Here’s Governor Charlie Baker at his press conference yesterday, discussing the woes of the MBTA and how to avoid them next time:
“We need to start from the premise the taxpayers have been taxed enough,” he said, speaking to reporters at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.
All due respect, Governor, that’s dead wrong. We need to start from the premise that the MBTA has to work. We’ve seen over the last week or so what it means when the MBTA craps out. Thousands of commuters unable to get to work. Thousands more standing around on freezing cold platforms waiting for a train that may never come, or if it does, it’s so crowded that they can’t get on. People stuck on trains for hours because their ancient motors don’t work when it’s cold, or when it snows. It’s bad for people, it’s bad for business, it’s bad for the economy, it’s bad for Massachusetts. It’s simply not acceptable.
So. What that means in terms of management fixes, improved efficiencies, and all the other magical no-new-taxes hand-waving that you say you’ve got up your sleeve in terms of making the T work, I don’t know – that’s your department. But you simply must be open to the possibility that all of those clever bookkeeping maneuvers will not be enough to bring the MBTA to an acceptable level of functionality. The state may need to take over the MBTA’s debt so that it isn’t perpetually chasing its tail. And, yes, more revenue may be necessary.
Charley said it right: this could be Baker’s Nixon-to-China moment. If Charlie Baker, Mr. No New Taxes, faced with an unprecedented collapse of public transportation, makes the case for new revenue to fix the problem, the legislature will go along despite Bob DeLeo’s allergy to new revenues. But whatever the solution, Baker needs to find one. If he doesn’t, his governorship will be a failure.
Because the MBTA has to work.
nt
To dig your heels in and refuse to raise taxes for a certain situation or expenditure. Maybe, in your opinion, this is something that should occur more often than it does not.
This is not that sort of situation.
of the top 100 (or 1,000?) incomes of Massachusetts and how much they have paid in taxes measured as a percentage of their income. Compare this with the average percentage paid by the average MBTA commuter and then let the governor explain what he means by “taxed enough”.
to say nothing of a determination to force a decision in favor of properly funding the MBTA. He will take the third way out which is to wallow in false consciousness and blame everything on the lege & his predecessor (note the singular). He will propose nothing new save personnel changes at the top…
And you know it will work, it worked for all his predecessors and at least in the short term it will work for him now.
The only good thing I see coming of all this (and believe me in about four hours I must board the Red Line in South Station) is that under sixty inches of snow lies buried the Summer Olympics in Boston.
Elias N
You’ve probably seen these charts johntmay but just in case they sort of answer your question…
http://www.massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=FactsAtAGlance_Tax_Fairness.html
I’m starting to come to the conclusion, slowly and sadly, that until the MBTA crisis significantly affects the bottom lines of big business and big non-profits here in Boston metro, nothing will change. Because the MBTA ridership doesn’t have the political clout by itself to make heads roll. I wish we did and by sheer numbers we should.
I can’t imagine the #s on lost productivity for the last few weeks, but most of it is probably being felt most in the pocketbooks of low income workers, so basically who care, right?
It was heartening to read the article in the Globe today re: hospitals running short of linens bc their cleaning staff couldn’t make it to work for days. In my dreams the CEOs of those hospitals get off their behinds and call the Legislature and tell them they have to invest in the MBTA or else.
A subtle but important reason the T exists in the first place is its role in emission reduction by the cars it removes from the road.
That is how the Conservation Law Foundation brought the Old Colony and Greenbush lines back. The judiciary seems to be the pathway when you are stuck with weasel kabuki.
It helps Charlie too as he can just blame it on activist judges or some such dodge.
a lot here, but we almost forget that Massachusetts Republicans are ideologically dysfunctional. Baker can stay in office forever, but he’ll never accomplish anything if he toes the Republican line. We can’t cut our way to prosperity or functionality. He needs a slap in the face with the history of revenue in Massachusetts.
There’s nothing wrong with Baker believing, ““We need to start from the premise the taxpayers have been taxed enough.” But it’s not an objective truth. It’s not an economic truth. Imagine a business saying, “We need to start from the premise that customers are already paying us enough.”
Business has to do that all the time in a bad economy. “We can’t raise prices, so how can we cut costs?”
I would be interested to know how Baker stays in office forever with only Republicans voting for him…11% +/- of the electorate at last look….
the opportunity to do anything but cut expenses. Businesses can diversify; businesses can plan for the future; businesses can raises prices. Government can’t diversify into other industries; subject to the whims of the electorate, led by the conservative movement, in the 1990s, we cut $3 billion in yearly future revenue; and as our governor has said, we aren’t allowed to increase revenue.
Baker stays in office until people can’t stand him or the Democrats come up with a reasonable candidate. I think he’s going to stay likable for a while. Do you see a viable Democrat on the horizon?
So he’ll toe the center line and try not to screw up.
November 2018 no one will remember January 2015.
I profoundly disagree with your premise that nobody will remember January 2015.
The “center line” is to keep the MBTA running. If you think that shutting down the MBTA altogether — which is where we’re headed with Mr. Baker’s current approach — than I suggest you are profoundly mistaken.
“Don’t screw up” as a “vision” for an executive never works. It doesn’t work in private enterprise and it doesn’t work in government.
He’s not trying to appeal to you and there’s nothing he could ever do that would change your mind.
So why are you trying to tell him what to do?
PS I don’t think most people share your view that he’s currently screwing up.
If our regional economy starts to slide or worse, egged on by the economic hit of this winter — and who knows if this is the new normal which could ham string the economy of Boston metro and the region for much longer — well I dare say that *will* affect Charlie Baker’s standing with many who didn’t and did vote for him.
