How to Dislodge an Appointee

Today, the Boston Globe noted that John Moscardelli, a member of the Turnpike Board, has resigned, giving Governor Deval Patrick free reign to appoint a majority of the board. Why did Moscardelli resign? He wasn't speaking to the media, but this says it all:

Moscardelli, who was appointed to the board in 2002, resigned a month after a change in state law stripped board members of several perks, including health insurance and a $25,800 annual stipend. It was the only state board that paid benefits, state officials said.

Coincidence? You decide.

Keep the Fast Lane Discounts

Tucked in at the end of today's Globe story about Deval Patrick's opposition to toll removal on the MassPike, is this little bit of information about Fast Lane discounts.

The cost of continuing the Fast Lane discounts, estimated at $12.2 million annually, is increasingly viewed as a luxury when the authority faces a number of financial unknowns, including the final cost of repairing the Sumner and Callahan tunnels and the annual cost of maintaining Interstate 93, which the authority has budgeted at $25 million but could go as high as $80 million, according to a board member. The authority would not make public its 2007 operating budget or give the size of its operating deficit.

The one-time cost of repairing the collapsed ceiling in the I-90 connector will be at least $34 million, officials said yesterday.

Patrick offered qualified support for the Fast Lane discount program, which takes 25 cents off the $1 toll on the turnpike extension in Boston, and 50 cents off the $3 toll at the Boston Harbor tunnels.

"If the discount can be sustained, I think it ought to be sustained," Patrick said.

I've mentioned this before. If we're going to have tolls, we should be doing everything in our power to make transponders widespread. More people using transponders reduces the cost of taking tolls and means that more of the money collected goes towards the actual roads, rather than to overhead. Part of that means keeping, and perhaps even expanding the Fast Lane discounts.

I'm also a little confused as to why people are surprised that Patrick is opposing the toll removal. If I recall correctly, he came out against this about a month ago. There needs to be some way to make up the $114 million in yearly revenue, which is required for highway maintenance. Even Republican state Senator Bob Hedlund (R-Weymouth) admitted today on WGBH's Greater Boston that if we took down the tolls, we'd have to raise the gas tax to make up the lost revenue.

Tolls for Thee

On Monday, Edward L. Glaeser, economics professor at Harvard and director of the the Kennedy School's Rappaport Institute, wrote a Boston Globe op/ed detailing some of the reasons why tolls should not be removed on the Mass. Turnpike. I agree with almost everything in the piece, but I particularly wanted to highlight two ideas Glaeser had for making those tolls work better:

First, we should acknowledge that, because congestion changes from hour to hour, the social cost of driving varies over the day. Time-sensitive tolls can help move drivers from commuting during peak hours to less congested periods. We could double tolls during peak hours and cut them to zero during off-peak hours. Alternatively, the toll could rise slowly from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. and then decline as traffic eases off. Since trucks use up the most space, tolls should rise particularly steeply for trucks driving during rush hour.

Second, we should recognize that the administrative costs for cash payments are about three times higher than the same costs for payments made with fast lane devices. Since people who use fast lanes save the system money, their tolls should be reduced. Tolls on those who pay cash should be substantially increased, perhaps even doubled. Already, some tolls are lower for fast lane users, but this effort needs to be expanded. Alternatively, higher tolls on cash-paying drivers can be used to make transponders free.

This is exactly right, I think. The Turnpike Authority should be pushing those fast lane transponders on the public. In my opinion, they've been very slow to move away from toll collectors to electronic payments, and they've really offered very little by way of incentive for drivers to switch. Increasing the use of the transponders would make Glaeser's first point easier to implement. The computerized payment system would allow us to do creative things with the tolls, such as separate peak and off-peak tolls, or discount programs for commuters.

It only makes sense -- roads should be paid for in part if not in total by the people who drive on them. Tolls are the way to accomplish this, and there are ways we should be using them to make them more efficient and more fair.

Bad Reasons To Oppose Toll Elimination

There are good reasons to oppose taking the tolls down, most importantly because we use those revenues for maintaining the Turnpike. Today, though, the Associated Press reported on what I consider to be the worst possible objection to the plan. From the article:

On Tuesday the heads of Teamsters Union Local 127 and United Steelworkers of America District 4 pledged to use "every legal tactic" to block the plan, which would cost hundreds of union jobs.

