CDOT is learning that no good deed goes unpunished.

For nearly 30 years it has had a practice during snowstorms of not plowing state highways that had light traffic during the overnight shift. Those highways were plowed 14 hours out of the day during storms, from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., if they served fewer than 1,000 vehicles a day.

This has been CDOT policy since at least the 1980s. What happened was that in December last year, in an effort to be helpful to the travelling public, it decided to start posting signs on those stretches of roads alerting drivers to the plowing hours.

This apparently caused many folks to mistakenly think this was a brand new policy, another cutback by Gov. Bill Ritter and an ill-advised safety problem, when in fact rural drivers have been living with this practice for as long as anyone can remember.

As usual, there is more nuance here and less controversy than the sound bites would have you believe.