State Highway Engineering or Political Theater?
A scathing editorial accuses the state highway engineer of prioritizing partisan optics over the crumbling roads of Benton County.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
When George F. Cotterill, chief engineer of the state highway department was in Kennewick recently, ostensibly for the purpose of inspecting the state roads in Benton County, he seemed to be a little hazy on road matters, but he was there like a wheel-horse when it came to politics. He didn’t know what the state intends to do with the road grade which it has built between Richland and Kiona and which is now almost impassable. He didn’t even know that money for building this road was appropriated by the last legislature or from what fund it came, but he was very positive that Governor Lister was not to be held responsible for the incompetency, lax methods and reckless expenditures of several of his state appointees. Naturally, after talking with Mr. Cotterill, we arrived at the conclusion that Governor Lister had not appointed him chief engineer of the highway department for what he knows about roads, but what he knows about politics.
“He didn’t know what the state intends to do with the road grade which it has built between Richland and Kiona and which is now almost impassable.”
The frustration with state-level bureaucratic neglect of local infrastructure is a recurring theme in Washington politics. The struggle between regional needs and the political machinery in Olympia remains as relevant today as it was in 1916.
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