaign organized with Democrats who opposed abortion rights and a position paper the campaign circulated from a Catholic theologian about reducing the need for abortion.

According to exit polls, the effort paid off. Obama made gains over the 2004 nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, with voters who attend religious services more than once a week, 43 percent to 35 percent. Obama also won 26 percent of the evangelical vote, compared with 21 percent for Kerry.

"It wasn't huge, but it was statistically significant," said John Green, director of the University of Akron's Bliss Institute for Applied Politics. Religious Democrats began to talk of a new era for the party.

But from 2008 to 2010, when control of Congress was at stake, the DNC cut its faith outreach staffing from more than six people to one part-timer, according to The Washington Post.

Harkins, appointed last October, is the senior pastor at the historic Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington and has held many leadership positions, including as a past board member of the National Association of Evangelicals. He has little political or campaign experience.

Until last month, the Obama re-election campaign hadn't named a national director for religious outreach. Until he joined the campaign, 24-year-old Michael Wear was an executive assistant in the Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships office.

Harkins said in a telephone interview that he brings to the job relationships built over years with clergy nationwide and noted that he works as part of a DNC team conducting voter outreach. The Obama campaign would not discuss specifics of its outreach, citing a policy of not disclosing staff numbers or strategy, but said efforts to reach religious voters have been part of the Operation Vote initiative targeting different constituencies.

"I don't think there's been any evidence of a deficit," Harkins said. "If there's a change we're seeking, it's to be broader, more robust, reaching a broader section of the faith community."

The issue is arising at a particularly sensitive time when Obama's critics are accusing him of enacting policies that are "choking" religious groups.

Catholic bishops have filed a dozen lawsuits nationwide challenging a Department of Health and Human Services mandate that most employers, including religious groups, provide insurance that covers birth control. The president has offered to shift the cost to insurance companies. But Catholic prelates said the accommodation still links the church to a practice that violates their beliefs.

Recently, evangelical, Orthodox Jewish, Catholic and Mormon leaders helped form in every state a new network of caucuses dedicated to religious liberty, with the birth control mandate as their initial focus.

The advocacy group Conscience Cause formed in February to rescind or revise the birth control mandate. The organization's board includes Jim Nicholson, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican under President George W. Bush, and Republican strategists Mary Matalin and Ed Gillespie. Gillespie is an adviser to the Romney campaign.

But some of the president's traditional allies are among the critics.

The Tablet, the British Catholic newsweekly read widely by American Catholic liberals, said in a recent editorial that Obama "has perhaps been misled into thinking that the widespread dissent to these teachings among Catholics means he can disregard the views of the bishops without having to pay an electoral penalty."

Four years ago, Douglas Kmiec, an anti-abortion former official in the Reagan administration, backed Obama, drawing widespread condemnation from fellow conservative Catholics. In a column last month in the liberal U.S. newspaper the National Catholic Reporter, Kmiec praised the University of Notre Dame for suing the administration over the narrow religious exemption in the birth control rule. In 2009, Notre Dame withstood intense criticism from American bishops and honored Obama, despite the president's support for abortion rights.

"Unwittingly, perhaps, the president has allowed his appointees to drift into the secular lane and stay there," Kmiec wrote.

Catholics, who comprised about one-quarter of the electorate in 2008, haven't voted in a bloc for decades, but the candidate who wins the most Catholic votes usually wins the election.

Some Democrats see no problem with consigning faith outreach to the sidelines. They argue that attempts to please moderate and conservative religious groups have kept Obama from fully enacting some policies important to party members. Among these critics are Democrats who consider church leaders' complaints about the scope of the birth control mandate an attempt to extend legal privileges to religious groups at the expense of women.

Advocates for faith outreach say that view is short-sighted, endangering the party and the president's re-election chances.

Keri B. Thompson, who specializes in political communication and teaches at Boston's Emerson College, had started volunteering for Obama when he ran for U.S. Senate from Illinois. In an interview after the White House briefing, Thompson said she was "thrilled" by the president's endorsement of gay marriage. But the day of Obama's statement, watching her Facebook page explode with comments, she said she saw some reservations amid the celebrating.

"There are some people in the religious community who are unsure," Thompson said. "I think they need to be brought to the table."

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Rachel Zoll can be reached at www.twitter.com/rzollAP or rzoll (at) ap.org

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Arup develops link with Auckland University on ?deep geology? business

The University of Auckland has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Arup global consultancy that will see one of its specialist divisions helping develop services to the geothermal energy industry.

This article is free to view to all NZResources.com members. You can obtain your free NZResources.com membership here.

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09/30/2010 -- State of the University address today will be webcast live

News at The University of North Dakota comes from all colleges, schools, divisions, and departments to highlight the variety of activities and initiatives at our flagship university. For articles prior to June 1, 2011 use our News Archive.

