DES MOINES – A recent announcement from an Iowa Department of Transportation official that Iowa will spend about six figures to design a new logo for the agency is coming under fire Monday.
Iowa DOT Director Paul Trombino said last week that the state will spend about $100,000 to design a new logo. This announcement comes even as the Iowa Dot and its roughly 3,000 employees struggle to maintain the state’s 114,000 miles of roadways.
On Monday, Senator Tod Bowman of Maquoketa, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, blasted the notion of spending state dollars on a new DOT logo.
“By wasting more than $100,000 on a new Department of Transportation logo, the Branstad Administration is damaging the bipartisan effort to responsibly repair Iowa’s roads and bridges,” Bowman said. “Our state’s transportation budget falls short of what is needed by almost a quarter of a billion dollars each year. We are already closing bridges and roads that are unsafe to use.”
A 2011 road use tax fund study suggested that a minimum of $215 million of revenue per year should be generated to meet Iowa’s critical roadway needs.
Bowman said “a fancy new logo” does nothing to repair potholes or reopen bridges that are “unsafe to use.”
The new logo for the Transportation Department proclaims that the agency is “Smarter, Simpler, Customer Driven.”
