St. PAUL -- The fate of Carol Molnau and state transportation funding was topic No. 1 around the Minnesota Capitol last week.
Democrats want her fired as transportation commissioner, but apparently are OK with her remaining as lieutenant governor.
Molnau has remained out of the public eye most of the time since the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed Aug. 1. In a couple of news conferences in the first half of August, she turned feisty when reporters asked if she would consider resigning.
The commissioner and the man who appointed her, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, have not said if resignation has been discussed, but the governor defended her Friday.
"Carol Molnau has become the punching bag for 20 years of backlog," the Republican governor said about Democratic lawmakers' attacks in recent days.
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Pawlenty said that after all those years when transportation funding was lacking, he and Molnau have led record-setting highway construction seasons lately. Most of the new money came from loans.
Check lakes
The private organization Conservation Minnesota has developed a Web site that allows Minnesotans to check the safety of their lakes.
The site www.checkmylake.org lets visitors to pick a lake by name or by county, and presents a map showing where the lake is located. It also shows whether the lake is safe for swimming and iffish caught in the lake are safe to eat.
The site takes data already collected by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and puts it in an easier-to-use format.
Groups such as Conservation Minnesota want the state to spend more money to clean up lakes and streams.
