February 16, 2000
Dear Sirs:
Last week I was attending one of our numerous bureaucratic meetings, this one on Surface Texture used on Graded Roads in the Australian Outback. While musing on the troubled condition of Montana's roadways, I slipped into a daydream, in which occurred the following disturbing events.
The Montana State Highway Department reads the Board of Regents' plan for program review in the university system, and is moved to adapt it to Montana's road policies. First, the Department appoints a head of the Highway Department and gives him control of a $200 million budget. He then hires approximately 100 of his friends and cronies to administer the state's roads. These people don't actually repair roads, but are paid an average of $65,000 a year for bearing the burden of administrative responsibility.
Then the Director threatens to close several roads around the state. He establishes the Office of the Director of Higher Road Theory and Repair (ODHRTR), which uses up another $8 million; no one in this office actually paves roads or drives equipment or pours cement or cuts weeds in the ditches, but all attend endless meetings and spend another several millions on travel both within the state and to Alaska, Europe, and the Orient. One weekend each month seven or eight of these administrators with at least three each of their junior officers travel at state expense to one of the premiere ski or fishing lodges for a working retreat. When someone asks about the junket, they say that they do, after all, travel on state roads.
While deliberating about which roads to develop and which to abandon, the Director and the most prominent of the junior directors decide to spend another $15 million per year on sports programs for the Highway Department, to promote good will among state citizens and simultaneously distract them from the nearly criminal neglect suffered by many roads upon which they daily depend. The Director's office in conjunction with the governor's office establishes a Blue Ribbon committee of state citizens to study the condition of Montana's roads, which they do assiduously for nearly three years. To track the Committee's revisions and to coordinate athletic events, the ODHRTR invests an additional $15 million in a computer software system which promises much but delivers little.
Meantime, the ODHRTR finalizes its own plan, which is momentarily slowed by the departure of one of the junior directors. Unwilling to assume responsibility for finding a replacement, the ODHRTR hires a recruiting firm for $70,000 to cull the candidates./1/ After nearly a year of high-profile interviews, feasts, and speeches, the ODHRTR chooses one of its junior officers anyway, saying that only a Montanan can understand the problems that face Montana.
As soon as the Blue Ribbon Committee's recommendations arrive, which include trimming the ODHRTR and redirecting money from it to state road maintenance and construction, the ODHRTR discloses its plan, which somehow is the one Montana will follow. They decide to close all roads that have five or fewer cars on them per hour.
Then I saw in my dream that there is a way to hell, even from the Gates of the Mountains. So I awoke, and behold, it was a nightmare.
Sincerely,
Paught W. Hole, concerned citizen
P.S. Dreams sometimes predict life. The day after my nightmare, in a sharp departure from past practice, the Highway Department announced a new Montana State Highway Map that deliberately omits less traveled roads, the better to protect the public from using them and becoming lost (Bob Anez, "Proposed Map Changes Draw Heat," Great Falls Tribune 10 February 2000: 1M. See also the following pieces in the same paper: Bob Anez, "New State Map Thins out Eastern Montana," 9 Feb. 2000:1A; Editorial, "Mapmaker mapmaker don't remake my map," 11 Feb. 2000: 6A.). The major difference between the Highway Department and the ODHRTR is that the Highway Department has stopped the publication of the planned map while it listens to public input.
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