Before digging into the details, let’s recall what Baker told Globe columnist Brian McGrory a couple of months ago:
I went over to Baker’s campaign office to ask him about his role in the Big Dig. He was the state’s chief budget writer in the 1990s when the massive project was put under the control of the Turnpike Authority and the decision was made to borrow $1.5 billion against future federal highway funds. These days, the financially crippled authority has been eliminated, and we’re still paying off that debt.
When I asked Baker about his influence in either decision, he said, “I was one of about 50 people.” That would make for an interesting campaign slogan.
But he was the state secretary of Administration and Finance, the most prominent fiscal adviser to the governor. “So what,” he replied. “My approval meant nothing.”
Alas, as I predicted some time ago, the facts beg to differ. Did Charlie really think that nobody was going to look into this?
[Baker’s] statements are sharply at odds with a picture of Baker’s financial leadership of the project that emerges from hundreds of pages of memorandums, letters, and other documents culled from his four-year tenure as secretary of the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, from 1994 to 1998. The documents show that Baker was the chief architect of a financing plan to sustain the project during its peak construction years, just as federal support was diminishing substantially….
Joseph Sullivan, the House transportation committee chairman at the time, … said Baker was a key player, especially in bringing all the parties together.
“When you are the secretary of administration and finance, your voice matters,” Sullivan said.
And, by the way, Baker’s plan was a mess.
Baker maintained that using the money for the Big Dig would not compromise road and bridge work elsewhere in the state, arguing that at least $400 million would be available every year for other projects.
“I don’t see how anybody could argue that the artery will be pulling money away from non-artery projects,” he said during a 1998 legislative hearing.
But others disagreed. “The administration kept denying the obvious,” Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-backed watchdog group, said in a recent interview. “If you keep spending more on the Central Artery, you’re going to have less to spend on state highways. I learned that in second grade. If you’ve got a dollar, you can only spend it once.” …
[T]he need for road and bridge repairs has long exceeded the state’s ability to pay for the work, and Baker’s financing plan for the Big Dig exacerbated the problem, by committing federal aid to the project until 2015. A blue-ribbon panel in 2007 concluded that the state was underfunding its transportation needs by nearly $1 billion a year.
Read the whole article — it’s long, but well worth it.
Finally, here is the Governor’s campaign’s statement (email, no link):
“Today’s Boston Globe story raises troubling questions about Charlie Baker’s central role in the failed financing and oversight of the Big Dig. It is clear from the story that Baker has repeatedly misled the people of Massachusetts about his role in developing the finance plan that has now saddled taxpayers with over $800 million in debt, and that he failed to reign in billions in cost overruns. Baker owes the people of Massachusetts a full and honest accounting of his role in the Big Dig.
Charlie Baker’s credibility is at stake here. His repeated claims that he played a limited role in developing the failed financing for the Big Dig have been proven false by public documents uncovered by the Boston Globe. Voters cannot take anything Baker says seriously until he comes clean about his role in the failed Big Dig financing scheme.”
Man, you just beat me to it, David. This article — which everyone could see coming down the ‘Pike, as it were, well in advance — completely and utterly destroys Charlie Baker’s reason for running.
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p>His refrain vs. Deval has been to criticize the gov’s “reckless spending” and “unwillingness to take on sacred cows”. Jeebus Crispies, what else does Baker’s Big Dig record reflect but precisely that?
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p>And look at this graph of how the payments were scheduled to be paid off through 2015. It was a time bomb designed to go off for whomever was governor from 2005-2014. How ironic! Perhaps it would be only just to elect Baker and make him deal with it now. But I kid — I’m a kidder.
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p>Recklessness? Ya think?
Charlie’s prominent role is the notorious project should be near-disqualifying and at least devastating political liability. Unfortunately, Deval’s horrible selection as transportation czar of someone even more deeply involved in the Big Dig will hamper the Gov’s campaign from taking as much advantage of this as it should be able to.
Yeah, I hear that — and Deval will take some heat for Aloisi. But even Aloisi won’t be the albatross that the Big Dig is for Baker. I mean, Baker just doesn’t want to have that conversation, you know? “Aloisi was even worse than me!”
That’s not as good as his current line: “I’m like Weld, but with basketball and more sober!”
from the Patrick campaign. Here is what Baker has been saying about his role in the Big Dig over the last few months.
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Baker is just not believable. On ANYTHING.
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p>He took out loans to finance the project. I actually have no problem with that. But saying that there will be no opportunity cost for taking out the loans is nonsense.
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p>If someone who did what he did at the Big Dig was now running for office said something like, “We needed the Big Dig, we needed to make transportation to Logan easier so that we could have convention business, and this business and that business, so we took out loans..,” I’d have NO problems with them, and would even be on their side on the issue.
