Back on the roads Mike Masterson

More holes to fill

Those who mistakenly believed that turmoil in Washington County’s Road Department had been paved over with the commencement of necessary repairs and rebuilding of two faulty bridges hadn’t quite let that concrete dry.

George Braswell, the heavy-equipment operator who is suing County Judge Marilyn Edwards and other county higher-ups for allegedly taking retribution on him for whistle-blowing about those bridges (and supporting another candidate in the last election) has been sharing other safety concerns of late. A wisecracker might say there’s more potholes to fill.

He met briefly late last month with Edwards and road superintendent Donnie Coleman for a chat about the county and road department supervisors allegedly failing to follow laws related to traffic safety, permissions to dig or excavate, and wide-load notices.

In some instances, the transgressions he says he’s witnessed could have proven not only dangerous, but fatal, says a news account by reporter Dan Holtmeyer.

Braswell detailed those specific concerns in a letter to county officials two months ago.

Because Braswell has an ongoing civil suit against Edwards, Coleman and others in the county hierarchy, he and his attorney had previously declined to sit down with the judge and Coleman. But that changed when the judge said they were free to discuss Braswell’s concerns without violating legal rules.

So they spent about a half-hour talking about what Braswell knows. He said the judge seemed most interested in what he had to say, which had to be encouraging. It’s always encouraging, isn’t it, when one’s superiors choose to listen to those actually doing the work?

According to the news account, Braswell didn’t have specific dates and times of the incidents he’s witnessed regarding certain supervisors. And believe me as one whose spent 45 years in the news business, it’s always best in such circumstances to include factual details.

So the rub apparently came when Braswell couldn’t recite those kinds of specific details, which would have validated his claims of which supervisors were doing what at the job sites on the days in question. Do records show they were even at the scene those days? If so, what time? How many times did this occur?

“I would say several. I wasn’t prepared for your questions,” Braswell said in the meeting, according to the transcript.

Regardless, Edwards and her chief of staff George Butler said they checked out what Braswell shared as best they could and found he’d been correct when it came to the county not properly acquiring permits for excavation and wide loads, mainly because supervisors had been misinformed about their lawful responsibilities on job sites, Holtmeyer’s story added.

The chief of staff was quoted saying he’d interviewed all the supervisors (except one on vacation) Braswell named as letting the rules slide and “nobody corroborated everything he said.”

I’d be one surprised puppy if they had confirmed his complaints.

As things stood last week, Butler said the county’s done all it can do to resolve Braswell’s complaints. And I must assume Braswell has been burning the midnight oil compiling the who, what, when and wheres to satisfy the county’s remaining need for details.

In fact, the middle-aged, bespectacled heavy equipment operator left the meeting promising to pull those missing pieces together. From what I’ve seen of this determined man thus far, I fully suspect Braswell will do just that. He’ll likely need similar details for his court case as well.

George “no nonsense” Braswell strikes me as one of those blue-collar fellas who believes in fulfilling his responsibilities the correct way and expects others around him to do the same. So far in this ongoing saga, he’s been proven right on two of the three allegations.

Profiling 101

A reader asked the other day how I felt about profiling other human beings when it comes to crimes being committed.

I explained my views this way: If purple people are committing heinous crimes in numbers well above the average for their overall population in any society, that circumstance soon becomes an obvious fact. How can it not be?

We, as rational, logical human animals (supposedly blessed with the ability to reason critically) naturally then become increasingly aware of the actions of those who are purple, which means many among us naturally will become leery.

That certainly makes this unfortunate situation neither right nor the least fair, including for the majority of good and decent purple folks. Yet it happens, nonetheless, because of our awareness of terrible events, blended with innate concerns for self-protection and for our children and loved ones.

And to my knowledge, there’s nothing inherently stronger than any animal’s desire for self-protection and survival, especially ones who are acutely aware.