I appreciate that the very purpose of unions is to protect peoples' jobs, but I have to say that the reason that we have tolls is not to provide employment for toll takers. Frankly, my preference is for more dedicated Fast Lanes over staffed toll booths anyway. That said, objecting to the removal of tolls on the Pike because it might cost toll collector jobs is like protecting the income tax because you're worried that the Department of Revenue might go out of business. It's completely missing the point.

Who's Minding the Store at MassPike?

The Boston Globe reported today that several Amorello loyalists left the Turnpike Authority today as chairman Matt Amorello's resignation took effect. I'm wondering if anyone's minding the store over at the Turnpike offices during the transition period. After all, let's not forget what happened the last time a Mass Pike Chairman was ousted:

[The Inspector General's] Office's investigation has determined that thousands of pages of documents are missing. When asked by an investigator from this Office about the whereabouts of the missing documents, the Turnpike Chairman stated that after his arrival at the Turnpike, in April 2000, file cabinets had been emptied and computer hard drives had been "sand blasted so data could never be recovered from them, and so that the computers wouldn't even turn on." According to the Communications Security Systems Directorate of the U.S. Army, computer hard drives are "sand blasted" for data security reasons as follows: "[the] equipment is taken completely apart and the hard drive disk is literally sandblasted with a sandblaster so as to render the disk permanently unreadable."

The Chairman also informed an investigator from this Office that after the Chairman's arrival at the Turnpike, a former MassHighway staff person was caught on video surveillance tapes removing boxes of material from Turnpike offices at Ten Park Plaza in Boston. This removal of material occurred during four trespasses or break-ins over a three-day period. The purpose of the trespass was presumably to remove files from Turnpike offices.

The last thing we need is a repeat of these shenanigans in the chaos of employee turnover.

At Least There Are No Missiles

Sure, we've got deadly ceiling tiles, but at least no one has yet crashed into a missile on the Turnpike yet. I lived for a while near where this happened, where I-95 meets the Hutch in the Bronx. Everything turned out OK since the missile was just a replica used for training but it had to have been pretty harrowing for the first responders.

Another Patronage Appointment for Romney

The AP is reporting tonight that Governor Mitt Romney has appointed former Republican legislative candidate Mary Connaughton to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Connaughton, if you recall, lost a mean spirited race in 2004 against Democrat Tom Sannicandro to fill the seat Karen Spilka vacated when she ran (successfully) for the state Senate. Romney stumped hard for Connaughton, and the state Republicans spent just over $23,700 on her campaign. On election day, all Connaughton and Team Reform had to show for their efforts, however, was a dog bite and a thirty point loss.

As the rumor goes, Katherine Abbot, the former head of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, and her chief of staff were fired in part because they refused to hire Connaughton. Sure, the official word was that the axe came down after some students were injured in an accident caused by an unplowed sidewalk, but the impression that DCR is a haven for hacks and retreads just won't fade away. Apparently Romney never stopped looking for a slot to plug Connaughton into, and today he was able put her in a place where he and state Republicans could finally start to get a return for their investment.

By the way, during the 2004 campaign, Connaughton campaigned in favor of merging the Turnpike Authority with MassHighway. One wonders if her determination will continue now that she runs the risk of making her own job redundant.

The Turnpike Authority Has Gone Rogue!

It's news like this that makes me inclined to go with Romney's plan to scrap the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority all together and absorb it into MassHighway. Apparently, Matt Amorello may be ready to contest the term length of one of his allies on the board which, barring legal action, would be up later this year. From the Globe:

[T]he Turnpike Authority asserts that legislation passed last year extends the terms of certain board members, including the Amorello ally, Richard K. Anderson, for six more years. That would mean that Anderson, who has been on the board since 2002, would not step down until 2011.

"Over the past months there have been media reports that there would be a vacancy in the board," Turnpike lawyer Michael D. Powers wrote in the letter to Jack Cline, Romney's appointments secretary, dated June 29. "To avoid confusion about this matter, I thought it would be prudent to write to you. None of the current members' terms expires this year."

You know, I can understand why you would want the Turnpike Authority to be semi-independent, but this kind of petty political maneuvering is beyond even the Beacon Hill back-benchers and big-money political donors that populate the board. Amorello's claim is completely ridiculous. Are we really to believe that the Legislature tacked on six years to every Board member's term just so Matt Amorello can keep the Authority as his private fiefdom? State Senator Steven Baddour (D-Methuen) says "even a first-year law student could see" that the provision that extends the terms of board members doesn't take effect until July 2007. It's particularly galling that the Board would attempt this blatant exercise in avoiding accountability while the Central Artery Tunnel has more holes than the plot of a Matrix sequel.