Pennsylvania residents who watched as the just-concluded 2025-26 state budget-preparation debacle played out might be thinking that the Legislature surely might now be able to find an issue that it can handle more quickly and more efficiently.

But, in fact, will it?

There’s an issue “out there” involving road salt, but state lawmakers have found a way to make it more difficult than it ought to be.

Some state lawmakers — and presumably some non-elected officials — believe that road salt’s use ought to be curbed in order to reduce environmental damage stemming from runoff.

It’s a legitimate point for consideration and action. However, the process and means for that consideration need not be a long, laborious, complicated exercise like the one that has begun shaping up in Harrisburg.

Pennsylvania no doubt has transportation and environmental officials capable of recommending to the General Assembly whether the state should or should not proceed with curbing road salt use.

With that in mind, lawmakers should be satisfied merely to vote “yes” or “no” on the issue, based on the professional judgment and advice put forth by the experts assigned the task of developing a formal recommendation about what should be done.

It is the Legislature that would decide whether or not to fund what is recommended, but it seems foolhardy for lawmakers to want to be involved every step of the way toward reaching conclusions — with so many other issues demanding their attention.

It is safe to assume that few, if any, elected members of the state House or Senate are experts in the science of road salt and its application on streets and highways and, as a result, might in fact be a detriment to what the real experts are attempting to accomplish efficiently and effectively.

The experts in question are better equipped at determining the actual procedure for implementing any salt cutback that might be recommended — and whether it be done regionally or statewide. Then there also would be the possible option of choosing years of testing the idea rather than mandating it from the start on a permanent basis.

Why muddle a process with politics and individuals — politicians — without the scientific qualifications for making the kind of decisions that will be necessary on this issue. Why muddle an issue with legislative proposals and possibly costly hearings when the proposal could be decided just in the course of Transportation Department general business based on scientific evidence.

Leave politics out of the decision-making when politics isn’t necessary.

This is an issue about saving lives, avoiding injury and avoiding damage and accomplishing that expeditiously, whether by adopting something new or rejecting something new.

House Bill 664 directs the state Transportation Department to prepare a road salt management best practices guide to outline the best ways to apply road salt on highways to reduce skidding by cars on icy roads. It is hard to fathom that that might not already be happening in that way.

Probably the best point about the guide, if eventually required, would be to set standards for identifying areas vulnerable to pollution from road salt runoff. But it is hard to fathom that such knowledge is not already in play by PennDOT and even in many municipalities.

It would be interesting to learn this legislative exercise’s total cost to the state’s taxpayers, but that number might be elusive — and embarrassing.