Today’s Herald delivers a body blow to Mitt Romney’s time- and money-consuming (yet apparently largely ineffectual) presidential campaign. Remember when Romney was all, “gosh, I sure wish there was something a hands-on guy like me could have done about the Big Dig, but the mean ol’ Turnpike Authority got all the power way before I took office, and try as I might, I couldn’t get any of it back”?
Turns out, not so much.
Gov. Mitt Romney, while angrily decrying Big Dig mismanagement, long ago washed his hands of the projects oversight, despite a federal agreement that gave his administration the power to annually ensure the tunnels were properly maintained, documents show. Federal records obtained by the Herald show that Big Dig bosses, working in coordination with Romneys MassHighway Department, have been required yearly to verify proper maintenance of the Interstate 90 Seaport connector where a collapse killed a woman….
Direct oversight over the project was transferred from MassHighway to the Turnpike Authority in 1997, although legislation authorizing the move required MassHighway officials to certify the safety of Big Dig tunnels before they were opened to the public, documents show.
However, instead of using that oversight power, MassHighway, under former acting Gov. Jane M. Swift and later Romney, relinquished oversight to the Pikes Big Dig project director, Michael Lewis, who signed off for MassHighway on the 2003 opening of the I-90 Seaport connector that later collapsed.
Looks like the Mittster really did try to “stay as far away from that tar baby” as he could. Proving once again, if further proof was needed, that Ben has been right all along: Romney is a Fraud.
