infrastructure, while Governor Pawlenty continued to support her. Molnau was a controversial transportation commissioner; while she does not have a college degree and said she did not read bridge inspection reports, she frequently promoted herself as a transportation expert while refusing to ask for funding to fix hundreds of problem bridges in Minnesota. She defended her leadership, citing that three members of her leadership team were engineers. The bridge that collapsed was one of those problem bridges that inspectors found to be structurally deficient. The required repairs were not made before the tragedy. A plan to strengthen the fatiguing steel trusses under the bridge was scrapped, some claim in part due to the $2 million cost of those repairs, although Mn/DOT engineers "scoffed" at the suggestion that this was a major factor in the decision. From 2003 through August 2007, Mn/DOT had reduced its staff of 4,500 by 600. Her critics claim that her focus was on new roads—not maintenance of existing ones. In September 2007 the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that Molnau's Director of Emergency Response was attending a class at Harvard on Emergency Response. The Director did not return when the bridge collapsed, and proceeded to spend several days in Washington, DC before returning to Minnesota over a week later. The Director was terminated after the outcome of an investigation by the State's Legislative Auditor and the Department of Transportation. Removal as transportation commissioner After the Interstate 35W bridge collapse some lawmakers publicly questioned her dual role as Lieutenant Governor and Transportation Commissioner. However, Molnau defended her roles, citing her predecessor, Mae Schunk, who was active in education throughout the state. Fallout from the I-35W bridge collapse was evident in a January 2008 Minnesota Public Radio/Humphrey Institute poll, with only one in four Minnesotans approving of the job she was doing as Mn/DOT commissioner. State Senator Steve Murphy responded by saying that the Minnesota Senate would remove her if she does not step down from her post as Mn/DOT chief. On February 28, 2008 Molnau was removed from her position as Transportation Commissioner by the State Senate by a party-line, 44–22 vote. Pawlenty considered her ouster a disappointing partisan move while legislators saw failures of leadership and management. Molnau's farm sale In addition to the criticism following the I-35W bridge collapse, Molnau was also criticized for the sale of her family's farm in 2000 near a highway improvement project