Editorial: PennDOT sign cleanup shows slow response time
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As the song goes: signs, signs, everywhere signs.
Except in Gilpin.
In Gilpin, signs were disappearing. Signs advertising restaurants. Signs advertising businesses. Signs on little metal legs, stuck into the ground near major roads.
It was suspicious.
These kinds of signs being removed isn’t unusual. It is just more typical during a contentious election season. Months before the municipal primary, well, that’s not prime time for political pranks even if these were candidates’ signs.
So what was up?
The answer was that it wasn’t theft at all. It was exactly the opposite. Someone was deciding to enforce the law.
Video surveillance turned in to Gilpin officials showed the “culprit” was a PennDOT employee doing his job. The agency confirmed it was enforcing its right-of-way rules. No signs are allowed in those broad swaths of ground next to state roads or attached to the poles or guide rails.
A news release from PennDOT does not acknowledge the relationship to a Westmoreland County court case, but it does come in the wake of former Franklin Regional school board member Gary English being acquitted in January for doing the same thing. He removed signs in 2021 and attempted to deliver them to PennDOT. His defense was that he was just doing what PennDOT should have been doing all along.
Does PennDOT need to give English credit? Not at all. However, making it public that the requirement was finally being enforced might have relieved a little stress in Gilpin.
Maybe the state didn’t want to acknowledge that this was something that should have been happening already. A statement would have put a spotlight on that, which might have been awkward.
The agency points to a different reason.
“A few years ago, (federal inspectors) went throughout parts of Pennsylvania and found some right-of-ways riddled with signs. We were told to do better,” said PennDOT District 10 spokeswoman Christina Gibbs.
It took “a few years” to follow up on a recommendation from the federal government that went along with policy PennDOT already had? A recommendation that only required pulling signs on wire legs out of the ground?
That explains a lot about upkeep on state roads and bridges.