River News: Our View

At a Dec. 4 Oneida County Public Works Committee meeting, during which the county’s disastrous response to the season’s first major snowfall was discussed, supervisor Billy Fried uttered what may have been the most revealing sentence of the entire 45-minute deliberation.

“I’m still proud to have Alex as our guy,” Fried said, referring to Oneida County highway commissioner Alex Hegeman.

That remark, delivered after county highways sat snow-covered and icy through two of the busiest travel days of the year, told taxpayers almost everything they needed to know about why this fiasco happened, and why it is at serious risk of happening again.

What occurred over the Thanksgiving holiday was not a trifling inconvenience for last-minute holiday shoppers, or some routine workday oversight, like forgetting to return a phone call. It was certainly not a matter of subjective opinion. It was a factual failure of public works that quickly turned into a failure of public safety that has now morphed into a failure of political accountability. 

When elected officials respond to that kind of systemic breakdown by offering votes of confidence instead of consequences, the need for accountability does not disappear. It moves up the ladder.

And now it has landed squarely on the shoulders of public works supervisors themselves. 

To understand why, it helps to revisit what we all learned during that meeting because beneath the sincere language of concern and calm tones of “we’ve got your back and know you won’t let us down” were a series of admissions that should have set off alarms for anyone serious about governance.

The public learned that no county snowplow was operating on state Highway 70 for extended periods on Thursday, despite accumulating snow and heavy holiday traffic: “Hegeman said county snowplow drivers weren’t out Thursday, Nov. 27, ‘specifically on (State) Highway 70,’” as Brian Jopek reported.

Here’s a news flash for the highway department: Highway 70 is not a desolate highway with few motorists. It is a primary corridor into and out of the county. It carries locals and visitors to their destinations and loved ones. Leaving it unplowed for most of the day was not a judgment call. It was dereliction.

Incredibly, we learned that, even in the age of interagency reporting and remote camera technology and weather forecasting, the highway department assigns but one person to drive around the entire county — 172 miles of roadway — to assess conditions, even as supervisors acknowledged that snowfall totals vary widely by location and that conditions can deteriorate faster than any single employee can reasonably monitor. 

By the time one stretch of road is checked, conditions elsewhere likely have changed. Did the brain trust at the highway department not grasp this? If so, why the complete failure of duty? If not, why are they working for a Northwoods county highway department?

We learned that the highway commissioner himself was not on call and does not always carry his work phone. This surprised former chief deputy Dan Hess, now a supervisor, as it should. Hegeman’s staff may have his personal number, but that does not make for a professional emergency-response system. 

In any operation involving public safety, being “reachable” is not the same as being on call — at the ready at all times rather than relaxing — and any competent agency head should know that.

We learned that no spare trucks were available. Multiple mechanical issues — broken turbochargers, a transmission that would not shift — effectively sidelined the snowplowing first string. The problem was, there was no second-string to send in, and the highway department apparently didn’t see the need for one. 

What’s more, six replacement trucks ordered in 2022 had still not arrived, prompting county board chairman Scott Holewinski to openly question whether they would be outdated by the time they did.

We learned that the highway department operates on a four-day, 10-hour schedule, even during winter, and that shifting to a five-day schedule during snow season has only been discussed as a possibility. 

We learned that training for new drivers is acknowledged to be insufficient, with supervisors themselves suggesting that videos and written tests are no substitute for documented, hands-on experience alongside veteran plow drivers. That’s another head-scratcher that those in charge don’t know this.

We learned that there was no clear protocol for increasing coverage when the forecast proves wrong and snow continues to accumulate. Despite worsening conditions throughout the day, full deployment occurred only after “several complaints” from the public. 

How many complaints? Enough to act, but apparently not enough to justify consequences.

What makes this especially troubling is that supervisors themselves acknowledged this was not an extraordinary winter event. As Fried noted, the county had been “fortunate” to experience two light winters. Taken together, these admissions do not describe an isolated misadventure driven by a perfect storm of miscues. Rather, it was a perfectly normal seasonal storm driven by a perfect storm of incompetence.

And yet, after learning all of this, the committee’s response amounted to encouragement, discussion, and reassurance. Fried said it was important for Hegeman to “feel support” from the committee. 

We would have thought Fried would have instead said that it was important for Hegeman to feel heat from the committee. Instead, it was just a mantra of wink-wink and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The committee never ordered Hegeman to come up with any specific plans and report back by a date certain.

Oh sure, supervisors floated the idea of gaining access to Wisconsin DOT traffic cameras. They discussed installing county-owned cameras at “key spots.” They talked about improving communication with law enforcement, refining call lists, enhancing training documentation, and possibly adjusting schedules.

All of that may help, but none of it constitutes the true safeguard against failure: holding failure and those responsible for it accountable.

Residents have been told repeatedly that “this won’t happen again.” But nothing the committee did or said ensures that outcome. Without written protocols, enforceable deployment triggers, mandatory equipment back-up, clear on-call authority, and real consequences for failure, the county is once again relying on hope, goodwill, and favorable, accurate forecasts, otherwise known as the bureaucracy’s insurance policies.

The overtime excuse deserves particular condemnation. Fiscal responsibility does not mean delaying response during dangerous conditions. It means planning budgets and staffing so that safety never depends on such momentary decisions. Suggesting that holiday pay concerns influenced response decisions should alarm taxpayers, not reassure them.

Nor should residents take comfort in talk of “internal discussions” and “debriefings.” Those are bureaucratic placeholders that mean nothing will change. The public already understands what went wrong. The unresolved question is whether anyone in authority is willing to say that failures at this level carry consequences.

When a supervisor says he is “still proud” after hearing all of this, he is not merely expressing confidence in an individual. He is signaling institutional solidarity. He is telling the public that this level of failure is acceptable within the bureaucracy — that no matter how serious the lapse, the response will be sympathetic rather than remedial.

Or, to say it another way, God always blesses the gold-ol’-boys, and the good-ol’-boys always come through without a scratch. Later they go to administrative state heaven, otherwise known as big fat public sector pension plan. 

If supervisors will not hold department leadership accountable when public safety is marginalized, then accountability must come from the only place left: the ballot box. Elections exist precisely to correct improper institutional delegations of power, and when elected officials confuse support with oversight, they invite that correction.

Taxpayers are not asking for perfection. They are asking for competence. They are asking for roads that are safe to travel on during predictably unpredictable winter conditions. They are asking for leaders who understand that offering support and comfort to staff, while important, must always be secondary to representing their own constituents.

Being “our guy” is not the standard for performance evaluation. Doing their job is.

And if Oneida County’s supervisors cannot bring themselves to enforce that standard, voters should remember this episode the next time those supervisors ask for another term.

We just might opt for another set of “our guys.”