I am Not a Lawyer

If I were, I might have known this:

1819. That’s the year state lawmakers last updated penalties for corporations convicted of involuntary manslaughter, the charge now facing a Big Dig epoxy supplier. Consequently, the maximum penalty is $1,000. Lawmakers want to stiffen the law, but it won’t matter in this case, because the attorney general is bound to the law on the books at the time of the tunnel collapse.

And taken it into account in the post I wrote Friday. It makes sense, but it also means that if Martha Coakley comes down with involuntary manslaughter charges for any of the other Big Dig companies, she'll be stuck with the $1,000.

First Things First

Yesterday, the Boston Phoenix's David Bernstein had this to say about the $1,000 criminal indictment faced by Big Dig epoxy supplier Powers Fasteners:

[I]t was pretty clear at yesterday afternoon's press conference that AG Martha Coakley wanted to use the indictment of Powers Fasteners as an impetus to spur the state to change its ridiculous cap on criminal penalties for corporations. Good for her.

Today, it looks like that's exactly what's happening. From the Boston Herald:

With an angry public demanding justice in the tunnel disaster, top state lawmakers vowed yesterday to stiffen an ancient 1819 manslaughter law that could let a Big Dig company get off with a meager $1,000 fine if found guilty in the death of Milena Del Valle.

"Clearly, we've got to take action," said State Sen. Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester), who vowed to file legislation within days. "If we're going to have criminal sanctions, they need to mean something and they must match the seriousness of this situation."

While some may be clamoring for Coakley to take down the major players in the Big Dig investigation like Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff, Gannett Fleming, or Modern Continental, it makes perfect sense to me for her to wait for the legislature to raise the absurdly low cap before going public with any charges against those firms. Can you imagine the outcry if Bechtel were the company facing just a $1,000 fine? Hopefully the legislature will act quickly to update the manslaughter penalties for corporations.

More Tunnel Trouble

Earlier this week, I expressed my skepticism as to whether the state could be trusted to replace the Storrow drive tunnel with a new, wider tunnel that could accommodate both directions of traffic. This Herald story detailing how state engineers knew they used the wrong epoxy in the section of tunnel that collapsed last year makes me even more reluctant to have the state embark on another tunnel project -- no matter how much simpler it would be. From the article (via BMG):

The documents, disclosed yesterday by attorneys for the epoxy supplier, reveal a chain of communication in which state officials were clearly informed of the deficiencies of the glue that failed and caused 26 tons of concrete to crash onto the roadway of the Interstate 90 Seaport connector tunnel on July 10 of last year. [Milena] Del Valle was a passenger in a car crushed by the falling concrete ceiling.

The documents also show that those engineers called for a more robust standard epoxy, but that either the contractor or another Big Dig firm still failed to use the right product.

Of course, don't forget that the media has been burned by phony memos before. This memo is being produced by the epoxy manufacturer to protect them from any liability. It also does not seem to be in the document dump the state sent to the National Transportation Safety Board in the course of their investigation. Was the memo lost, simply overlooked, or was someone engaged in butt-covering of their own?

New Tunnel or No Tunnel?

Today's Boston Globe brings us two pieces of tunnel-related news. The first is that the Storrow Drive Tunnel may be beyond repair and need to be replaced. The Globe notes that it was not waterproofed when it was constructed over fifty years ago and it has, perhaps unsurprisingly, suffered extensive water damage over the past half-century. This means, of course, that the planned rehabilitation of Storrow Drive will be neither cheap nor quick.

In addition, a local activist has shown that there are more accidents in the I-93 tunnel than in other tunnels in the area. This news, in my opinion is less important given that I would expect the O'Neill tunnel to have more accidents than the Sumner or Callahan tunnels given that it's longer, wider, less straight, and more heavily traveled than the two older East Boston tunnels and that area residents are still not used to the traffic patterns on the relatively new road. Frankly, I would have been astonished if there were not more accidents on I-93.

The Globe also presents two alternatives for replacing the Storrow tunnel. One would put the westbound as well as the eastbound traffic underground, allowing the city to expand the nearby Esplanade. The other would get rid of the tunnel altogether, and bring the eastbound traffic above ground. Here's my question: After all we've gone through with other area tunnels in not just the past year, but the past 15, does anyone in the Greater Boston area really have an appetite for more? Sure, it would be nice to connect the Esplanade with the rest of the city by burying that portion of Storrow, but what assurances do we have that such a project would not just turn into a Mini-Dig?

"Fed Up"

Friday's Boston Herald blasted the $333,000,000 price tag that the Turnpike Authority just added to the bill for the Big Dig. The total cost of the project is slowly but surely creeping up on the $15 billion mark. From the article:

The cost correction comes as [Governor Deval] Patrick tries to exert more control over the project and the Turnpike Authority, whose shaky management has provoked federal probes into the project’s finances and construction quality.

"We're fed up with this," an administration source told the Herald last night. "We want transparency and we want an accurate reflection of the costs. We have little or no confidence that the Turnpike Authority can manage itself, let alone the Big Dig."

"Fed up" does not even begin to describe how I imagine most Massachusetts residents feel about the Big Dig. The exasperation with the project is a big part of the reason why Bay State voters have turned to people outside of the political establishment in the last two gubernatorial elections. What I'd like to know is where the Governor is in implementing these recommendations he had after the 2006 death of Milena Del Valle in the I-90 Connector tunnel. Where's the independent auditor? Where's the "stem-to-stern" review? Where is the effort to hold contractors accountable? What ever happened to Senator Marian Walsh's call for a Big Dig Review Board?

I'm encouraged that some local pols are calling to eliminate the Turnpike Authority, but that still doesn't address the question of where all that money went, whether the project is safe, and how the government can restore enough public confidence to undertake a large public works project ever again.

Globe's McNamara in Bizarro World

Globe columnist Eileen McNamara writes today that now, with the city paralyzed by gridlock after last week's tunnel collapse is the perfect time to get commuters more interested in investing in public transit. McNamara apparently lives in some kind of Bizarro world where after someone is killed by a poorly managed public works project, the public is ready for another one. From her column:

Skyrocketing gas prices and the collapse of ceiling panels in the Interstate 90 connector could give fresh political impetus to a plan floated last spring by mass transit advocates to invest $2 billion in transportation construction and expansion projects. The money would come from existing tax revenue and new fees on everything from hotels to rental cars.

It sounded implausible in May. But the gridlock of the last week might have cooled the fevered antitax climate that has doomed so many initiatives for the communal good in the past 25 years...

I'm not so sure. I'm afraid that the opposite dynamic will come into play. People are angry, and angry people don't want to put even more money into a new project that could end up causing just as many problems as the CA/Tastrophe. McNamara forgets that residents of the state that do not have to commute into Boston (yes, there are such people) are not going to want to have anything to do with another expensive public works project for a long time. I, for one, would rather sit in my car than give Beacon Hill hacks another opportunity to line their pockets until they can prove to me that they've cleaned up their act. I am certainly no antitax crusader, so if even I am thinking that way, there's no way there's any public appetite for further tranportation investment right now, despite all the gridlock.

It's not about whether extending the Blue line or building the North Station-South Station rail link are good ideas. It's about whether state residents will trust anyone on Beacon Hill to effectively manage and oversee a public works project ever again. After the scandals, inaction and outright lies of the past 15 years, from where I sit the answer is 'not likely'.