Sure, Blago is a really bad governor and deserves most of the scorn heaped on him in other matters, but this still falls into the “shit happens” category for me. I see no malfeasance on the governor’s part. He didn’t reject requests for the electrical system to be replaced and I don’t think anyone knew there was a problem. I particularly think it idiotic to think the governor “let” this happen because he has it in for Springfield. The governor may be somewhat indifferent to our city at times but I really don’t believe he's out to get us.
Perhaps there should have been a tickle date set up 25 or 30 years ago to begin the process of replacing the aging wiring toward the end of its life expectancy, but I don’t remember hearing any warning that this was going to happen. Maybe a whistleblower will step forward with evidence that the administration was warned of the impending doom at the fairgrounds, but until that happens I think we are just going to have to admit that sometimes bad things happen.
Perhaps Springfield can learn from this and start making noises to the State in another 25 years that it might be time to replace the wiring again if the State isn’t already doing something about it.
If there is a bright spot to all of this, it might be that it’s a good thing this didn’t happen right before or during the State Fair.
3 comments:
Tickle date? Sometimes bad things happen? This is no doubt poor management of government resources at the very least.
As to whether it was all Blago's admin to blame, well there needs to be an investigation into this mess to find out just who knew what, and when.
I've grown increasingly frustrated with Blago, and yearn for an upcoming date to vote.
Sure, we DO need an investigation, but until such an investigation comes to some conclusions, I don’t think we have enough information to point fingers. When my water heater goes out, or the moles eat my buried cable wire (which really happened), my culpability is somewhat limited. It’s easy to just blame Blagojevich because he’s the worst-governor-ever but that may give cover to the real problem, solving nothing.
Let me be clear that I'm not attempting to defend the good governor. I just am not going to jump to easy and convenient conclusions.
$3 Million to replace 22-miles of cable??? Do you think that if City Water , Light & Profit owned the lines or Ameren owned the lines instead of the State having to own them, either of the utilities would replace ALL of the lines because some faults were found. That's like, we have a problem at First and Ash, so let's re-wire the Southwest side of Springfield. I have not yet read or heard a story that a "fault" or faults were found, they'll just replace it all and put off other maintenance (like the hole in the roof of the theater in the Illinois Building), etc. Maybe if the fairgrounds electrical crew had had a high voltage electrician on it in any of the last SIX years, some of these problems could have been discovered before they became catastrophic. Guess we'll never know.
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