At the end of the day, we must face the fact that the tunnel accident denuded our top state officials and, unless we keep the blinders on, forced us to see them as craven opportunists â when not out right insensitive buffoons.
In fact the only person not subject to severe criticism is Deval Patrick. I am a long time Patrick partisan and make no apology for it, but six weeks before this disaster, he called for an independent inspector general to oversee the cost overruns and safety issues. The only candidate to do so.
Chris Gabrieli, on the day of the accident, sensitively released his tax plan â little more than a two hundred dollar per household bribe, and a change in position, but flexibility should trump principle and compassion in any political race, right?
Tom Reilly showed his true colors. The perfect prosecutor. The chief law enforcement officer for eight years waits around for something to happen and then finds something to prosecute. He had no idea that these issues existed before tons of concrete and billions of dollars rained down on someoneâs head? Not his fault; not his problem â until there is political hay to be tossed. The fact is that at last he has a role he can understand – the only role he can understand. He was charged with some of the oversight and failed; he was charged with some of the financial recovery and didnât much bother. But give him something to prosecute â not to mention a chance to get in front of the cameras and blame it all on someone else and we have the man who would be king.
The most revealing was our Mit whom we actually got to see sweat for the first time since we have met him. The only positive thing in his craven performance was the strand of hair he allowed to fall to his forehead obviously having misplaced the hairspray. Having hurried down from, and now back up to his vacation home in New Hampshire (Bush and Catrina anyone?) he could only whine that this was not his fault and that bucks all stop two doors down from his office. Amorello, Amorello, Amorello. My God, one would think that the chief executive of the Commonwealth would at least have admitted that this happened on his watch, and that his party occupied the corner office for every moment of the construction of this project.
But not our Mit. According to him the tunnels are unsafe. Not that he would know. You can bet he will be in no danger when the sky is falling; wouldnât want to muss up the suit. Especially when he can get in a hundred cheap shots against Amorello.
It is not easy, even for a cynic like me to admit that the leaders of the Commonwealth are now scrambling to make either political hay or to seek safety by blaming someone else when a woman died tragically. Frankly, I think it a disgusting and unforgivable display.
Here’s a link to the press release that jethom19 mentions that spells out Deval Patrick’s call for a Special Inspector General.
<
p>
Starts out good:
Patrick said when he is elected Governor he will appoint an independent SIG to give him and the public a higher level of comfort that both safety and oversight issues are being pursued with complete independence and rigor. (emphasis mine)
<
p>
Ends up very good:
“Our elected officials have had this level of authority but have consistently failed to act,” Patrick said. âThe project and the public deserve better. Too many people have worked too hard for too long to have the project mired in scandal as it comes to a close. We need to remove the politics and the potential conflicts of interest from this project and make sure that it is overseen by independent professionals who have the interests of the taxpayers as their only concern.â
<
p>
That’s my Governor.
<
p>
and Deval Patrick’s proposal was not remotely related to the fact that his gubernatorial opponent is charged with the cost recovery. . .There were no politics at all in his proposal. . .Nor his citicism of the amount that Tom Reilly is seeking . . .Even though Deval Patrick has zero familiarity with the facts of the cost recovery case. . .Nope. . .Politics never enters his mind.
<
p>
Surprisingly, it is your candidate and your candidate only who is “not subject to extreme criticism.” Since Deval Patrick has no role whatsoever in the Big Dig, the best political position is to support an independent investigation because it suggests that all of the current investigations – including Reilly’s – are inadequate. At least acknowledge the political dimensions of his position when assessing the political dimensions of this issue.
you seem far too bussy with political calculation and far less with right and wrong. Your candidate did nothing for the eight years he could have. Your only complaint against Patrick was that he wasn’t there to prove a negative.
…is to not be in the state when things start happening. Maybe we should look for a candidate who moved to Massacusetts three months ago — his hands are totally clean.
<
p>
I prefer candidates with deep roots and knowledge of the state they want to manage. But hey, that’s just me.
Patrick has lived in Milton for over 15 years. I think that’s enough time to have “knowledge of the state you want to manage”. Sorry, he’s not a career Massachusetts politician, so he can’t take the credit or blame for the past history of Big Dig governance.
<
p>
Patrick’s call for an independent investigation is along the same lines as our Congressional delegation, who asked the independent NTSB to inspect the safety of the tunnels. Frankly, the request to involve the NTSB was the sanest and least overtly political action taken by our public officials in the aftermath of the accident. The only difference is that Patrick called for independent leadership two months ago.
Not to detract from your post, which is excellent, and it may have been a typo on your part, but Deval came to Milton at the age of 14, and he’s about to celebrate his 50th birthday…
but I’ll mention it again –
when sanity is applied, the blame for the tunnel death will fall on the contractors.
Politicians can’t look at a design and say whether it’s safe or not. Contractors can, and are responsible for doing so.
Everything else (Mitt fingers Amorello, BMG blames Mitt, the legislature is silenced, etc) is empty talk.
How can you pre-judge where the blame must lie?
<
p>
Why not take up Deval Patrick’s call for an independent investigation to determine, in a disinterested way, exactly what went wrong, and (more importantly) how we can insure that the project is safe for future traffic?
Primary responsibility falls on the folks who built it … period.
