CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Both state Transportation Secretary Byrd White and Deputy Highways Commissioner Jimmy Wriston spoke out against a bill Tuesday being considered by the state Senate Transportation Committee that calls for the state to use contractors on road maintenance jobs currently handled by the Division of Highways.
The bill, SB 162, includes several proposals focusing on road maintenance but it was a contractor section that got the most attention Tuesday from White and Wriston.
According to the bill, DOH districts would be authorized to hire contractors if 70 percent of core maintenance projects from the year before aren’t completed.
“These repairs shall include, but are not limited to, pothole repair, paving, ditching, and mowing on and along each district’s roadways,” the bill said.
White said he believes the DOH does better work with routine maintenance than contractors.
“This would require us to use private contractors when our experience thus far has not been very good,” White said.
White said he believes contractors do a decent job on patching roads but not so much on ditching along highways.
“We found that there quality was nowhere near good enough to meet our standards and it cost almost five times as much per shoulder mile for what we could do it for,” White said. “It means we get less work done at a lower quality.”
Senator Bob Beach inquired about the possibility of using contractors for snow and ice removal. Wriston said some states have tried it but are now going back in-house.
“The success initially seemed like it was going in the right direction but they’ve since been revamping that and backing away from that,” Wriston said. “Just about every state that I’ve known that have went down that road they are now backing away from it.”
Wriston added DOH staffing levels continue to increase.
“We’re probably closing in on having 5,200 people working in the Division of Highways and we are close to reestablishing what are quotas are,” Wriston said.
The state began a major push nine months ago on road maintenance projects. White said Tuesday much has been accomplished including the ditching of more than 34 percent of the state’s highways. He said they are ahead of pace of ditching highways at least once every three years.
Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, decided not to bring the bill up for a vote Tuesday. He said he planned to get the stakeholders together to discuss it before putting back on the committee’s agenda.