Martin Blows It!

Well, as it turns out it didn't take new Illinois Secretary of Transportation Tim Martin very long to blow his first shot at maintaining safe roads in bad weather Wednesday.

After a short, freak snow storm blanketed Chicago expressways with 1 inch of fluff Tuesday night -- after days of zero-degree weather -- by the wee hours of Wednesday morning Interstate-290, the Eisenhower Expy., was one big sheet of black ice so treacherous a person couldn't even walk on it, much less drive a vehicle over it without crashing or spinning off into a ditch..

Earlier Tuesday night Martin had 17 salt trucks manning the roads, including the Eisenhower, but sent seven crews home for the Lincoln holiday by 10 p.m. Tuesday to avoid paying holiday overtime pay to the drivers.

Within hours Illinois State Police shut down 14 miles (7 in each direction) of the Ike because roadway icing had caused 50 vehicular accidents, some of them life-threatening.

Martin, who Ed. thinks built nothing but junk substandard buildings as the former Chief of Operations of the Chicago Board of Education, seems to have taken his level of incompetence with him to his new state office. Unfortunately, Martin -- who's been in the new job less than a month -- now holds the lives of millions of motorists in his slippery hands.

Ed. simply cannot believe that this idiot is now in charge of thousands of miles of state and federal roads in the Land of Lincoln, much less a multi-billion dollar budget. New Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, also known as Gov. BJ, ought to have his feet held over the fire for hiring Martin, who is nothing but an incompetent hack. If the new governor had any sense, he'd can Martin before someone dies because of his many shortcomings ... and he'd rehire the venerable former state transportation chief, Kirk Brown.