Highway reform nixed
Thursday, March 13, 2008

JUST A few days after a state House committee disposed of a reform bill designed to bolster the power of governors, a Senate committee spiked a good-government proposal that would take some power away from the state's top elected official.

On Tuesday, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee voted down a proposal to remove the Alabama Department of Transportation from the governor's direct control. As we noted in the editorial above this one, last week a House committee spiked the idea of giving governors real veto authority.

A strong gubernatorial veto would provide a needed check on the Legislature's power. It's not a good idea, however, to have governors exercising direct control over the state Department of Transportation.

Under the current arrangement, the transportation director serves at the pleasure of the governor. The governor appoints the director, and the governor can remove this key administrator for any reason or no reason.

In other words, the governor has a great deal of power over road projects. This is a formula for politicizing the distribution of asphalt and concrete.

Gov. Riley doesn't want this power because he understands the importance of professional highway administration. He knows the Transportation Department should operate at an arms-length distance from the politicians in Montgomery. Otherwise, transportation priorities always will be threatened by political priorities.

It's next to impossible to completely remove politics from road-building decisions, but it is possible to reduce the damaging influence of political favor-trading and deal-making.

The best way to do that is to make the transportation director accountable to an appointed commission. Rep. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, proposed creating a five-member commission, with the members appointed by the governor to six-year terms. The commission would have the authority to hire and fire transportation directors.

Reducing the governor's role in highway administration should have the added benefit of producing more continuity in the Transportation Department's leadership and policies. As it stands now, transportation priorities are heavily influenced by election results. Just about every time a new governor takes office, the state gets a new transportation director and a new set of road-building priorities.

Democrats and Republicans in the House agreed that Rep. Ward's bill would put the state's highway policies on a more rational course. The House voted 95-1 in favor of his highway reform bill.

Not surprisingly, the Senate played its usual role as the graveyard of rational, bipartisan legislation.