Wisconsin DOT has warned that state budget woes may require curtailing winter maintenance service to the state's seven populous southeastern counties. Facing a $6.5 billion deficit, CBS-TV affiliate Channel 58 in Milwaukee reported that WisDOT Secretary Frank Busalacchi forecasts one-third of Milwaukee County snowfighters will be laid off and essentially what this means is up to one-third of county highway workers will be laid off which means that everytime a plow or icing agent is needed on the highways, it will take twice as long to remove it." Local officials wrote Busalacchi calling the threat "not only irresponsible but also dangerous."

The Salt Institute weighed in, commenting:

How short-sighted would be budget cuts for snowfighting. World-class research at Marquette University documents an 88.3% reduction in injury crashes in the four hours after salt is applied -- so if it's delayed, people, predictably, will be injured and die. Research shows that inadequate snowfighting would cost Wisconsin workers $85 million every day, depress retail sales by $39 million a day and this slackened economic activity would shrink tax revenues by $11 million a day. That's not a "budget cut," that's classic "penny wise, pound foolish" mismanagement. Rapid and professional winter maintenance has earned Wisconsin valued economic development -- and jobs -- and kept Badger State citizens safe on winter roads. "Irresponsible" and "dangerous" indeed would be any reduction in snowfighting services.

WisDOT has already cut summer maintenance, the station reported. I was in Vancouver, BC last weekend for the annual meeting of the Transportation Association of Canada and there learned that budget-induced summer maintenance (don't mow the grass or maintain the right-of-way) has led to other dangers for drivers. One maintenance engineer pointed out that failure to do routine summer maintenance has led to trees invading the right of way, themselves a threat to run-off-the-road accidents that already represent about half of all highway crash fatalities. In addition, trees and shrubs close to the road provide cover for animals who dart out onto the roadway imperiling their own lives and in the case of deer -- or moose in Canada -- the lives of travelers.

Surely we can find more effective budget cuts somewhere. Applying salt pays for itself in the first half-hour after it's applied -- considering only the safety benefits. For more see our website .