This plan won't solve DOT woes

Legislators have been talking tough since an audit found the state Transportation Department squandered tens of millions of dollars on cushy contractors, engaged in high-level favoritism and deliberately misled the Legislature. The agency won't receive another penny, they say, until it's overhauled.

But the plan a special House panel has been cobbling together to overhaul the state's most out-of-control agency will not solve the problem.

The clear problem is that there is no way to hold anyone accountable for what gets done and how it's done. ...

The clear solution is to put one person in charge of the agency, and draw a clear line of responsibility from that person to the governor.

The solution is not to let the governor hire the director but then maintain a governing board that's controlled by the Legislature. ...

Yet that model is what the House panel appears determined to pass off as ''reform.'' ...

This latest proposal is not an attempt to save our roads and bridges, or the lives we sacrifice on inadequate roads and bridges. ... It's an attempt to save legislative prerogatives, by preserving the ability of individual legislators to pull strings out of public view. We need real reform. The (Columbia) State