BOSTON (AP) – Three days before the Interstate 90 connector tunnel was opened to the public in 2003, the Romney administration passed responsibility for its safety certification to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which the governor has accused of mismanaging oversight of the Big Dig project.

That section of the Big Dig has been under scrutiny since a woman was killed July 10 when ceiling panels fell on her car.

Instead of a member of the state Highway Department signing off on the safety of the tunnel, the Turnpike Authority’s Big Dig project manager, Michael Lewis, did. The details of the certification were reported Friday by the Eagle-Tribune newspaper.

Legislation passed in 1997 called for a joint determination of safety by the Turnpike Authority and the Highway Department or its designee.

“In accordance with the legislation, we chose a designee,” Jon Carlisle, spokesman for Romney’s Executive Office of Transportation told The Associated Press on Friday.

Carlisle said Lewis signed the certification because he knew more about the day-to-day operations of the Big Dig project than the top engineer at the highway hepartment. Thomas Broderick, then the highway department’s chief engineer, told the newspaper that Lewis signed the safety certification in January 2003 for the same reason, “(The state Highway Department) didn’t do any of the day-to-day work.”

Rep. James Marzilli of Arlington said the administration should not have given up its role as an independent inspection agency to the person who had been overseeing the project.

“The certification should be by a person who is experienced and disinterested,” he told the newspaper, “and not by someone who has a professional stake in the project.”