Howard Monroe And The Morning Show

When I think the debacle of the Wheeling Tunnel work canNOT get any more bizzare....it does.

Last week we learned that a tile company from Richmond was in the tunnel looking at doing some work. Then we learn the company has NO experience with tunnels, and frankly damn little experience in ANY major project.

Then the newly announced "re-do" of the tunnel work is called off at the last minute while "negotiations" continue.

And now....now the State Hiway Department says they are not calling the shots. Decisions on who is going to the work, and when, and--I gues--how is in the hands of an insurance company:

“The surety company is in the position to determine who they will use, and they are standing behind their work,” Walker said. “People are always asking how the state could be so irresponsible. How could the state allow them to bring the contractor back in? The state isn’t bringing the contractor in. We are working with the surety company, and that’s the decision they will make.”

So a project that has been screwed up for over a year, that has been so badly a failure that it was called off before it was done, that is a critical part of a highly travelled federal hiway is now being controlled by an insurance company. And that compan plans to bring back the same contractor that was doing the work when it was screwedup---a company Governor Manchin told me would "never" work in such projects for the State again.

This project continues to be an embarrassment and a disgrace.

And --with the notable exceptio of State Senator Andy McKenzie--no one at the State level is willing to demand answers.

Unbelievable.

WVLY Wild Side and Talk of the Town host Scott Shalaway is on his way to the Galapagos Islands with nearly 40 listeners on a Uniglobe sponsored trip. Check here throughout the week as Scott updates his trip.

Here's a quick but ecstatic note from Scott in the Galapagos (June 17):

Yesterday was magnificent.  maybe my best day in nature!!!! Unbeliebale, better than expected

 

Just back from snornkeling with sea lions today

 

gotta go

 

                                 Scott

 Day One: from Pittsburgh to Ecuador:

Got to our hotel very late Fri nite and had a big day today exploring Quito and surrounding areas.  Everyone got to straddle the equator and we ate lunch over looking an ancient volcanic crater.

Sunday morning we leave for the Galapagos and everyone is excited.   Should be on board our boat for lunch

Scott

Someone help me.

Seriously.

What in the world is going on with the Wheeling Tunnels?

We all know the original story---111 day project started Janary last year ended up having the plug pulled in November because it was a complete and total disaster. Now the company kicked out is back inside doing work again.

A company with extensive experience in working with tunnels underwater offers to do free testing to see if their systems will work to solve the water drainage problems that are seen as the primary cause of problem. These EXPERIENCED people are told "thanks, but no thanks".

Now a company who has NEVER WORKED ON A TUNNEL BEFORE is being considered for inside tile work. .

Or maybe not. From The Intelligencer:

Calls to Safeco Surety’s office in Indianapolis, Ind., were referred to its main office in Seattle, Wash. Workers there sent inquiries to communication specialists in Atlanta, Ga. — who referred questions to Velotta’s underwriter, Matthew Mairn in Cincinnati.

Mairn said he could not comment about whether Safeco Surety was seeking to bring in another subcontractor to do the tile work.

Does that sound the textbook definition of "getting the runaround"?

What is going on with the Wheelin Tunnels?

Seriously.

The balance of power at WVU has shifted dramatically.

With the forced resignation of Mike Garrison as President, the controlling power now seems to be with the media, dissident faculty, and other critics...rather than the people appointed under our State law to oversee the system.

Elsewhere on this blog I noted that politics is the application of pressure to achieve or maintain power. The critics have certainly proved today they know how to apply that pressure, and have achieved power..

The properly appointed Board of Governors selected a person they felt was the best for the job--as they defined the job. Since his appointment, Mike Garrison did absolutely nothing that was improper, incorrect, illegal, unethical, or contrary to what the BOG expected when he was appointed. The faculty ("employees") didn't like the choice and managed to get the decision reversed.

I heard a caller to Hoppy Kercheval's show suggest that she often had bosses she didn't feel were qualified...but the boss was the one selected to run the business. Most of us have gone though such an experience. It's the way the world works.

But not WVU.

The inmates now run the asylum.

