Capitol News

Sen. Roger Victory (R-Hudsonville) was a guest on 103.5 WAWL The Morning Rant with Eric Kaelin on June 11.

In regards to being a state senator, Victory said that when issues like power outages occur, it is his job to hold utility companies accountable for their responsibilities to residents.  

“When we don’t keep up with the proper infrastructure and proper infrastructure investment, when a storm hits, that can be devastating,” Victory told WAWL. “So such things as tree maintenance and those types of things are very critical, and just making sure that communications of when we do have power outages to stay away from downed lines because we don’t want a loss of life.”

Victory said that currently the Legislature is working on the issue of unemployment due to COVID-19 and mandatory business closures. 

“The system has been overwhelmed, and just recently 340,000 people have been locked out of the system,” Victory told Kaelin. “That means that for a single mother who is trying to put food on the table and pay rent, they are not receiving their payments and are receiving minimal communication.”

Victory’s office has helped to handle 700 cases but said that the responsibility ultimately rests with the governor’s office. 

He talked about the recent riots, and how afterwards, the entire city banded together to clean up. 

“Thousands and thousands of others from all ends of the spectrum were working together, cleaning up the community, and within hours what a difference it made,” Victory told the radio host. 

Victory said recent failures of dam structures throughout the state have caught his attention and that he is looking into structures within Ottawa County that might be in need of repairs. 

“I really do appreciate the work of our water resource manager in Ottawa County. I work closely with him, and he wants to be ahead of the problem and not behind the problem,” Victory explained on WAWL. 

Victory said that he is concerned about the severely unbalanced budget, but he will be digging into the topic soon as he tries to reconcile discrepancies with financial needs of the state.