Just four short months ago, I noted that the state's "GOP first, general welfare distant third" newspaper, the Oklahoman, was engaging in its typical pro-Republican spin on the issue of Oklahoma's decrepit bridges, just after the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis:

Fair enough, for what it's worth—but isn't something missing here? Something about bridge repair, and paying for it, and…

Oh, yeah!

Just a day after voters soundly defeated a fuel tax proposal to fix the state's crumbling roads and bridges, Republican lawmakers announced a plan they say would provide much-needed money without raising taxes.

House Speaker Todd Hiett said the failure of State Question 723, a proposal to increase diesel and gasoline taxes to 22 cents per gallon, "sent a very clear message."

"They do not want a tax increase to fix the roads and bridges, said Hiett, R-Kellyville.

The plan, announced by House and Senate Republicans at the state Capitol, would increase annual appropriations hikes for the state Transportation Department from a maximum $35 million to $50 million.

…It would also create a $100 million emergency bridge repair fund —though it hasn't been decided whether money will come from the Rainy Day fund or another source, said Rep. Mark Liotta, R-Tulsa, chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on General Government and Transportation.

The $100 million would be enough to fix about 55 of the state's "worst of the worst" bridges.

How did today's report start?

Oklahoma continues to lead the nation in the number of structurally deficient bridges, but none on the state highway system are unsafe or in danger of imminent collapse, including Oklahoma City's aging Crosstown Expressway bridge, state highway officials said Thursday.

Nearly 6,300 bridges are structurally deficient in Oklahoma, which means the bridges aren't meant to carry today's loads, federal data show. Of those, 989 bridges are on Oklahoma's state highway system. Such bridges are under greater scrutiny after Wednesday's bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

But the GOP went absolutely batshit crazy in 2005 opposing SQ 723, insisting not only that we didn't need to raise any taxes to pay for bridge repair, but that their plan to repair 55 out of 6300 "structurally deficient" bridges in Oklahoma (not even repairing all 909 "structurally deficient" bridges on state highways) was certainly all we needed to do.

Well, now we know what that $100 million fund accomplished, and the Oklahoman has not stopped spinning it. Today's Oklahoman article:

State stretches funds to repair 68 bridges

Oklahoma is replacing or repairing 68 bridges with the special $100 million appropriation the Legislature approved in 2006, the state transportation director said today.

When the money was received, the department thought it could repair or replace 35 or 40 bridges, transportation director Gary Ridley told the Oklahoma Transportation Commission.

"With this funding, we have improved the state highway system by focusing on one of our most critical needs," Ridley said. "We set an ambitious goal and our designers and staff have exceeded our own expectations."

Normally, replacing a bridge takes three to four years of preparing, including environmental clearance, surveys, design, right of way purchases and utilities' relocations, the agency said.

"This doesn't solve our problems. However, it certainly was a shot in the arm," Ridley said of the $100 million appropriation.

As you can see from the earlier coverage, this is just blatantly dishonest: when the GOP proposed this fund instead of the necessary gas tax increase, they said it would be enough to fix 55 bridges. Now that it turned out to fix 68, they're trying to make it look even better by downplaying their own original estimates and hoping you won't notice.

Now look at how the Associated Press covered the same story:

Oklahoma bridge repair money exhausted with hundreds left to fix

By TIM TALLEY
The Associated Press
12/3/2007

OKLAHOMA CITY — It took just 18 months for state transportation officials to go through a $100 million fund that has repaired or replaced dozens of the state's most obsolete bridges.

But now the bridge fund is exhausted, and there are hundreds left to fix. Oklahoma lawmakers approved the one-time appropriation in March 2006 to jump-start a bridge program that transportation officials said was critically needed to repair or replace 1,600 functionally obsolete or structurally deficient bridges in the state.

Since then, the state Transportation Commission has approved contracts to repair or replace 60 bridges, more than their original goal. The bridges included some of the state's most critical load-posted bridges as well as others in serious need of repair, Department of Transportation Director Gary Ridley said.

"We thought it incumbent on us to put the money to good use as quickly as we could," Ridley said.

[…]"Even if we're fully funded…we still have about 626 bridges that we've identified that are critical that are not in our eight-year program," Ridley said. He estimated it would cost $2.5 billion to repair those bridges.

The AP properly notes that the Republicans' plan barely scratches the surface of what needs to be done, and spends lots of words (not quoted here) exploring how they think they can come up with this amount of insufficient funding again, even though the law they passed to make it happen didn't work this year. But also note that AP says the one-time fund was enough to fix 60 bridges, not the 68 mentioned by the Oklahoman.

That's the Oklahoman way of making the GOP look good, also known as "lying and hoping you won't notice." Instead of accurately reporting that a fund thought to be sufficient to fix 55 bridges was actually enough to fix 60 (9% more bridges than estimated), the Oklahoman changes it to a fund thought to be enough to fix 35 bridges that actually fixed 68, a whopping 94% improvement over original estimates.

Except that's not what the original estimate said, that's not how many bridges were fixed, and the paper doesn't mention the 626 bridges (ten years' worth of this program) that are both "critical" and not included in the current eight-year plan. The paper only mentions, at the end, that 1600 bridges "are ranked as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete."

It's easy for Oklahoma voters to think things aren't so bad when the state's leading newspapers goes so far out of its way to massage the figures to make the GOP look competent.