Now it begins.

We finally actually can focus on the real race for the White House and put the petty bickering of the primary behind us. Obama and Clinton have spent months....and millions....pointing out the minor distinctions between each other.

At last we can look at the wide gap that divides McCain and Obama. The radical right and America's moderate middle class. The past and the future. The same and the change.

Obama remains a calm and confident voice in a frenzied political world. He offers a sense of focus and determined self-understanding. He offers a promise of doing politics in a different way....of governing in a new manner. And of keeping the oft-forgotten American middle class in the spotlight.

If McCain's speech tonight is a prelude to the campaign, we can begin to book our reservations for Inaugaration Day. I have rarely sensed less energy, less urgency, less vitality in any candidate than I have just seen in McCain----AND in his supporters.

A rambling and wandering speech over a variety of topics that seemed to have little sense of coherence.

There is a long slog to election day.It will no doubt twist and turn and take us in places we have no idea we will be going.

But tonight---it's good to be a Democrat in America.

It's good to be an American in a country ready to change.

Notes from the day

It is impossible for me to convey in writing how frustrated, irritated, and frankly tired I am of the anti-Manchin faction continuing to beat the drums for Mike Garrison's removal as WVU President.

I've written thoughts elsewhere on this site and talk about it every day so I won't rant much more here.

But I just want to vomit when I hear people ---such as those on a competing radio station owned by a lawyer with a personal grudge against the Governor--just spewing factually incorrect venom and treating their own subjective (and illogically formed) opinion as fact. All with an eye to doing damage to the Governor.

Then they have the gall to whine about the "damage done to the State's image".

And just to be fair, let me say that my friend and colleague on my own radio station, Hoppy Kercheval, is just as bad. I don't know what or whose axe Hoppy is grinding, but frankly he is efectively a tool for the anti-Manchin and anti-BOG forces. Whether he intends to be or not.
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Might be some movement on the Wild Escapes theme park this week. I think the Corps of Engineers may be ready to OK some permits.
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I want to see the Capitol Music Hall return to life. And I think the City and its partners such as WNHAC could do it under the auspices of a non-profit organization. But why do we need another out-of-town consultant report?

Pull together business people and entertainment experts here in town. Put them in a room and figure out what can be done and what it will cost. Randy Worls, Denny Magruder, folks from Oglebay Institute and the Symphony, folks who offer younger-skewing entertainment such as Jason Miller from River City Restaurant and Mike Duplaga from Generations Pub. They can give you a first hand, from the scene assessment of what works and what doesn't. Why a DC company?
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I suppose by definition you have to be desperate to solicit the services of a street hooker. But have you seen the pictures of the prostitutes arrested in Wheeling this week??? Yowzah!  Holy cow! How much booze or smoke do you have to have you in to want to be picking THOSE girls up?

I honestly thought the downtown hookers were long gone. I haven't seen any on the stroll for a long time. Guess I wasn't looking hard enough.
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Politics--at its base--is the application of pressure to maintain or change power.

It doesn't always happen in the public arena of government. Politics is practiced in business, social groups, heck it's even practiced by kids in the playground.

And politics is hard at work at WVU these days. At least 2 consistituencies are working hard to oust the president, Mike Garrison, and grow their own power. 

 Those groups are

• Republicans and other anti-Joe-Manchin folks who see this as a way to toss some smoke Manchin's way;
• Some of the faculty who did not like Garrison's appointment and see the Heather Bresch controversy as a way to get a "do-over". Faculty who don't like the idea of a president whose background and focus will be on fund raising, government relations, and not an old-line, long-time college prof.

They are using all of the traditional political pressure techniques: rallies, no confidence votes, and lots and lots of media exposure giving THEIR side an out-of-proportion sense of urgency.

But the Board of Governors this week cut the clutter and got to the heart of the matter: Mike Garrison (nor, I might add, the Governor) has been implicated in NO WAY in this scandal. Just because a vocal minority--with the aid and abbettment of some media figures like my friend Hoppy Kercheval--cries loudly it does not mean they get their way.