Holy smokes. Beverly Scott sounds like my internal conversation. This is good:
She says the weather was extreme, to an extent that no one expected.
She has had “no direct conversation with the Governor.” Well then.
She fiercely defends MBTA employees and their performance during the crisis.
She firmly puts the blame on outdated equipment and a lack of investment over a generation.
Listen to it.
Please share widely!
TheBestDefense says
won’t talk to her directly if he is planning on blaming her for the mess. And he certainly does not want to acknowledge that there is a long running financial problem going back to his mis-guided efforts while at A&F.
Peter Porcupine says
She is an employee of the MassDOT appointed board.
He HAS been talking to them.
TheBestDefense says
never has day to day, hour by hour oversight of its top employee. It never has the most recent info about the facts on the ground.
Patrick says
Does he also not talk with Walsh? or other local officials not under his direct control?
Charley on the MTA says
He’s the Governor. He doesn’t just talk to his own underlings. He can talk to anyone he wants. Talk about siloing.
Peter Porcupine says
That’s why MassDOT was created – to cut the Gov out of the loop.
It may rank up there as the dumbest thing Patrick did.
TheBestDefense says
create the board. It far pre-dates his tenure.
Peter Porcupine says
And the MBTA, the Pike and MHD, MAC, the Registry, and the other transportation agencies were all swept into its gaping maw.
This is a new and differently hellish Pike-like board, and he certainly did create and staff it.
TheBestDefense says
The MBTA Board of Directors maintains a separate legal existence from the MassDOT Board but the distinction is not especially important. I was speaking about the long history of the T Board, your were writing about the current odd duality of the two.
I am curious as to why you think it cuts the Guv out of the loop, and this is not a “gotcha” question.
petr says
…both the MBTA and the Pike were about to go broke in seriously explosive way. UBS was about to pull the trigger on some scabrously vicious swaps they had made with the Pike authority and the transition to ‘forward funding ‘ for the MBTA had been seriously mismanaged and, likewise, threatened chaos. The entire Commonwealth was on the hook for a balloon payment of several hundred millions of dollars in the case of the Pike and a spirally MBTA. Looks like we ended up just slowing the spiral of the MBTA, rather than halting it altogether.
There also isn’t the ‘silo’ here that you think. Partly because people here have referred to Beverly Scott as the “CEO”. By the law, The Transportation Secretary, Stephanie Pollack, is the CEO. Beverly Scott is the General Manager and she can be fired by Pollack. And if Gov Baker wanted Beverly Scott fired he could, theoretically, ask Stephanie Pollack to do it. If Pollack refused to do it, Baker could fire Pollack and get someone who would.
Peter Porcupine says
Who cannot be fired.
TheBestDefense says
That is why many states create these “quasi-independent” boards. It allows the Gov to publicly gnash his/her teeth while privately are happy they do not have to make tough decisions.
Peter Porcupine says
Let me give you an analogous situation.
A while ago, Mitt Romney was trying to get control of the Big Dig while Matt Amorello laughed up his sleeve at him. Mitt went to court to try to determine the extent of his authority. The SJC ruled that there was no compelling reason for the Governor to assert control over what had been deliberately created as an independent authority and in the “fullness of time” his own appointees would overtake the existing ones and he would gain ‘control’ in that way. Meanwhile, Amorello had an old Senate chum, Diane Wilkerson, place an amendment in the budget to extend the terms of the existing members so Mitt would NOT be able to gain control.
Then the tunnel collapsed and they couldn’t shove authority at him fast enough.
This is happening to Baker a little earlier on. Had he contacted her directly, he likely wouldn’t have been criticized for not understanding the lines of command. MassDOT wouldn’t have given him the time of day except that there is a massive snow emergency, so now he is responsible for lack of maintenance and years of featherbedding and money-hiding, like Aloisi salting away ARRA money with no explanation instead of spending it to create jobs as intended.