<
p>
If you bought a house, and it looked really nice, and your agent recommended it to you; then you moved in and a wall fell down … you be tempted to blame your agent, but it wouldn’t be their fault (unless the contractor had a history of building bad houses which the agent had overlooked – which I don’t think is the case here)
<
p>
No comment on D.P., let’s not get gubernatorial politics mixed into things.
Just let me make a point so that you will re-consider the various areas of responsibility.
<
p>
Let’s take a suspension bridge instead of a house. The builders, don’t design the bridge, they just build it to meet design specifications. Sure they can make recommendations on improving things, but if the builders build it to design specifications and the bridge turns out to be designed incorrectly and falls down, it would be the designers fault and not the builder.
<
p>
Of course you could find fault in all three areas, poor design, poor construction and poor inspection.
…none of which Amorello does (and almost all of which, at least the first 2 and as I understand much of the third, parsons-brinkerhoff does)
Those of us who are not doctors (and even some who are) should always try to get a second opinion from a disinterested specialist before undergoing major (non-emergency) surgery or other high-risk treatments. Politicians who were in charge of this project had a duty to get second and third opinions as to the safety and viability of the design. If you need expert advice, you hire an outside engineering expert. The problem is that it seems everyone associated with this project was more worried about not rocking the boat than making sure that it was done right.
as I said here. And it is not that powerful a tool; far better to have a good contractor (or a good doctor).
I heard on NPR today that contractors around the country were looking to the Big Dig to learn what went wrong, and that new standards on the anchors used to mount the ceiling tiles might be issued. If existing standards were followed, and are subsequently revised, that could conceivably remove some of the blame from the contractors.
<
p>
I’m not saying that’s the situation, I’m just saying, keep your ears peeled.
Two quotes:
<
p>
<
p>
<
p>
I guess you aren’t counting Deval as a leader, and you’re faulting Gabrieli for not checking the traffic report when releasing a major platform.
<
p>
I won’t even go into your comments about Reilly and Mit(whoever that is).
within, or connected to, existing structures is different from new construction. In this case, the comparison is not a new house nor a new bridge, but with the foundations for each, especially if they are placed on land which is not ‘undisturbed’ (the word we use when adding a wing on a house).
<
p>
Much of the Big Dig is on land which was once under water, or was filled for various reasons over the past 350 years, seriously ‘disturbed’.
<
p>
I know that the issue is falling ceiling tiles. From what I have been reading, this is a suspension system failure, not a failure of how the tunnel itself is made.
<
p>
Still, work on existing structures requires close coordination between the contractors and designers (architects and engineers,) as well as trust in those people by the owner. There will always be unknowns that must be solved on site as they come up. I tell clients at our first meeting to budget at least 20% for overuns – what we can’t see that must be fixed, what they forgot they needed. And to hire the contractor they trust, not the cheapest.
<
p>
The Commonwealth and the Federal governments do not believe this. (And I admit I don’t know how to define ‘trust’ in this situation.) They set themselves up for this kind of disaster. They certainly don’t understand cost overruns.
<
p>
I expect the failure came about from poor coordination and communication (and maybe, work ethic) between all the participants.
<
p>
And as I review this note, it seems to me new construction probably has the same issues.
I agree with virtually everything you say.
<
p>
It is ironic that the issue of “trust” comes forward in your discussion. Ironic because in order to protect the public “trust”, the legislature developed MGL Chapter 30B, the state public procurement law. Many times (but not always) this law is interpreted to mean that the “lowest” bidder must be accepted by the government.
<
p>
It is actually the lowest “qualified” bidder. (In other words someone can be lower, but if they are not qualified, they are out.) The problem is that in order to protect the public purse, the “lowest qualified” bidder and the “most qualified” bidder might be two different parties.
<
p>
The challenge then is to set the minimum qualifications such that only qualified bidders can succeed. Then there is an additional issue. That becomes one of steering a contract to only one bidder by making the qualifications so specific that in advance only one bidder meets them. For example the Iraq War and Haliburton being declared the sole qualified contractor, based on experience and size. There is your “no-bid” contract, with it’s “waste”.
<
p>
The bottom line: State Government can’t easily pick the contractor they “trust” the most for two reasons.
<
p>
First, quality costs money, and therefore the best rarely has the lowest “initial” cost (i.e. bid). Of course the long term cost of cheap construction costs the state far more money that hiring a quality trusted contractor to begin with.
<
p>
Second, the state would literally have to pick the contractor before the bid, design the bid specifications so that the advantage went to the “trusted” bidder and therein is the conflict with MGL 30B, you’ve now steered the contract to a preferred bidder, a violation of the law. This is know as favoritism, and it is fine in the private sector (along with nepotism) BUT in the public sector, against state ethics and public procurement laws.
<
p>
In one sense it is the classic public policy trade off between “efficiency” and “security” (safety). From the public’s perspective the most efficient project is the cheapest cost, the lowest bidder. That means cutting corners to save money. Start cutting corners and you reduce security. Is the public willing to pay more for security? I’d say at the airport yes. In public buildings (courts) for instance yes. Judges homes? Yes, they just funded that yesterday. But on our roads and highways? The benifit isn’t so apparent, and therefore more difficult to justify.