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Baltimore Sun: Larry Hogan’s Key Bridge rebuild claims don’t quite jibe with his record

By Baltimore Sun Editorial Board

May 6, 2024

• We do not routinely comment on social media posts, but one offered last week by former Gov. Larry Hogan… represents the kind of partisan hubris and misrepresentation that the candidate claims to detest.

• Hogan posted on X that as governor in 2022, his administration “opened the new Nice-Middleton Bridge — which is similar in size — across the Potomac, under budget and ahead of schedule.” He added that he has “been urging the Biden administration to expedite” any environmental review of the new Key Bridge and promises to “cut the red tape” if elected to the Senate.

• A couple of corrections to the record are in order. First, the Key Bridge replacement already has qualified for an expedited permit review under the National Environmental Policy Act’s “categorical exclusion” list. It’s not “red tape” delaying the process, but the serious challenge of designing and building a bridge simultaneously.

• The Gov. Harry W. Nice Memorial/Sen. Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge was already designed and ready to go when Hogan took office in 2015. Hogan actually held up the project as governor, vetoing legislation to help finance it and then getting into a dispute with Democratic lawmakers over whether the bridge should have a promised bike lane that his administration cut because of cost.

• For a better comparison of how Hogan would handle transportation construction as a U.S. Senator, we might look to the Purple Line light rail project he initiated during his first term. By the time he left office last year, the project was 66% over budget (at $9.3 billion) and nearly 5 years behind schedule.