Another year, another transportation finance debacle in progress. Legislators balked at Gov. Deval Patrick’s tax-laden $1.1 billion proposal and crafted one that injects a few million less dollars into the network. True to his word, Patrick vetoed the Legislature’s plan. Lawmakers are poised Wednesday to overturn his veto unless House Speaker Robert DeLeo is kidnapped by aliens or senators engage in a wholesale revolt against Senate President Therese Murray.
Yet just when Massachusetts residents thought it was safe to get back on their bumpy roads and screechy subway cars after another unsatisfying debate about transportation dollars, the dispute over whether or not the transportation package has significant funding to account for the elimination of tolls at the western end of the Massachusetts Turnpike shows no signs of abating.
Rep. Antonio Cabral is the most recent entrant in the latest war of war of words with the Patrick administration. Cabral, a New Bedford Democrat and chair of the House Bonding Committee, claims that the governor is engaging in “scare tactics” by insisting that the Legislature’s transportation plan doesn’t add up because it does not account for a $135 million loss of revenue when the tolls come down in 2017, as the governor insists.
“To use the scare tactic, if you will, that if we don’t have the $135 million, we won’t be able to fund South Coast [Rail] or the Green Line is a little disingenuous,” he said at a bonding committee hearing Tuesday.
Cabral is right: it is a little disingenuous since $135 million will not make or break South Coast Rail, the representative’s favorite expansion project; its billion-plus construction and multi-million dollar operating costs will.
Though the tolls are scheduled to be eliminated when the bonds are paid off, Cabral noted that, under Massachusetts law, the turnpike also has to be in a “state of good repair.” With many Massachusetts transportation assets struggling to meet that criteria today, it will be interesting to see how MassDOT defines a state of good repair for the turnpike four winters from now.
Even worse, if that were possible (and anyone who has followed transportation issues in Massachusetts over the past decade knows that it is certainly possible), the Pioneer Institute’s Jim Stergios argues in a Fall River Herald News opinion column that the real problem with the transportation debate on Beacon Hill is that not enough of the new tax revenue is dedicated to transportation.
On the MBTA front, Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Davis noted at the same Beacon Hill hearing that riders can expect fare increases in 2015 and 2017, and likely beyond. While riders will predictably grumble, a 5 percent fare increase every two years is in line with Gov. Patrick’s original transportation vision to shift more of the cost burden to users, and to generate $145 million by 2023. (The governor’s plan also included raising tolls by 5 percent, but the toll hike trial balloon has yet to go up.)
Meanwhile, MBTA users continue to cast about for ways to improve the system and find the funds do it. The MBTA Rider Oversight Committee has proposed a new college pass plan that would give students a significant discount for unlimited rides and help fund additional MBTA service past the witching hour of 12:30 am. The idea, which has been kicking around for several years, merits serious consideration.
However, it’s another example of the seismic shift in thinking about how public services are funded today: With state lawmakers loathe to levy new taxes on residents to put the entire transportation system in a state of good repair (with a few attractive expansions to boot), motivated users will have to come up with the financial fixes for new services themselves. South Coast Rail proponents, take note.
–GABRIELLE GURLEY
BEACON HILL
House Speaker Robert DeLeo won’t be charged in the ongoing federal investigation into the state probation department, his lawyer says. Prosecutors have alleged a bribery scheme between former Probation head John O’Brien and a number of State House officials, but haven’t charged anyone on the receiving end of the transactions.
Gov. Deval Patrick flies to Chicago to pay off his bet with the governor of Illinois on the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup, NECN reports.
Three state lawmakers are challenging a Registry of Motor Vehicles plan to close as many as 18 branches, the Telegram & Gazette reports. Some of the branches are in Gateway Cities, including Attleboro, Brockton, Fall River, and Lawrence.
A former member of the state Parole Board files suit against Mo Cowan, the governor’s former chief of staff and the state’s ex-temporary US Senator, claiming Cowan threatened her if she refused to resign her position after a parolee killed a Woburn police officer, the Salem News reports. Gov. Deval Patrick is also named in the suit.