This was NOT an effort to give the governor cover, but an effort to prevent any governor from acting by the Political Class. I am at a loss to understand why Patrick went along with this.
Peter Porcupine says
Let me give you an analogous situation.
A while ago, Mitt Romney was trying to get control of the Big Dig while Matt Amorello laughed up his sleeve at him. Mitt went to court to try to determine the extent of his authority. The SJC ruled that there was no compelling reason for the Governor to assert control over what had been deliberately created as an independent authority and in the “fullness of time” his own appointees would overtake the existing ones and he would gain ‘control’ in that way. Meanwhile, Amorello had an old Senate chum, Diane Wilkerson, place an amendment in the budget to extend the terms of the existing members so Mitt would NOT be able to gain control.
Then the tunnel collapsed and they couldn’t shove authority at him fast enough.
This is happening to Baker a little earlier on. Had he contacted her directly, he likely wouldn’t have been criticized for not understanding the lines of command. MassDOT wouldn’t have given him the time of day except that there is a massive snow emergency, so now he is responsible for lack of maintenance and years of featherbedding and money-hiding, like Aloisi salting away ARRA money with no explanation instead of spending it to create jobs as intended.
This was NOT an effort to give the governor cover, but an effort to prevent any governor from acting by the Political Class. I am at a loss to understand why Patrick went along with this.
judy-meredith says
“@conoryunits: I respectfully ask @necn to just run this Bev Scott press conference on a loop for the rest of the day.” #yes!
nopolitician says
There was a study done in 2009 called Born Broke which explains how we got where we are today.
The MBTA is funded by cordoning off 1% of the state’s sales tax for its revenue (plus fares and things like advertising). This was done in 2000, in exchange for the MTBA adopting a “forward funding” plan adopted to get them to “live within their means”. At this time, $3 billion in debt was also assigned to the MBTA.
The state sales tax was flat from 2000 to 2010 (and likely from 2010 to 2015 too) – averaging 1% increase per year. The MBTA also underwent some expansions during this time – funded by taking on more debt.
When you are short-funded, the easiest thing to do is to defer maintenance. Bottom line is that the sales tax hasn’t provided enough of an annual increase to cover cost increases, and no one in the state wants to deal with the MBTA funding issues, so they have ignored this for 15 years. Right-wingers just scream “pensions! salaries!” and therefore the perception is that the MBTA is a patronage-laden haven which only exists to pay out high salaries in sweetheart deals.
lynne says
were pet projects of influential members of the legislature, as well. I’m not sure the MBTA had much of a say in whether or not to do those…or if they did have a say, if for practical political reasons they really didn’t.
TheBestDefense says
I am curious about your comment about pet projects. I know that legislators put pet projects into the GA budget for things like small road or park improvements to “slop the hogs” back home. Can you name any MBTA projects like that?
afertig says
But can we talk about how she said stuff like “my senior community” and “my disability community” and the way she humanized (pick axes!) the MBTA workers?
waldox says
In my view it’s representative of a real leader.
abs0628 says
Humanizing the riders and workers is so important. Also being a really fierce advocate — with heart and humor and self deprecation — for the transit system as it is and what it could be, how critical it is. I really liked how she kept saying this isn’t about me, it’s about my team (which she clearly sees as the workers and riders). And she was frankly pretty generous toward Baker.
Bev Scott for Governor! 😉
chris-rich says
“Class really shows when there’s no class.'”
The Legislature and Executive are likely to continue to be a no class mess for the foreseeable future.
thegreenmiles says
Just now: “The B Line … I believe that is the Riverside line.” If the media doesn’t care enough to ride the T, how can they help us understand what’s wrong with it?
chris-rich says
This should surprise no one.
The real function of local TV news is to give a kind of proxy sense of indifferent suburbia. They don’t care about the specifics of the green line because their audience data tells em it doesn’t care.
Trickle up says
who think that “noreaster” is a word.