Blame the Legislature: Lawmakers deserve lot of credit for road conditions

“Silent” and “listen” are spelled with the same letters.
Yet, just because you are mum is no indication you are actually listening.
That’s the impression we are starting to get from the Legislature on the condition of our roads.
Although the Legislature appears restrained about the earful it’s getting about road conditions, we’re unsure it’s even listening.
Last week, at a meeting of the Preston County Commission descriptions of its roads drew comparisons to those in Afghanistan.
While another report of one new arrival’s take on area roads described them as “worse than Mexico.”
One commissioner also suggested that poor road conditions may have contributed to an accident earlier this month that injured four teenagers.
Meanwhile in the state Senate’s chambers, the subject of road conditions did come up again.
One senator noted the roads were bad on his weekend trip home while another described seeing ducks swimming in potholes.
Yet, its members dropped that discussion without any further action after one senator observed, “It’s too cold to lay asphalt.”
That’s true. It is too cold to pave roads with asphalt, but it’s not too cold to ditch roads, repair slips, clear the canopy and patch potholes.
In the past our newspaper has almost exclusively blamed mismanagement at the Division of Highways locally and in Charleston for our road conditions.
That’s about to change. From hereon we’re going to turn our attention to the failure of legislators to do anything about this issue.
Yes, there was “Randy’s Dream,” which appears headed nowhere. There was also an ill-conceived idea by the governor to use road bond money for maintenance and repairs.
Others have toyed with that thought despite widespread opposition while still others have discussed calling all 55 county road superintendents onto the carpet.
To our best estimation, 40 bills under the subject of roads and transportation were introduced in this legislative session. About 25 of them have little to nothing to do with roads.
Incredibly, none of the 15 that do pertain to actual roads have advanced far in the Legislature, nor any of the other related 25.
Matter of fact, almost all of them remain in the committees where they were initially assigned.
A famous journalist once said of outrage, “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
No, no one is advocating slitting throats over our horrendous road conditions.
But we are beyond ready to start changing for whom and how we vote in the next election.