Eastern Massachusetts spends a considerable amount of time hand-wringing over the MBTA, the transit agency everyone loves to hate. But the Bay State’s road and bridge network suffers from a commensurate amount of disinvestment. The only thing that is missing from the statewide road and bridge debate is an obvious, headline-generating villain to lob pitchforks at.
Instead, on the road and bridge side of the transportation ledger, Massachusetts endures the annual spectacle of cities and towns begging state lawmakers to get busy and allocate Chapter 90 road and bridge repair funds. Potholes are epidemic in most areas, and a real New England winter means that snowplows did a fair amount of new damage.
The short-term issue is the timing of those funds to municipalities. The Salem News wants lawmakers to “end the foot-dragging,” pointing out that 2013 is the second year in a row that the Legislature has forced cities and towns to cope with an abbreviated period for repairs in a region where the construction season is already pretty short.
Chapter 90 funding has been caught in the crossfire over transportation finance between Gov. Deval Patrick, House Speaker Robert DeLeo, and Senate President Therese Murray. Patrick signed a $300 million road repair bill last week, but the governor and state lawmakers must work out the financial nuts and bolts that undergird the agreement before municipalities can rev up jackhammers and bulldozers.
Patrick has indicated more than once that the Legislature has yet to come up with a tax plan that will adequately fund the program. It remains to be seen whether the governor will play hardball with the terms portion of the bill. Even if he agrees to that aspect of the legislation, he may decline to disburse the funds or, more ominously, selectively disburse “some of those funds” at a trickle as Lt. Gov. Tim Murray signaled last week.
Dealing with this year’s construction season funding is a problem that will get fixed, even if the fix is a messy one. The underfunding of the highway investments over the next decade compared to the scope of the projects that need to be done to keep Massachusetts safe and competitive is the longer-term quandary.
Patrick administration officials, who failed to get support for a $1 billion transportation investment over 10 years, argue that the Senate’s $800 million finance plan won’t be enough to deal with issues like ratcheting down the number of structurally deficient bridges. In the wake of the metro Seattle Interstate 5 bridge collapse, the Boston Globe argues that “any major shortchanging of bridge repairs is a sign of structural deficiency — on Beacon Hill.”
It’s also a sign of structural deficiency in the electorate. “Raise my taxes, please, I am concerned about the unsafe bridges” are calls that most lawmakers probably don’t get, even though their constituents traverse suspect spans and bump along on cratered roads every single day.
The Washington State bridge collapse, however, did persuade some Seattle area residents who use other “creaky” bridges in the region to think differently. One woman told The San Francisco Chronicle that she would be willing to pay higher gas taxes if the money goes to road and bridge repair.
–GABRIELLE GURLEY
BEACON HILL
A report by state Auditor Suzanne Bump says millions of dollars of questionable welfare payments have been made in recent years, including checks sent to people who were dead. Adding a wrinkle of confusion to her report, however, a spot check suggests most of those her audit says were dead were alive. The payouts to recipients Bump says were dead averaged around $2,050.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Lawrence Mayor William Lantigua has been subpoenaed to testify today before a state grand jury investigating thousands of dollars in parking receipts that have gone missing from a city-owned garage run by one of his close allies. Meanwhile, Lantigua proposes a budget that keeps 31 firefighters on the payroll by hiking property taxes the maximum-allowed 2.5 percent, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Boston magazine compares the Boston Redevelopment Authority to JRR Tolkien’s magical One Ring: “If you make it your own and harness its powers, you can do almost anything you want. But eventually, inevitably, those powers will corrupt you.”
Boston magazine digs into Brockton’s $75 million desalination plant, a facility that isn’t actually delivering any fresh water to the city. CommonWealth looked at the plant’s construction in 2007.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
More than 250,000 veterans will miss out on Medicaid coverage because they live in states that have declined to expand the program under Obamacare, Governing reports. Meanwhile, US Rep. Michael Capuano, in an op-ed in the Globe, says Republicans are killing Obamacare with a thousand small cuts.
The IRS has targeted other groups of charities during periods of potential abuse such as credit counseling and foreclosure rescue organizations during the mortgage crisis and Jewish charities in the wake of a Brooklyn rabbi scandal involving black-market kidney sales and money laundering.
Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a Tea Party favorite, is leaving Congress, NPR reports (via WBUR).
CASINOS
The state is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the tribal set-aside by a private casino developer because the gambling commission has opened up the Southeast region to commercial applicants. Mashpee Wampanoag chairman Cedric Cromwell tells Greater Boston he’s still confident the tribe’s casino will be built despite state and federal hurdles that still must be cleared.
ELECTIONS
State Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry of Dorchester captured the First Suffolk Senate seat that has long been held by South Boston pols.
In the Democratic primary for the Back Bay-based House seat vacated earlier this year by Marty Walz, Jay Livingstone decisively defeated Josh Dawson.
Republican US Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez is pummeling Democrat Ed Markey on one issue after another, but analysts are divided on whether he’s developing a broad critique or madly bouncing from one issue to another in search of a topic that will connect on the campaign trail. The Braintree Democratic Town Committee member who says he was threatened with discipline for hosting Gomez in his home insists he’s “a good Democrat” and will likely vote for Markey. Markey concedes he could have donated more to charity.
The Herald posits that John Connolly, a long-running critic of Boston public schools management, won’t net the endorsement of the city teachers’ union.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The $200 million expansion of the Peabody Essex Museum is put on hold temporarily in the wake of the architect’s death, the Salem News reports. Meanwhile, the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester is launching a $5 million campaign to upgrade the facility.
The last of the Campanelli brothers, whose Brockton development company constructed more than 30,000 homes in eight states after World War II to trigger the middle-class boom for returning soldiers, died over the weekend.
Fewer Massachusetts homes are selling, but when they do sell, they’re going for good prices.
EDUCATION
Mike Petrilli of the pro-Common Core Fordham Institute fires back back at Pioneer Institute’s Jamie Gass and Charlie Chieppo, who yesterday unleashed a broadside in the Wall Street Journal against the new Common Core education standards.
Evelyn Hammonds, the Harvard dean who was at the center of a recent controversy over snooping into email accounts of faculty members, will step down.
HEALTH CARE
A study finds patients who are involved in their health care decision-making have longer and more expensive hospital stays than those who delegate the medical decisions to their doctors.
TRANSPORTATION
C&J Bus Lines launches bus service from Tewksbury to New York City, the Eagle-Tribune reports.