I'm glad I wasn't yet drinking my coffee this morning as I read our story about Danny Isaac and his views on the DOT commission. My dog wouldn't fancy the idea of dodging hot liquid spewed across the room.
“The commission is the people’s access,” said Danny Isaac, chair of the DOT commission and a Myrtle Beach resident. “The DOT was reformed in 2007 to eliminate the dominance of politics. We need to leave it out of politics and keep it in the hands of the people.”
This, you might remember, is the same chairman who has been fighting the idea of public comment periods at commission meetings because people might waste his time. And the same chairman who took his fellow commissioner to task for giving those people more information about the DOT's business. The idea that the commission is currently "in the hands of the people" is almost ludicrous.
As for taking away the people's access, why would eliminating a superfluous, politicized commission do that? Plenty of other state agencies function without a commission. Meetings at those agencies are still open to the public, their files are still available on request and residents still have a venue to have their voice heard. Why should the DOT be any different?
Sen. Larry Grooms summed up the weakness of the current system well when I talked to him earlier this month: "A commission system that is parochial in nature, no matter how good a job you do at screening candidates ... when it all boils down to it, everybody wants to make sure that the roads closest to home are the ones that get the most asphalt."
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