The major players

Joanne Wagner is the former director of MnDOT's Office of Equal Employment Opportunity/contract management. Wagner filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the agency, claiming she was demoted after she recommended against awarding a contract to Granite and McCrossan. Wagner determined the contractors were not meeting their goals for hiring subcontractors run by minorities and women. She settled her suit in early November for $170,000, and is leaving the agency.

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Douglas Differt, an engineer, is a former MnDOT deputy commissioner who overruled Wagner's decision on the Granite and McCrossan contract. Differt, at last report, worked for URS, a transportation consulting company. Differt is a key figure in another transportation issue, the inquiry into URS' consulting report to MnDOT on options for repairing the 35W bridge before it collapsed.

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Carol Molnau, MnDOT commissioner and lieutenant governor. Molnau has been under fire in recent months because of the I-35W bridge collapse, the controversy over how the contract for the bridge reconstruction was awarded, and concerns that her agency is broke and unable to keep up with maintenance and replacement of the state's roads and bridges.

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Bob McFarlin, assistant to MnDOT Commissioner Carol Molnau, is a spokesman for the agency on the DBE issue. He was not on staff during the disagreement over the awarding of the 494 contract to Granite/McCrossan.

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Hope Jensen is the current director of civil rights for MnDOT. She and her staff review contractor bids and monitor their performance on meeting federal equal employment opportunity and disadvantaged business enterprise rules. She did not hold that job at the time of the awarding of the 494 and Hiawatha light rail projects.

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Dianne Holte, owner of Holte Contracting, based in Ramsey, Minnesota. Holte is a certified DBE contractor and one of the few female members of the Associated General Contractors of Minnesota, a heavy construction interest group. Holte's company worked as a subcontractor on both the 494 and Hiawatha light rail projects, and was visited by a federal investigator who, Holte says, wanted to verify that Holte Contracting is a woman-owned business.

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George Sullivan is an investigator for the U.S. Department of Tranportation Office of Inspector General. Sullivan has reportedly talked to MnDOT and several DBE contractors as part of his investigation into the 494 and Hiawatha projects. In one Met Council audit, Sullivan is quoted as finding examples of DBEs who were given credit for work they did not perform, or acted merely as fronts or pass-through companies for the prime contractors.

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Granite and McCrossan, prime contractors on heavy construction work, including roads and bridges, in the Midwest and around the country. Granite is based in Texas and C.S. McCrossan is based in Maple Grove, Minnesota. McCrossan was also one of the losing bidders in the I-35W bridge rebuild project.

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Dean Thomson, a Minneapolis attorney, has been hired by Granite and McCrossan to represent them in their appeal to MnDOT over proposed sanctions totaling more than $4 million for missing DBE hiring goals. Thomson argues that both the state and federal governments made numerous errors and miscalculations in their findings, saying the companies performed the work in good faith and won praise from the various public entities for their efforts.

Thomson also represents McCrossan and other contractors who lost the bidding process over the 35W bridge collapse.

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FHWA, the Federal Highway Administration, initially agreed with the recommendation of MnDOT's Joanne Wagner against hiring Granite and McCrossan for the 494 project. Local FHWA officials then reversed their position and approved awarding the contract. The official involved has declined to be interviewed by MPR News.

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NERA, the National Economic Research Associates, an international consulting company, was hired by MnDOT to assess the agency's DBE attainment. The survey of MnDOT contracts awarded from 2000 to 2004 found the agency's DBE attainment was 5.5 percent. The NERA consultants estimated the available pool of DBE's would have allowed MnDOT to attain a level of more than 15 percent. The report was delivered to MnDOT in 2005, but not released until MPR News learned of the study and requested a copy.