As Adeas has already noted, the Masters of Beacon Hill are staying the course on the slow demise of the MBTA. Nothing will change.
From the Globe:
Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg and House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo…instead saying they looked forward to learning more
Learning more!
DeLeo said the powerful trio has spoken about the idea of a commission to examine problems at the T
A commission! The Commonwealth is saved.
Senator William Brownsberger….noted the Legislature had already made some long-term efforts to help the T, pointing to funding for new cars on the Orange and Red lines set to go into service in a few years. (emphasis added)
Full speed ahead, boys!
lawmakers said they supported a deliberative process that prioritizes getting any new Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority reforms right, rather just getting something done right now.
Ah, Reform before Revenue Redux! With the secret codicil: and therefore, no reform, because then we would have to do something, God forbid.
Kick-the-can-down-the-road-ism remains the preferred strategy.
A commission will take care of this at least until the snow melts. Then we can Learn More until the new T cars arrive, if they do, and then we’ll have plenty of room to decry the mismanagement we have failed to clean up.
Here’s the Globe’s headline, btw, with correction for clarity:
Fast fix to MBTA woes is unlikely
Here’s my modest proposal for how to end these shenanigans.
A grass-roots movement to abolish the T. Specifically to repeal Chapter 161A of the General Laws.
Put that on the ballot and the battle is finally joined.
So what would repeal mean? it would mean revolution. It would mean chaos and lawsuits. The Globe will tell us all how is destructive and irresponsible it is.
In short, repeal would require the Legislature to act. Probably before any referendum took place. For once, no more can-kicking. For once, they would own it.
Which is fair, after all they broke it. PS Not quite fair to Sen. Brownberger who is a good guy on this stuff. But his quote is representative.
Update: Sorry, shoulda put that jump-break thingy in (to shorten the post on the front page) to begin with.
I sure hope we don’t abolish the service itself.
for sure. Wisdom would be reforming what we’ve got.
Not going to happen. Whaddaya do absent wisdom?
Rescind Chapter 161B and you’ve still got the need, and the pension obligations, and contracts, and the Big Dig debt that was punitively loaded on top of the T. (But no revenue source for that debt–oops! No scapegoat. No whipping boy)
Also the property and the rolling stock, whatever that may be worth.
So yeah, the whole passive-aggressive relationship between the T and Beacon Hill and the people is vaporized. No place to hide. No place to stand above the fray and point yer plummy finger and do nothing.
What then?
Whatever, it cannot possibly be worse than what we’ve got.
I like the idea of a ballot initiative fix for the T… They’re basically a golden ticket to lock in policy and to bypass the Leg.
However don’t you have to collect signatures from every district in the State? Might be hard to get those outside of Metro Boston to sign on for that.
OR! I remember reading that someone was working on a ballot initiative for recreational weed. Let’s put 60% of excise taxes from that towards public transit! The rest for education & substance abuse programs.
but not more than a quarter of the signatures can be from any one county.
That’s 75%. Surely one could get the other 25% from the rest of the state.
Besides, if you can’t get those sigs, you’re not going to get the votes anyway.
that voters outside of 495 would line up to sign a petition abolishing the T.
(Maybe not to fix it though.)
And it had the added bonus of being something to bitch about for 15 years.
It would almost be elegant were it not so baldly sleazy. This is why I completely despise the GOP. They wanted to ram the big dig through on the cheap while being indifferent to the complete mess it would make of Distressway driving.
And the lawsuit seized that up while also serving as a rebuke for being dumb plutocrats.
They contrived to just load comparable debt back on the T and further roiled things by agreeing to half assed derivative bets based on predicting interest rate movements.
The T is essentially being punished for a 15 year old slight that has morphed into this strange Yankee Kabuki on Beacon Hill that amounts to a rousing chorus of “Yes We Have No Bananas” from the Deleocrat Melodaires with clownish pantomimes that involved synchronized inside out pocket pulls to emphasize just how broke they are.
That’s certainly a crucial part of the solution — yet another board, no doubt populated by yet another collection of automobile-centric cretins whose agenda is to destroy public transportation once and for all.
It looks to me as though we are reading the proposed execution order for the current MBTA. Specifically, the use of phrases like “dissolved in favor of a receiver”. Any time we read “dissolved”, “receiver”, “authority”, “employees”, and “personnel matters” in the same context, we are looking at union-busting. It is no surprise that Ms. Garry joins Mr. Tarr in offering a proposal that Scott Walker would be proud to support.
Here are some specific criticisms this excerpt raises for me:
1. The language about “fiscal controls”, “appoint, remove, supervise, and control all MBTA employees and personnel” sounds like “abrogate all union contracts and replace union workers with scabs”.
2. No mention is made of the 2009 Alessandro Report or the several other investigations that have been published about the all-too-frequent MBTA mishaps. What will this new board learn that isn’t already available in the public record? Why not START with the information we all already know?
3. Regarding “guidelines”, “procedures”, “quarterly reports”, and so on, I’d like to know what is ALREADY in place and for aspects that are not, what is causing the lapse? How do these aspects contemplated by the proposed new board differ from constraints on other state commissions and agencies (such as the Probation Department)? I’m pretty sure that the MBTA and DoT have had these in place for years, if not decades. I’d like know what stops the current MBTA from meeting these requirements, and what the contemplated board proposes to change in order to resolve those lapses. As a parenthetical note, I’d love to know what, if any, employees of other state agencies (specifically including the Probation Department) are employed as a result of a recommendation from Ms. Garry or her staff.
4. An important bullet is missing: something along the lines of “Developing an accurate estimate for the short-range and long-range costs to the state and region of allowing public rail transportation to lapse.”
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I note that this excerpt makes NO statement about the importance of convenient, safe, and affordable public rail transportation in the state and regional economy.