A group is rallying support to put a question on next year’s ballot that would raise the state’s minimum wage and guarantee workers sick time, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
In a rare interview with the Eagle-Tribune, Lawrence Mayor William Lantigua says he won’t rush the process of selecting a new police chief.
The owner of the Lawrence apartment building adjacent to the city parking garage where fees were allegedly siphoned away offers to rehab the run-down facility as long as its free parking passes are allowed to continue, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Selectmen in Millbury sign a host agreement with a slots parlor operator and set a referendum on the deal for Sept. 24, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
The Lowell City Council votes 6-2 to reject a bid by Mayor Patrick Murphy to limit campaign donations by companies doing business with the city, the Sun reports.
City unions in Gloucester agree to join the Group Insurance Commission, saving the municipality an estimated $3.5 million over the next four years, the Gloucester Times reports.
MARATHON BOMBINGS
To mark the 100th day since the Boston Marathon bombings, GateHouse Media publications tell the stories of 100 people affected by the tragedy.
The State Police sergeant who released without authorization photographs of the capture of Dzokhar Tsarnaev will likely keep his job, says the the head of the State Police.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose own student loan proposal went nowhere, is criticizing President Obama for backing a compromise that would keep rates relatively low for the next few years, the Associated Press reports (via WBUR). The Globe, in an editorial, urges Warren and her fellow Massachusetts senator, Ed Markey, to support the loan-rate compromise. A New York Times editorial backs Warren over the White House.
Same-sex marriage advocates plan a coordinated campaign in New Jersey.
ELECTIONS
US Sen. Ed Markey edges Scott Brown in a new poll from the MassINC Polling Group, a sharp reversal from a poll in December, CommonWealth reports.
Wife at his side, New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner admits to more sex chats, Time reports. The latest explicit spree began one week before Weiner launched his first round at rehabilitating his public image, sitting for a People magazine family portrait. A New York Times editorial urges the “serially evasive” Weiner to “take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, away from cameras, off the Web, and out of the race for mayor of New York City.” A Wall Street Journal editorial rips Weiner for “What he’s forced his wife to endure. Watching the elegant Huma Abedin stand next to her man Tuesday as he explained his latest sexually charged online exchanges was painful for a normal human being to watch. Mr. Weiner is not a normal human being.” Buzzfeed paints Abedin as more than a strong, silent victim in the episode, reporting that she has been a driving force in Weiner’s mayoral chase, as she apparently believes that, for Weiner, the quickest path to normality lies on the other end of a campaign trail; the site adds that Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, had urged Weiner not to resign from Congress.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Another apartment tower is proposed for the red-hot area of Boylston Street in the Fenway.
HEALTH CARE
The vice president of Addison Gilbert Hospital explains the ins and outs of what she calls the state’s misnamed Distressed Hospital Trust Fund in a column in the Gloucester Times.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Fairhaven Wind defies a Board of Health order to shut its two turbines off between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., the South Coast Today reports.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Testimony in the Whitey Bulger trial turns sordid, even by its own warped standards, as Stephen Flemmi, when questioned about his sexual relationship with his common-law wife’s teenage daughter, says Whitey Bulger was the one with the real penchant for teenage girls. Which leads Kevin Cullen to propose that the trial spin off a game show, “The Biggest Scumbag.”
The Globe reports that prosecutors are continuing to zero in on former Patriots player Aaron Hernandez as the chief suspect in a 2012 double homicide in Boston’s South End.
A Superior Court judge overturns the rape conviction of an Ayer man six years into his sentence because his mother and sister were barred from the courtroom during jury selection in his original trial, the Lowell Sun reports.
MEDIA
Dan Kennedy assesses the media landscape in the Gateway City of Haverhill, which lacks a daily newspaper of its own but is served by the Eagle-Tribune and a weekly, both of which are owned by the same company.
Shirley Leung’s debut column in the Globe’s business pages focused on how many in the business community are sitting out the Boston mayoral race, for now. Interestingly, the Herald has a story on the same subject and the Globe’s Lawrence Harmon offered up a similar view in June.