Item: Newly-named Secretary of Transportation Jim Aloisi is unfamiliar with the Big Dig culture.
When asked yesterday whether he was a part of the Big Dig culture, Aloisi said: “I don’t even know what that phrase means.”
Fortunately, BMG is here to help. (After all, it’s our phrase!) Here’s what our own Charley, the inventor of the phrase, thinks it means:
the Big Dig culture of Beacon Hill — which has been a bipartisan failure, over a long period of time — gives taxpayers a strong suspicion that their money is being flushed down the toilet.
And here’s what Deval Patrick, who made the phrase famous (and who is also Aloisi’s new boss), thinks it means:
The state must also confront the “Big Dig culture” on Beacon Hill — which is one of neglect and inaction, where politics is more important than governing — because that culture created the conditions for last week’s calamity…. The Big Dig culture of Beacon Hill allowed corners to be cut and oversight to be lax. The culture is a failure to take the role of government seriously.
So it seems that the “Big Dig culture” consists of the following elements:
- A culture of neglect and inaction
- in which politics trumps governing
- and which fails to take governance seriously,
- such that corner-cutting and lax oversight run rampant
- leading taxpayers to think that their money is being flushed down the toilet.
Got it? Great. Now, of course, that’s all theoretical. Maybe a concrete example would help. Such as … hmm, let me think … oh, I know! Remember when Big Dig officials learned from their outside counsel of a $1.35 billion cost overrun in late 1999, but decided not to disclose it because they thought the political fallout would be too severe, which resulted in inaccurate bond disclosure documents? The ones that ended up part of an SEC investigation? All of which led the MA Inspector General (pdf, see “Finding 4,” pp. 47-48) to describe the episode as “an example of bureaucratic arrogance,” continuing:
Big Dig officials sought self-preservation at the expense of the public interest. These officials created policy options not for the purpose of achieving a public good, saving the taxpayers money, or improving transportation. Rather, Big Dig officials developed these plans, in total disregard of the taxpayers, to avoid bad press, avoid negative issues during an election year, save management from excessive scrutiny, and preserve the bureaucracy from its inability to perpetuate itself through toll increases. The plans also sought to protect the bureaucracy from having to explain “promises made during bonding.”
But of course you remember that, Jim. Because you were the outside counsel who told the Big Dig officials about the cost overrun, emphasizing that “these are ‘hard’ numbers – not worse [sic] case #s.”
Now, let’s be clear: I’m not saying (and neither did the Inspector General) that Aloisi was integral to the decision not to disclose the cost overrun. He may have had no involvement in that decision. But the point is that Aloisi was intimately involved with these events, and others (like the Amorello fiasco) that have repeatedly embarrassed this state, and that have turned “Big Dig culture” into household words around here.
We hope that this little review of the “Big Dig culture” has been helpful. The unanswered question — for Aloisi, for the Governor, and for all of us — is whether Aloisi is the right guy to navigate the state’s transportation bureaucracy out of that culture, and into the new era of reform that we’ve been promised. For all of our sakes, I sure hope so.
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p>Nope. Too broad. Covers how most people think about MOST construction projects, particularly gov’t ones.
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p>Hate to quibble with the inventors of the term!
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p>But I’d submit you should add “to a jaw-dropping, almost unfathomable degree” after “run rampant.”
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p>XYZ high school is budgeted to cost $20 million and it goes $6 million over! 30%. Normal neglect, lack of oversight, etc. But not Big Dig culture.
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p>Big Dig was $2.8 billion which has become (latest projection I saw in Globe, which included deferred interest) $22 billion. 910% cost overrun.
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p>That’s Big Dig Culture.
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p>I don’t think we’ll see extension of Big Dig Culture.
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p>We’ll just see “usual level of neglect and inaction.” I.e., no bold plan that gets enacted and sets MA up for success in coming decades.
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p>Luckily, in absence of that, we will see a lot of local quibbling over who takes credit for MA share of Obama transport stimulus roads bill!
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Somebody is watching!
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p>Nice clarification, David.
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p>As for the Big Dig, isn’t that finished, except for the bill?
