The circular firing squad otherwise known as the MBTA unleashed more volleys during this week’s transportation oversight hearings on Beacon Hill.

Thomas Murray, the Transport Workers Union president, summed the higher ups’ performance in the T’s spectacular winter collapse in a way that won’t surprise commuter rail passengers. He indicted the MBTA’s top managers for “evading responsibility” for their role in the rail service fiasco and claimed that they interfered with Keolis, the commuter rail operator.

“Nobody knew what the hell was going,” Murray told state lawmakers.

That observation applies to other areas of T operations. Frank DePaola, the MBTA’s interim general manager, all but admitted that the agency ignored a few basic tenets of snow removal. Deicing products have come a long way, but the T apparently did not know about them. They failed to investigate the types of products New York and Chicago uses to melt snow and ice without corroding the rails.

Apparently, no one thought to text, email, call, or send carrier pigeons to either city to find out if there was a better way of doing things.  “The T has been too isolated,” DePaola told WCVB-TV.

Some transit systems use specially designed work trains or old trains that no long run during regular service hours to clear snow from tracks. At the MBTA, the current fleet of trains also double as snow plows.

Rep. Evandro Carvalho, a Dorchester Democrat, noted that the recommendations from the peer transit agency group, which included the officials from the Philadelphia, Toronto, and New Jersey systems, “sounded kind of basic.”

DePaola’s response? “The MBTA has a set of policies and procedures that have worked for them for maybe 100 years.”

To make matters worse, the MBTA apparently doesn’t have the capacity to buy equipment that can stand up to a New England climate that runs hot and cold. Murray noted that the T “buys junk,” a problem that may be exacerbated by awarding MBTA procurement contracts to the lowest bidder, a practice that won’t necessarily be solved by transferring purchasing decisions to another entity.

It is past time for the MBTA to throw off its century-old cobwebs. A new general manager and a new commuter rail operator cannot hope to improve the greater Boston transit system if both continue go up against deeply entrenched management and operations philosophies that would have been cutting edge when the Green Line opened in 1897.

For all the handwringing over complex systemic flaws like funding, some of the MBTA’s problems are kind of basic. Winter 2015 raises serious questions about the agency’s ability or interest in keeping up with best transit practices or tapping creative minds to take the lead during crises. The agency is hidebound by old school thinking that probably left those peer transit system officials scratching their heads.

Rather than prioritize routes that an old fleet could actually navigate, top managers at Keolis and the MBTA got up tied up in knots trying and failing to keep the entire system at full strength amid cascading equipment failures brought on by historic weather conditions. Meanwhile, managers at the lower rungs wait for cues instead of making decisions on the front lines.

Several years of legislative reforms have moved the boxes around on the MBTA’s organization chart without denting the agency’s dysfunction. Gov. Charlie Baker’s commission, whose report is due soon, will presumably have something to say about major systemic issues like the T’s chronic budget shortfalls.  How to shake up a workplace culture that  wears its “we’ve always done this way” syndrome practically as a badge of honor is another core problem that demands action.

–GABRIELLE GURLEY

 

BEACON HILL

As the Baker administration pushes for an expansion of the earned income tax credit and elimination of the film tax credit, House leaders say there’s no reason the state can’t have both, CommonWealth reports.

A survey of state workers in the Department of Children and Families paints a dire portrait of an agency buckling under the weight of an overload of cases, decrepit facilities, and low employee morale.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

The Salem District Court building on Washington Street, empty since 2012, is put up for sale, the Salem News reports.

Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood is under tremendous development pressure and lots of residents are worried about the ability to preserve it as an affordable gateway for new Asian immigrants to the city.

Quincy officials receives a federal grant to pay for 75 percent of the cost to build a pumping station in a flood-prone West Quincy neighborhood.

The crew of a tall ship from Canada is rescued by the Coast Guard off the coast of Gloucester but the ship itself is left bobbing in the waves, the Gloucester Times reports.

BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING TRIAL

The defense called just four witnesses before resting its case in the trial of admitted marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The judge sent jurors home for an extended weekend, with closing arguments scheduled for Monday. Kevin Cullen says the brief time the defense took — calling witnesses who supported the idea that it was Tamerlan Tsarnaev who downloaded most of the jihadi material found on various computers and it was also his fingerprints, not his brother’s, on a lot of the bomb-making tools introduced as evidence — was enough to begin to plant a seed of doubt about the idea that Dzhokhar is equally culpable for the mayhem of that April week two years ago. Keller@Large, who initially opposed the death penalty for Tsarnaev because of the lengthy trial and its cost, has changed his mind and now says “money is no object” after hearing the testimony.

OLYMPICS

Shirley Leung says we should all stop being so mean to John Fish and beating up on the Olympics — even as she more or less says it’s time for Boston 2024 to show him the door.

WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

Arkansas follows Indiana’s lead and passes a so-called religious protection law, Time reports. Several other states including Georgia and North Carolina are considering similar bills.

RELIGION

The Rev. Paul Hurley, a Catholic priest and Weymouth native, has been confirmed by the US Senate as a major general and the Army chief of chaplains.

ELECTIONS

Republican Hannah Kane of Shrewsbury wins the special election to fill the House seat vacated when Matthew Beaton resigned to become Gov. Charlie Baker’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, the Telegram & Gazette reports.

Hillary Clinton wins a head-to-head matchup against Sen. Elizabeth Warren in a New Hampshire poll of would-be Democratic presidential candidates, though voters pick Warren as the one more supportive of issues they care about.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

In a move that had been widely expected, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce has tapped Jim Rooney, the longtime head of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, as its new CEO.

Two business owners from Hingham and Hanover have been indicted separately by the grand jury after being charged by the Attorney General’s office with failing to pay unemployment tax as far back as 2009.

EDUCATION

State lawmakers are considering two separate bills that would expand preschool and kindergarten options for children in gateway cities and other low-income, low-achieving school districts.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched a two-week ad assault against Republicans they say are trying to kill the Pell Grant program.

A new report urges the state to expand the METCO program, WBUR reports.

The president of the Worcester teachers union calls on the principal of North High School to step down or be fired, the Telegram & Gazette reports.

The Middleboro school superintendent, who has had a strained relationship with the School Committee since last summer when they declined to give her a raise and extend her contract, has abruptly left farewell messages with several town officials. But no one knows if she’s actually quit.

HEALTH CARE

The US Supreme Court rules that Medicaid doctors cannot sue for higher pay, as they have for years, Governing reports.

Dr. Edward J. Benz, Jr., the chief executive of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, will step down next summer after 16 years.

Arizona has passed a new law that mandates doctors tell a patient undergoing a drug-induced abortion that the procedure is reversible even after it has begun, an assertion most physicians say is blatantly false.

TRANSPORTATION

Lawrence S. DiCara, writing for CommonWealth, says it’s time to get buses off of downtown Boston streets.

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

A new poll indicates global warming remains a second-tier issue for most Massachusetts residents, WBUR reports.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Dante Ramos writes that the availability of video surveillance images from last week’s shooting of a Boston police officer and a gunman following a Roxbury traffic stop underscores the role the technology can play in defusing potential police-community conflict. CommonWealth’s current issue has this in-depth look at the proliferation of surveillance video and its role in solving and preventing crime.

On Greater Boston, former federal judge Nancy Gertner and former Essex Assistant District Attorney Bill Fallon debate the push to eliminate minimum mandatory sentences for drug offenses. Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants raised the issue two weeks ago at a criminal justice conference at UMass Boston.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft testifies that Aaron Hernandez told him he didn’t do it.

A North Andover mother is charged with hosting a drinking party for 50 underage teens who each paid $5 to attend, the Eagle-Tribune reports.

A former West Bridgewater police officer fired for threatening to kill a woman he was allegedly in a relationship with was found not guilty of perjury as the alleged victim applauded the judge’s ruling before being removed from court.

MEDIA

Mark Wahlberg may star in a proposed second film about the Boston Marathon bombings and the search for the Tsarnaev brothers, Time reports.