December 28, 2009 06:43 PM UTC

BREAKING: Snowplows Cost Money, Too

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• by: Colorado Pols

Do tell, as the Denver Post reports:

The state Department of Transportation plans to leave snow on nearly 2,800 miles of less-traveled rural highways during evening hours this winter, and lawmakers who represent those areas are fuming.

Citing public safety concerns, a dozen legislators, mostly Republicans, have drafted a letter asking transportation officials and Gov. Bill Ritter to send out plows to the farther reaches of the state’s highway system.

A spokeswoman for the transportation department said the state’s general practice has always been to leave those stretches unplowed overnight unless they are a school route, a hospital route or unless heavier snowfall would otherwise shut them down…

Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, who is leading the charge against the policy, characterized the shift as an ill-advised cost-saving measure.

“It’s a basic safety issue. People who are traveling rightly expect the roads to be plowed unless they are officially closed,” Brophy said. “It certainly adds a new level of uncertainty to anyone on the Eastern Plains or up in the mountains.”

In fact, the Post reports that the ‘new’ policy makes things less uncertain, since the state has posted signs alerting drivers of the plowing schedule. It’s not actually much of a change of policy as the DOT’s spokeperson said above.

So it’s not as big a deal as the first paragraph makes it sound, even though Greg “The Gadfly” Brophy obviously wants it to be. And he compounds his overreaction with that trademark lack of alternatives we’ve come to expect this year:

Brophy didn’t offer an alternative cut to the roads budget to provide more funds for plowing, instead saying transportation officials are better equipped to make those decisions.

That would be the same officials who made the first decision, right? Thanks for playing, Senator. And again, kudos to reporters like Jessica Fender at the Post for not letting Brophy get away with just complaining about the budget and actually asking him what he would suggest instead. Colorado’s budget problems are a real, legitimate crisis, and every time Republicans complain without offering their own solutions, they do the whole process a disservice. Fixing our budget isn’t a partisan issue — or it shouldn’t be, anyway — because it is a very real problem.