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Ohio State football's Jake Stoneburner, Jack Mewhort suspended following arrest

Ohio State redshirt senior Jake Stoneburner and redshirt junior Jack Mewhort have been suspended from the football team until recent legal issues are resolved.

Stoneburner and Mewhort were arrested early Saturday morning for allegedly urinating in public and running from police.

Mark Collins, a Columbus-based attorney, said the football players learned of their suspension Sunday, and would be barred from the Woody Hayes Athletic Center until their case is resolved.

?I?m going to try to work the next week or so to resolve this to everyone?s satisfaction to get these two young men, get this taken care of and get them moving forward and get them back on the team hopefully,? Collins told The Lantern.

The arraignment is scheduled for June 11 at the Delaware County Municipal Court.

Representatives from the Department of Athletics, including coach Urban Meyer, did not immediately respond Sunday night to The Lantern?s request for comment regarding the suspensions.

Shawnee Hills Police arrested Stoneburner and Mewhort for ?obstructing official business? at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday by the Bogey Inn near Dublin, Ohio.

Police said they spotted Stoneburner, Mewhort and a third person unaffiliated with the OSU football program, Austin Barnard, urinating in between buildings. When they attempted to confront the three individuals, police said they ran away.

Two of the suspects were found trying to hide in between vehicles in a parking lot being used for this past weekend?s Memorial Tournament. The third person fled into the woods, but was ultimately caught by police after threatening to use a police dog.

Adam Widman, assistant director of communications for the Department of Athletics, on Saturday said Stoneburner?s arrest was being investigated.

Widman did not respond to The Lantern?s request for comment regarding Mewhort?s arrest.

Obstructing official business is defined by Ohio Revised Code 2921.31 as ?No person, without privilege to do so and with purpose to prevent, obstruct or delay the performance by a public official of any authorized act within the public official?s official capacity, shall do any act that hampers or impedes a public official in the performance of the public official?s lawful duties.?

Stoneburner is expected to be the starting tight end for the 2012 Buckeyes, and is listed in the No. 1 spot on Meyer?s preliminary depth chart.

In 2011, Stoneburner caught 14 passes for 193 yards and had seven touchdown catches. Stoneburner was highly recruited out of Dublin Coffman High School along with former Buckeyes teammate offensive lineman Mike Adams. He has caught 37 passes so far in his career at OSU.

Meyer listed Stoneburner after this year?s Spring Game on April 21 as one of his ?top offensive playmakers.?

Similarly, Mewhort, who was also a highly recruited prospect out of St. John?s Jesuit High School and Academy in Toledo, Ohio, is also expected to start on the offensive line for the Buckeyes.

Stoneburner and Mewhort are the second and third football player to be arrested since Meyer took over as head coach upon the conclusion of the Gator Bowl.

Redshirt junior cornerback Dominic Clarke was arrested and charged on Jan. 12 for drunk driving. Meyer removed Clarke from the team later that week.

Stoneburner and Mewhort did not respond for requests to comment Sunday.

Kristen Mitchell and Pat Brennan contributed to this article.

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Wallace Spearmon Wins 200m in Eugene - from Universal Sports

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PST: Del Piero linked to Galaxy, Red Bulls

We?ve been hearing about Alessandro del Piero?s arrival in Major League Soccer long enough to be desensitized. What?s it been? Two years? Regardless, you?d think there?d be a little more excitement surrounding one of soccer?s global icons moving to North America.

While it?s not a certainty that the out-of-contract, former-Juventus attacker will find his way to MLS, this possibility?s moved beyond idol speculation. At this point, it?s something worth getting excited about (and being disappointed in, if it doesn?t transpire).

It?s one of the great things about being a fan of MLS at this point in its history. You think baseball fans get amped at Yu Darvish coming to MLS? A little, but in the context baseball history, it?s only slightly more exciting than any other major transaction. Del Piero coming to Major League Soccer? Undeniably amp-enducing, on a league-wide scale.

Italian newspaper Tuttosport speaks with a certain air of inevitability, linking the 37-year-old with the typical duo: LA Galaxy, New York Red Bulls. While the report is little more than European paper mongering, the pieces do seem to fit.

Del Piero had been linked with one other MLS side, but I guess that?s the point of today?s news. Del Piero is said to have turned down the opportunity to join Marco Di Viao in Montreal. Though Tuttosport says Spain?s Malaga could get in the race, it looks like MLS?s two biggest spenders will (again) be bidding for the league?s next big import.

The report also goes hints at the ridiculous Del Piero versus Ronaldinho fantasy choice on one sheik has the luxury of making. Check that out, and in the interim, we?ll start blowing up the implications of Del Piero: what is means for the league that the two big spenders have corner another big star?s market; and how Del Piero can and might fit with his two possible destinations.

Also, secret between us PST?ers: When you see me end a post like this, it means my first draft was way, way too long, and I need to break up my thoughts into a bunch of posts. Here?s that follow up, talking about the implications of Del Piero joining LA or New York.

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