You will find that they were owned by many of the administrative staff of bechtel Parsons brinckerhoff. By administrative staff, that loosly translates to women and minority business’s. Cranes, backhoes, and front end loaders that sat idle for months to the tune of several hundreds of dollars a day.
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p>Bechtel Parsons had platoons of diversity coordinators, “women in construction” observers, minorities in construction representatives, neighborhood coordimators etc,who wandered around aimlessy all day long. There were meetings where essentially people cut out paper dolls. The rampant abuse of the taxpayer and outright theft could be followed right back to Beacon Hill. The Bechtel Parson/Big Dig phone directory was like a family tree of Beacon Hill. Out right theft was tolerated and condoned by Mass Highway. I cannot put into words how blatant it was. There was a significant number of engineers etc that resigned in 1999 due to the rampany fraud being perpetrated and they didn’t want to get sucked in and the theft was an affront to their sense of decency.
No amount of fancy footwork will mitigate what Beacon Hill
purloined from the CAT project.
This brings it full circle. MA will never learn!
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p>Viva Billy Bulger, Al McKinnon, Driscoll, et al!
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p>Aloisi: $3 million in billed in “fees”
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p> Fired for $800,000 in unsubstantiated fees.
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p> Getting paid to “advise” Amorello (not to quit)
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p> $340,000 in public pension payments to date on
top of it all (and he’s only 53)
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p> great.. a Secretary who lied to public about overruns, an underling of Kerasiotis of all people!
And I am absolutely opposed to Aliosi coming back (like a Halloween movie where you just can’t kill the bad guys and they kep coming back to life)… but isn’t this a done deal? I mean, hasn’t the Gov already made this happen?
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p>Or is there hope?
The quote about Aloisi not knowing what the Big Dig culture is appeared in the Globe story reporting his appointment.
Let the good times roll…
The appointment of Jim Aloisi as Secretary of Transportation ensures that one entity will reap a windfall from Mr. Aloisi’s facility in navigating the Big Dig culture of Beacon Hill–his former downtown corporate law firm, Goulston Storrs.
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p>The extremely lucrative and underpublicized bond counsel work obtained by downtown corporate law firms with intimate business and political connections to critical Beacon Hill legislators and executive department heads remains one of the continuing scandals of the Big Dig culture of Beacon Hill.
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p>Non-disclosure of substantial cost overruns, rampant overbilling of the state for legal services, and egregious billing for phantom legal services are regular features of a Beacon Hill-Downtown Bond Counsel nexus that permits Mr. Aloisi and other corporate and public law and policy attorneys to briskly travel through the revolving-door reserved for Beacon Hill Bureaucrats and Politicans/Downtown Corporate Law Rainmakers.
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p>The citizens of Massachusetts should demand that the Legislature reform our competitive bidding laws to authorize the Inspector General and the State Auditor to review, void, and prohibit future state contracts with outside legal counsel found to have excessively or fraudulently billed the state for legal services. Successive state Attorney Generals in the Commonwealth have demonstrated no appetite to stem the covert Beacon Hill-Downtown Bond Counsel dealmaking that often results in the type of destructive financial fiascos and legal imbroligos that have plagued Mr. Aloisi and the taxpayers of Massachusetts.
ever wants me to cast a ballot for her, she will need to take-on something of the magnitude discussed above and below.
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p>Not sure that Aloisi has been plagued by anything but excessive wealth from state contracts, but I got your point.
For example, where he refers to “attorney generals.” “General” in this case is an adjective, so the correct usage in this case is “attorneys general.” That is all. Thank you! đŸ˜‰
You’re plenty capable of correcting grammar mistakes yourself.
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p>BTW, I gave the post a (6) since the poster’s point resonated with me and there was a courageous call for the A’s G to perform their duties to stem the “Beacon Hill-Downtown Bond Counsel dealmaking”. When I became confused at the misspelling of a word while reading the post, I did what I was taught to do in public schools as a child, which was to look it up in the dictionary.
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p>I hang out on BMG for the content and wit.
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p>Shalom.