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p>Baker is asking everyone to TOTALLY ignore his track record, listen to promises of “tax cuts” and a few light pleasantries, and elect him.
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p>As time goes on, and people see his high-spending record at the Big Dig, a government project, they are just not going to believe him. They’ll think, “Yeah, sure pal, you’ll say anything for a vote and will deliver nothing, at best.”
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p>On the other hand, Patrick can point to getting about 19,100 jobs in the state in April 2010, and show people how he is forcing Health Insurance Companies, like the one Baker used to lead, to keep rates down.
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p>These are true accomplishments in trying times, under bad circumstances with economic factors running against him.
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p>Baker’s lack of any credibility will get Patrick another term.
although not presented in such a neat form as the Globe piece. Unfortunately, the true believers who see Baker as another superstar candidate for the corner office probably won’t accept the story. Hopefully, enough others will to tip the balance more in Patrick’s direction.
David, Thanks for posting this thread. The Globe story today sure helped sort through Charlie Baker’s various prevaricating attempts to deflect responsibility for a plan he obviously played a central part in creating. Tim Murray had this guy’s number months ago when he called Charlie out on his Big Dig Plan that shifted statewide road and bridge maintenance funding over to pay for the escalating Big Dig boondoggle.
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p>Kerasiotis and Baker were a great sleight of hand tag team…picking the taxpayers pockets at the toll booths (doubling the tolls on the Pike and Bridge and setting the plan to keep cranking them up annually long after Kerasiotis and Baker had hit the road) and through bond sales which we will be paying for infinitum…
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p>It seems part of the GOP SOP playbook…”tell them what they want to hear and hope the truth will not come out before election day”…Charlie Baker, the Insurance salesman and Richard Tisei, the Realtor of the Year…if they could only bring back Kerasiotis (unindicted co-conspirator) to be part of their “Had Enough? Tour…The Big Dig Tenors…starring Pothole Charlie.
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p>Everytime I go over the Bridge or come through a Toll, I will think of Charlie Baker, the man who created the plan to increase those tolls annually to pay for Big Dig overruns…and I will remember how he has danced, fudged and deceived us all year, hoping we would not find out.
It is time to bring back the Romneyberg and rechristen it the Bakerberg, this campaign is sinking faster than a lead balloon. Might as well make one for Cahill and Glodis to. I wholeheartedly approve, you guys have the power make it happen.
Endorse all three and give them the BMG Kiss of Death!!
out of the leaking hole in the ground was the Christy Mihos Big Dig commericals who those guys inserting their heads up their…….
All tunnels leak. FYI.
reptilian humanoids!
This strikes me as typical of Republicans on the national level – to cut taxes while borrowing. The last Republican president to have a surplus was Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. When Obama took office, the national debt was $10 trillion, of which $9T was accumulated by the last three Republican administrations. The borrow and spend policies of these administrations changed us from the number one creditor nation to the number one debtor nation.
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p>Now that the Democrats are in power, Republicans fulminate about deficits and too much spending. Unfortunately deficit spending is required now if we are to have any chance of recovering from the worst financial crash (left us by Bush II) since the great Depression.
See Big Dig Red Ink Engulfs State for full (2008) article:
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p>And I’m a little perplexed at the joy here of bashing Baker for his indefensible role in sinking us with unfathomable Big Dig debt… while not being similarly outraged at Deval Patrick’s appointment of Jim Aloisi as Secretary of Transportation. Whether Patrick takes heat for it or not is not the question… the question is whether BMG will ignore it as an issue… or go the extra mile and at least consider endorsing the one clean money candidate in the race… and the one candidate who most assuredly would not play these types of inexplicable inside games (inexplicable except insofar as money’s corrupting role on our political system is not plainly obvious).
We had plenty to say about Aloisi at the time. No one here is claiming that Deval hasn’t made mistakes. But the reality is that, overall, he’s done a good job under seriously adverse economic conditions that were not of his making.
if you are accusing Governor Patrick of being paid off. You are going to need to back that up.
…but this is a DEMOCRATIC blog, not just a progressive one, hence BLUE Mass Group.
Are you suggesting that this is a forum for only Democrats? No contrary opinion or different party affiliation welcome? If I agree with close to nothing that you say or stand for does that mean I should find another forum?
He suggested nothing of the sort. Empowerment said “I’m a little perplexed at the joy here of bashing Baker…”, and Christopher explained to him what should be obvious without advocating a single thing about blog moderation.
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p>You’re sideways complaining about something that wasn’t in the content.
Only that the editorial persuasion is Democratic. You, “empowerment”, or anyone else is free to post about whom you support and why. My point was that I wish “empowerment” would stop harping on the editorial endorsement of BMG, which wasn’t likely to go for anyone but the Democratic nominee.
