Editor’s Note: Views from Kansas is a regular feature that highlights editorials and other viewpoints from across the state.

Politicians too often make promises they can’t or won’t keep.

In Kansas, highway and infrastructure projects frequently make their way onto lists of campaign pledges.

Every region wants the best possible roads, always with an emphasis on safety and the ability to handle transportation tied to commerce and economic development. Rural communities in particular depend on good roadways for survival.

So, there’s a lot riding on roads — and with political campaigns in particular. With that in mind, it’s no wonder a politician’s promise of infrastructure improvements can be a difference-maker with voters on Election Day.

In 1986, Republican Mike Hayden’s promise to rebuild the state’s highways helped him win the governor’s race. The state followed through with a Comprehensive Highway Program that led Kansas to lofty rankings nationwide in road quality.

Fast forward to 2011, when ultraconservative Gov. Sam Brownback started the state on a backward path of destruction as he systematically undermined the Transportation Works for Kansas (T-Works) program approved in 2010.

Brownback placed steep income-tax cuts for the wealthy above infrastructure. Unprecedented highway fund sweeps exacted damage as dollars intended for maintenance and improvements were diverted to pay off debt.

Brownback only deflected that reality. In 2014, his campaign website promised he’d “continue implementation of T-Works and a renewed emphasis on private-public partnerships designed to create safe, efficient travel.”

Gov. Jeff Colyer is up to the same shenanigans. He’s talked of ending KDOT sweeps, even as Brownback’s budget proposal for 2019 — which Colyer helped craft — takes still more money from highways.

As lieutenant governor, Colyer worked alongside Brownback to gash funding for Kansas’ road and highway system. Yet on the campaign trail recently, Colyer crowed about plans to improve U.S. Highway 69 in southeast Kansas. Brownback, when he ran for re-election, did the same.

Expect more misleading promises throughout Kansas as Colyer works to gain an edge with voters in the Aug. 7 Republican primary.

Kansans shouldn’t be fooled. As for the governor, he’d better serve the state by acknowledging the mess he helped create and offering realistic solutions to fix damage to roads and other core services allowed to languish in recent years.

— Originally published in The Garden City Telegram.