‘Avalanche’ of promises: Justice’s latest road efforts look to be more retreads

Another week, another “avalanche of (road) work.”
Every time Gov. Jim Justice expounds on his plans for our state’s roads we almost want to believe him. But we don’t.
It’s almost like when our president told us we were “gonna win so much people will say we can’t take it anymore.”
Or when a now former  Justice appointee (Tom Smith) told us, “In about three more weeks, you’re going to be saying, ‘Why did you guys get so much stuff started, there’s orange drums everywhere.’ ” That was nearly a year ago.
Though not too many of us are tired of winning yet, even fewer of us are frustrated by the amount of orange drums lining our roads. Or the work being done along them.
What frustrates most of us though are the governor’s endless, empty and evasive promises about our roads.
Perhaps worse, lately Justice appears more intent on deflecting any blame for our road conditions than getting to work.
Maybe he’s right, none of these road slips, potholes, clogged ditches or anything else happened to our roads  on his watch,.
After all, he only took office a bit more than two years ago. Or maybe he was just unaware our state’s roads had fallen into disrepair years ago.
But we were under the impression he does a lot of traveling on state roads and honestly, if you’ve got two good eyes  you can see we have a problem
Though we’re paid to be skeptical about what anyone says, by now, we suspect many are not  are sold on the latest from the governor’s office.
Just last week, the governor convened a 15-minute gathering with Division of Highways’ district engineers and county supervisors from across the state.
Essentially, he asked them to come up with a plan in 72 hours to evaluate every secondary road in their district and a plan to repair them.
Knowing there are some 40,000 miles of roads in West Virginia and the governor claims to be the one-man answer to the state’s roads, this effort appears about as detailed as a fourth-grader’s book report.
Worse yet, a fourth-grader who waits until the night before his book report is due to do it.
Here we are, two weeks after the 60-day legislative session and he wants to create a roadmap for statewide repairs in three days.
Some will say it’s about time, but the idea of tackling the state’s secondary road issues is not something you do in 72 hours.
This will take lots of planning, even more time and a oodles of money. Mostly money.
It will not be accomplished anytime soon, either, despite the avalanche of speeches, photo ops and promises.