BRIDGEPORT – Broken roads. Broken bridges, Broken system. Broke.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey traveled to the heart of road condition discontent on Monday to announce what he’s calling a “massive culture change” in how the state approaches the construction and maintenance of its road system.
Morrissey said the state needs to be more efficient, more transparent, more maintenance-focused and even more collaborative in its efforts.
But it wasn’t a pep talk – at least not initially.
“Today I’d like to speak with you openly and candidly about the problems that we face and what we’re doing to fix it,” he said, standing in the parking lot in front of West Virginia Division of Highways District 4 headquarters, in Bridgeport.
Morrissey said he took office to find a department of transportation that was “basically out of money” but engaged in new construction projects all over West Virginia.
The money tied to the multi-billion dollar Roads to Prosperity program initiated under the previous administration is spoken for – “spent wildly” to hear Morrissey explain it. The result, he continued, is a state in need of massive infrastructure investment, but already home to the most bond-indebted highway system in America.
“We were designing and starting construction on highways all over the state that we had no way to pay for. And we got to the point where soon we were going to have to tell some of the contractors to stop working,” he said, adding, “It actually got to the point where the federal government came to our administration very early in our tenure and they said if West Virginia doesn’t change the way we manage our highway system then they were going to reduce the amount of federal funds that were coming into our state.”
Morrisey laid out a number of steps his administration is taking to begin addressing the problems.
The first will be a prioritization of the repair and maintenance of existing infrastructure over new construction. According to Morrissey, it’s hard to justify pushing new projects “when a basic look at our financial numbers makes it obvious that we can’t even afford a lot of the existing highways that are on the books.”
Transportation Secretary Todd Rumbaugh said the initial focus will be on lowering the percentage of “poor” bridges in the state from 14% to below 10% by 2028.
Morrissey said he’s also called for a thinning of the DOT’s top-heavy organizational chart, explaining money that should be going into the state’s roads has been going to an ever-expanding list of job titles in Charleston and beyond.
Going forward, Morrissey said the decision-making process surrounding transportation projects will be transparent and data-driven, not the result of closed-door political wrangling. He said a prioritized list of upcoming bridge and secondary road projects would be published on the department of transportation website Monday afternoon.
If private interests and/or local government have a project requiring some degree of urgency, Morrissey said there will be opportunities to work with the state.
“We’re looking for partnerships. That could be monetary. It could be other forms. We’re open to that,” he said. “The object is to get things done, and to get things done with the highest quality in the shortest period of time. There may be counties that want to move fast on a particular project or want to move up on the priority list and they’re willing to be helpful – that’s great.”
Monongalia County Commissioner Tom Bloom made the trip to Bridgeport. He left believing “it’s a new day” at the DOH due to leadership changes made at the state and district level.
“My first reaction is excited. I finally heard that I can tell the citizens of Monongalia County that the governor’s office realizes that certain areas have been underaddressed and is planning to move forward,” Bloom said. “The second thing we heard is he is looking to work with the counties and our priorities on new projects, roads and intersections. The third is transparency. I’m very excited. I was fortunate to meet with him for 10 minutes yesterday and this is what he said. He wants Monongalia County and the north central region to move forward.”
Much like Bloom, Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Executive Director Bill Austin said he, too, was encouraged by the governor’s remarks, particularly in terms of transparency.
“A systematic, policy-driven way to select projects is very important and it’s really what the whole MPO process is aimed toward, being able to develop a state transportation improvement program with the input from everybody. I’m very much encouraged by that,” Austin said. “It’s no secret, you’ve seen it with several projects … The previous process was basically if you got the governor’s ear and it was important to the governor that’s how projects were selected. This is going to be a more data-driven process.”