…from the state party.
to the Governor’s statement on the matter.
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p>There were not really “cost overruns.” I am SICK of people stating this. It’s misleading, at best.
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p>Yes, the cost went up over time. Why? The legislature asked for more scope to be added to the project. Scope creep isn’t free. Not to mention the cost of materials in the 90s went through the roof.
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p>Let’s call it what it really is please, instead of perpetrating bad and not really useful mythologies. The term “cost overruns” implies that the price tag went up for other reasons other than the project got gianormously larger. From what I can tell, the cost price increase was about right for say, things like, adding a whole extra tunnel to the project after the price was quoted.
This is not to excuse the price increase from that scope creep, nor Baker’s poor decision to kick the funding can down the road…
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p>Though, to be honest, I’m not sure what else could be done. I mean, you had half a hole in the ground, what are ya gonna do? Stop digging and leave it there? The federal funds were drying up as stated…there was very little choice in the matter…but the debt should have been structured MUCH better, and NOT placed on the shoulders of such entities like the MBTA, right as it was being forced into “forward funding” to boot.
we were sitting on a surplus for heavens sake. Not only was the big dig dollars pushed out, but transportation dollars were being used to fund it. They knew going in the plan was to underfund transportation by a billion, while sitting on a billion in surplus. What they should have done you ask?
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p>Pay for it.
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p>Listen, no matter, it was going to be ugly, did Baker’s decisions help the state? How can anyone say that. Then you hear him talk about how Patrick’s handling the budget, are you kidding me?
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p>Very poor, all around for Baker.
yeah, maybe the scope increased. But YOU BET there were “cost overruns.” The Globe did a whole series on this topic. And it was a lot of money.
… when the framing was about a 2B$ project that had overruns to 14+B. That is absolutely false. Also after reviewing the article, there’s a lot in there that is misleading as well. My favorite is probably this: “Construction on virtually all of the Big Dig’s major contracts began with incomplete and error-filled designs”. The start of the design process is almost always incomplete and in need of correction. Design is an iterative process. Just look at any RFP for construction and you’ll find that the design deliverables assume this.
but leaving the Fleet Center off the initial design was hardly the kind of “incomplete” initial design that I think you’re talking about. That one cost a million bucks all by itself. And that’s only the most obvious example.
… of that particular one. The story on that is probably much longer than is covered in the article. But the difference in scale is huge.
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p>The added scope amounted to something like 12.3$B. And I’m not exactly filled with confidence in the Globe when they say that they reviewed the costs and that they found this that or the other… the thing to remember is that the Globe don’t know $#@ about the business and that line about ‘incomplete’ design drawings shows it. A lot of the issues brought up in the article, if you read between the lines, are contractors passing the buck. Contractors complaining about incomplete designs!!?? They bid on preliminary designs that are by definition, incomplete. They know that when they put together their estimates. Trust me David, the Globe article is a mess and I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw it. I’m sure it sold papers though.
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p>By my account a lot of the overruns were for miscellaneous and possibly unavoidable type stuff. For example, some of the overrun was that the value of the sale of the building they were working out of was included in the project valuation and that wound up being millions off the mark (you try to predict the commercial real estate market 15+ years in advance). MTA wound up eating it by deciding to keep the building for themselves. Other issues included the noise mitigation efforts for North End residences that included the replacement of a metric $@#@-load of windows that the project paid for. Etc, etc…
… just 6ed me but in case that any of what I just said is interpreted as getting Mr. Baker off the hook,… it need to be understood that the particulars of doing the project and the particulars of funding the project and whether it was affordable are two different things. I know that the state was aware of the 14.3B$ figure since 1993, but that whenever the costs would come out of the papers people would scream overrun. Why the state knew the figure in 1993 but the public didn’t really know is a question you have to ask the administration of that time.
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p>So to be clear… It was an expensive project. Forget the overruns (they weren’t as big or as unreasonable as spinners and pass-the-buck-ers would like you to think). Why the administration didn’t have a conversation with the public about the real cost and the funding (debt) mechanisms is something you have to ask them,… not pass the buck.
I 6ed you because you said “Trust me David, the Globe article is a mess and I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw it. I’m sure it sold papers though.”
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p>David is the author of the blog entry, not myself.
… I just didn’t want what I said to be confused with some kind of defense of Baker. If we can’t afford the debt on the Big Dig now, it’s not because of overruns so much as decisions to spend the money in the first place.
You said, “the Globe article is a mess and I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw it.” On that we are both in agreement. I give you a 6 and we move on.
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p>Life is grand!
it’s quite simple. Neener neener neener.