Not only was Charles Sheedy a 30-year employee of the state Division of Highways in Marshall County, but he and his wife also live in the Cameron area.
Those two facts automatically qualify the Republican House of Delegates candidate to offer his comments on the cause and effect when it comes to roadway conditions not only near his home but also throughout the Mountain State. Not only was Sheedy in the literal trenches during his career, but he also managed Marshall County’s DOH headquarters and three sub-stations.
Now that he is running to represent his neighbors in the 7th House District, Sheedy’s work experience is speaking loudly and clearly to those exhausted with deplorable road conditions.
“’Ugly’ and ‘dangerous’ are two words I hear a lot when I’m talking with people in my district about our roads, and that should never be the case,” he insisted. “Taxpayers should never feel at risk when they are traveling roads they pay to have in good shape. A really bad pothole or slip should be a rare thing, but that’s not the case in Marshall County and not the case around the state.
“I don’t believe it needs to be that way because the money is there and will be in the future,” the Republican said. “It’s about priorities, and if a school bus full of children isn’t a priority, then something is very wrong with the people making the decisions.”
Roadway maintenance and repair in the Mountain State mostly is funded by the 36 cents per gallon state tax and 18 cents chipped in by the federal government. A few months ago, Gov. Jim Justice was urged by Democrat lawmakers to suspend the state tax after the price at the pump skyrocketed, but the proposal was denied.
“That would have set us back even further if the governor would have listened to that idea. Thank goodness he didn’t,” Sheedy said. “I just think we need to make sense of it and do what’s right for the residents of our state.”
Ongoing Corrections
The Governor’s Office announced this week state revenues exceeded projections by $193 million. Justice reported the year-to-date surplus now sits at $427 million and currently is 28 percent ahead of 2021 collections.
So, what could those “extra” dollars mean for the state of West Virginia roadways? The answer just might surprise you.
“The first thing we need to do is get the wages corrected for our DOH employees. I feel we need to do that for all of our state employees, but when it comes to our roadways, the DOH needs to be able to compete for employees in all areas of the state,” Sheedy explained. “We have a lot of positions that are available in District 6 that they can’t fill because the state is not paying enough to attract people who want to do the jobs.
“It’s gotten worse because the benefits that were promised to them have been eroded over the years, so now the lower wages aren’t worth it,” he said. “There are a lot of state employees wondering why they should stick around especially now that there are other jobs in the area. If we don’t fix this, our roads are going to get even worse.”
Higher wages. Check! And?
“Another part of this equation that we need to address on the state level is how we are purchasing what our state departments need throughout the state because we’re not purchasing in ways to make what we need cheaper and more affordable. Instead, we’re just buying one thing at a time when we already know we’re going to need things like brakes for our trucks,” Sheedy said. “We either buy in bulk as a state, or we find ways to buy locally at legitimate prices.
“That way we can use local merchants more often than the state does now, and I think that would benefit everyone if we look at ways to do it across the board,” he continued. “And we also need to correct what (Joe) Manchin did when he was governor. He sold off a lot of equipment our DOH people have needed and we’ve never replaced those things.”
Take a Number
Sell and centralize. That was one of Joe Manchin’s answers to balancing the Mountain State’s budget in the middle of the housing crisis that began in late 2008 and continued to haunt the American economy for more than five years.
Foreclosures and frozen wages became part of the country’s economic reality and development stopped on the proverbial dime. Even at The Highlands in Ohio County, future construction for the brick-and-mortar retail industry was either halted or canceled.
Meanwhile, most states recorded budget deficits, but Manchin, who served as West Virginia’s governor from 2005-2010 before he became a member of the U.S. Senate, professed to balance the books and one action he enacted along the way was selling off most of the heavy equipment that was utilized by the state’s 10 DOH districts, according to Sheedy.
“He didn’t seem to care what he was selling or for how much he was selling for back then. He had brand new equipment sold and they were selling this stuff for pennies on the dollar. I was there. I saw it happen,” Sheedy recalled. “The Division of Highways has never been able to recoup those losses since and it’s one of the biggest reasons why we’re still struggling today.
“He told people he was trying to centralize the state’s big equipment. He said we had too many of this and too many of that, and that just wasn’t true at the time. He said the state instead would contract every job out and that Highways wasn’t going to be needed anymore,” he remembered. “It didn’t work, our roads are horrible, and Manchin walked away from it for Washington. There is so much work that hasn’t been performed, it’s incredible.”
Sheedy is a fiscal conservative who checks all the boxes necessary to identify as a genuine Republican, and that is why he’s confident that, if elected, he will be able to work with legislative leadership the mistakes of the past can be corrected and forgotten.
“What Manchin did back then may have sounded good but what it really did was hurt the people throughout the whole state because when you compromise the DOH, you’re compromising our infrastructure and no one needs that to happen ever; not when we have the weather we have here in West Virginia,” Sheedy insisted. “We can change how we go about those things but it’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to happen overnight. We have to figure out how to do things differently and that’s going to take a lot of conversations with our county folks.
“We have to create a new system that actually works this time because that’s not been the case for far too long,” he said. “I know our roads in Marshall County are horrible and I know a lot of people are concerned, and that’s why I plan to work on fixing this issue if the voters send me to Charleston.”