A recession may be our only way to wake folks up to the consequences of the MBTA collapsing. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not feeling very hopeful at this point.
nt
I think that’s probably true. At this point, it’s hard to blame Baker for the ongoing failure of the MBTA. But he’s got to get through the winters of 2016 and 2017 before running for reelection. And if the MBTA behaves in those winters the way it’s behaving now, people will indeed blame him. And rightly so.
But most people have a better feel a the job after a year, and he would have the prior fall to review planning, so I good chance things will go better. Of course all speculation.
Note that outside Boston a lot of the local roads suck but I don’t hear people screaming about the DPW or that the selectman need to be voted out.
I see. So you’re saying that his stated starting premise: “We need to start from the premise the taxpayers have been taxed enough” is the result of his ignorance of the current situation. And you argue that voters won’t remember that.
That posture is precisely why I won’t ever vote for a Republican — at least, as the party has existed in my lifetime. I will say that if I had been offered a choice between Frank Sargent and Ed King, I would probably have voted for Mr. Sargent. I was not offered that choice. That was a long time ago, and Frank Sargent would have been loudly and firmly rejected by today’s MA GOP. I was not offered that choice, and I know of no Massachusetts Republican who can sit at the same table as Frank Sargent (or Everett Dirksen, or Henry Cabot Lodge, or Nelson Rockefeller).
What do you think might have happened if Mr. Baker had arranged a meeting with Ms. Scott — say two weeks ago — and said “Help me understand what’s going on here and what you think we should do about it”?
Mr. Baker, like all of today’s Republicans and too many Democrats, apparently “leads” by asserting his belief and prejudice, uninformed by facts or the guidance of senior professionals who actually DO have a clue about what’s happening — and who have been on the job for more than a few weeks.
Give a rest. I think you’re 50% of the comments today and this shows you’re reaching (and note I think I have heard the “wouldn’t fit in today’s GOP, or “this is the last R I would have voted for” about 10 times here on BMG).
I have no interest in debating you. It’s very very boring because you are intransigent and predictable.
Maybe he tried to talk to her but she was on one of her 30 trips. http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/02/mbta_gm_beverly_scott_spared_no_expense_on_trips_record_review
$327k that might have been used for a little maintenance and clearly ousting him didn’t change much.
http://www.eagletribune.com/opinion/editorial-manager-s-ouster-won-t-solve-t-s-problems/article_c2224da3-1df8-5274-b9a8-dffd38ff2516.html
. . .that 20% of sales tax revenue is a bad deal for dealing with the $1.7 billion in debt. That was pretty clearly true back a few years ago, when sales-tax revenue was depressed by the bad economy.
Now that we are out of the recession, revenue should increase. How much would it have to increase for the original deal to work? What if instead of 20% the figure was 21%, or 25% or 30%?
As far as the debt is concerned, I assume that there is no way to restructure it to take advantage of interest rates that are much lower now than they were back in the 1990’s.
There isn’t any way to restructure that debt, is there?
Declaring that we need an indeterminate tax increase to fund a system that is beyond any hope repairing doesn’t seem like a proposal that many people will support.
An important reason why people won’t support it is that we don’t talk about the alternatives.
I agree that “an indeterminate tax increase to fund a system that is beyond any hope [of] repairing” is not likely to be chosen over an alternative that costs nothing and doesn’t impact anybody. That’s not the alternative, though.
The alternative is a state whose economic heart is in fibrillation because nobody can get into or out of the city. How do we sustain Logan airport as a regional hub when no traffic can get to or from it during the day? Pick your poison — route 1A, the Callahan, or the Ted Williams tunnel. What do you think will happen to those arteries with no MBTA?
That’s why we MUST have a concrete tax increase proposal, with a clear understanding who does and who does not pay higher taxes. That’s why we need a road map of what gets repaired, what gets replaced, and what gets shut down, and when. That’s why we need a 25-year plan so that we don’t have to repeat the exercise five years from now.
We found an out-of-the-box solution to the bridge problem of I-93 that worked and worked immediately. That happened because we started with the premise that I-93 cannot be closed.
The starting premise that you seem to be disputing is that the MBTA has to work. In my view, that is the only premise that avoids utter catastrophe for the entire New England region.
Yeah all this talk of “the MBTA system is beyond repair” is just flat insane. Letting it cease to exist is not an option.
Your example, somervilletom, of Logan Airport is apt. Without a functioning transit system, say goodbye to that airport being an international hub because if no one can get to it, adios. Same goes for the Financial District in Boston or Longwood Medical Area. If no one can get to our CBD or our medical centers for work or care, say goodbye to our regional economy.
How is this even a reasonable point for discussion? Do folks in the rest of Massachusetts not realize how many of their own jobs are tied to the economy of Boston metro, so if we go down so do they? Do they not care? Do they really hate folks who live in Boston metro so much that they’re keen on experiencing another recession just to stick it to us? It’s starting to feel that way.
“Let’s be great” is the slogan, right? Not feeling it. More like “Let’s be mediocre” or “Let’s be Alabama”.
like almost all government debt, repeatedly. Interest on debt hurts but the real problem is the absolute size of it compared to T revenues. I remember when, during the forward funding debate, Finneran and Wagner said that giving the T control of ad revenues on T rolling stock and stations would be good for them. Especially memorable was an instance when one idiot (I don’t remember which one) suggested that cigarette ads would be a mother lode, even while the state was spending big money to reduce youth tobacco consumption.