If you live in rural Texas, it will come as no surprise that county roads across the state are failing. You feel it every time you dodge a pothole, ease past slow-moving farm equipment, or watch a school bus crawl down a road that hasn’t seen real maintenance in years.

Transportation may not sound exciting, but the condition of our county roads is a conversation rural Texans should be paying close attention to. These roads carry our kids to school, ranchers to their land, ambulances to emergencies, fire trucks to grass fires, and workers to the jobs that power much of the Texas economy. Yet county roads remain one of the most underfunded parts of our public infrastructure system.

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Suzanne Bellsnyder is editor and publisher of the Hansford County Reporter-Statesman and Sherman County Gazette. A former Capitol staffer with decades of experience in Texas politics and policy, she now focuses on how state decisions shape rural life through her newspapers and the Texas Rural Reporter.