MECHANICS WANTED
ELECTION 2018: Endorsement in District 29 Maryland Senate Race – Vote for Jack Bailey
The Maryland Senate District that spans all of St. Mary’s County and the southern tip of Calvert County includes a growing population and faces challenges in providing key government services, especially that of transportation gridlock. For the past twenty years, legislators in this district rested on their laurels of work done in the early and mid-nineties and failed to focus on the needs of the future. As a result, traffic is gridlocked on Great Mills Road, Route 5 from Park Hall to Leonardtown, Rt. 235 from Pax River NAS all the way to Rt. 4 and beyond. The Maryland Department of Transportation and the inept politicians from the legislators in the seventies up until the present time were asleep at the switch.
In 1977 a two-lane bridge was opened over the Patuxent River from St. Mary’s to Calvert County. The two-lane road on the St. Mary’s side failed immediately, and the Speaker of the House was a delegate from St. Mary’s County. Either that lawmaker was living in another century, or he was a very short-sighted legislator who failed to deliver for his home county.
In the mid-nineties, Congressman Steny Hoyer surged the workforce at Pax River with thousands of new jobs and was instrumental in pushing the State of Maryland to widen, expand and rebuild Rt. 235 to Pax River. It was a good job, and Hoyer deserves much credit for the vast improvement. The legislators at the time assisted Hoyer to bring funding for the project.
At the same time, Hoyer, Sen. Roy Dyson, and Del. John Bohanan punted when it came to funding a design for adding a third lane to Rt. 5 between Great Mills and Callaway with a reversible function for that lane to allow traffic to flow faster in morning and evening rush hours. A plan was presented to them, evaluated by the State Highway Commission to cost $1.6 million to achieve and the three Democrats did nothing. The result is the mess in that area that clogs traffic to this day.
The St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners can point to the FDR Boulevard extension that sits uncompleted as their proudest moment and an example of a government project that should nominate them for the Biggest Bozos on the East Coast – only leaving out the west coast due to the excellent morons that run California. The existing Republican St. Mary’s Board can only be judged by their record. Is FDR Blvd. going to open this week? Next week? Next month? Will it have to be repaved before the new road opens? The transportation master plans bouncing around Leonardtown for the past forty years have planned this road to link the California area to Great Mills Road. The various Boards of Commissioners over that time span continued to miss the point that the road is needed for local traffic and to relieve traffic congestion on Rt. 235.
Politicians of both parties can be assigned blame for the transportation gridlock in Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary’s Counties. Hoyer has been in Congress for thirty-seven years, and amazingly, this tired old geezer wants another term and will probably get it. Voters deserve the politicians they elect to office. For thirty-seven years all other sections of Maryland on the Western Shore have had rail service – but not Southern Maryland – which has been represented by Hoyer. Hoyer sent buses to the area, but buses get stuck on roads just like other traffic.
The transportation gurus of the inept O’Malley Administration decided that a Metro extension was best to provide rail service to Southern Maryland and to send it down the middle of Branch Avenue at the cost of least $2 billion. Where is the money for that project?
Even though CSX tracks can be double-tracked and extend Maryland’s MARC service down to Newburg from Bowie, nothing has been done. The Democrat politicians (Martin O’Malley, Mac Middleton, Roy Dyson, John Bohanan, Sally Jameson and Steny Hoyer) who promised to bring that about in 2006 during the campaign were either lying or without the talent to bring it about. The result: all roads leading from Southern Maryland are clogged. No MARC trains run into Southern Maryland even though the railroad tracks are there and can be improved to accommodate the passenger trains.
More feckless politicians have allowed the old Navy railroad right-of-way from Hughesville to Pax River to be butchered, sliced, and diced. Light rail could be extended but only after the public finds more talented and bright elected officials than those currently in office.
The bridges: not having fallen into the Patuxent – yet – the Governor Thomas Johnson Bridge looms above the river as a monument to government stupidity. A patch job in 1988 to install steel bands around the top support pilings for the bridge are a visible fix. The unseen? According to some divers, large holes have been eaten through the concrete supports for the bridge by a fast current in the deep river channel. Should the Maryland Department of Transportation wish to assure the public the bridge is safe, they could video those support beams and post that video inspection on YouTube so all of us could rest easy when crossing the bridge.
With transportation being the single biggest problem for Southern Maryland and the single largest source of funding to solve the problem being the State of Maryland, how can voters expect a senator such as Sleazy Steve Waugh to be part of the solution when the Governor of his own party says he is a bum and to vote for his opponent?
It’s just crazy to expect that Waugh will be an effective advocate for the single-most serious challenge for the next person elected to the Maryland Senate from District 29. Waugh has been in office for just about four years, and the transportation gridlock has worsened, and he has not provided effective leadership in bringing about solutions.
Governor Larry Hogan says to vote for Jack Bailey and that Bailey is a leader the Governor can work with to address transportation issues. With all of the many Waugh foibles aside, and there are serious issues of sleazy campaigning, arrogance, failing to provide an office in the district open and available to the public while panders to big shots and special interests – Waugh has been another in a long line of political pipsqueaks.
Governor Hogan says to send him a bulldog to work with not a lapdog for Mike Miller like Waugh.
Vote for Jack Bailey for State Senate and put him to work solving transportation gridlock, replacing the failing Governor Thomas Johnson Bridge and retire the arrogant Steve Waugh.
