Definitely no love lost between Wu and Walsh | Hall pass for striking teachers? | Another MBTA boondoggle | Designated survivor | Lame Ideas | Quick hits | About Contrarian Boston |
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White elephant: The MBTA’s new all-electronic fare system is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
Another day and another billion dollars down the drain at the MBTA.
The MBTA’s shambolic $567 million contract for new Red and Orange line cars was bad enough. Years behind schedule, Chinese train manufacturer CRRC has managed to produce only a trickle of new cars, more than a few of them with serious defects.
But the T’s deal with global transportation and defense firm Cubic Corp. for what was supposed to be a cutting edge fare system may be worse, by some measures.
The cost of installing the new contactless payment system jumped from $723 million in 2017, to $935 million in 2021.
Oh yeah, and the system was supposed to have been in place three years ago. Now Cubic is saying it will take until 2025.
Taking into account inflation and yet more delays, we are likely now looking at a price tag north of $1 billion.
“I am not sure either the $935 million cost or the 2025 completion date are really realistic anymore, to be honest,” Charlie Chieppo, a senior fellow at the Pioneer Institute who has closely followed the project, told Contrarian Boston.
And while Cubic clearly has some issues to face up to, the T is definitely driving the train on this fiasco.
Consider this: New York’s transit authority also inked a deal in 2017 with Cubic for a new contactless payment system. It has now in been in service for more than two years, and cost $656 million.
The T has gone silent on this mess, never a good sign, with a spokesperson not responding to questions from Contrarian Boston on the current price tag for Cubic’s fancy new fare system.
The only good thing is that, in contrast to the holdup on those new Orange and Red Line cars, no one will lose life or limb because the T doesn’t have a contactless payment system.
“No one is going to die because this project is another year delayed - it’s just a reflection of how bad the T is right now,” one transportation insider told CB.
Not living up to its name: On debate over slavery reparations, The Boston Globe’s Ideas section strikes out
One of the most puzzling things about the Globe in recent years is how a major newspaper can manage to put out an Ideas section that, week after week, is maddeningly esoteric and too often just plain dull.
A case in point: This past Sunday’s Ideas section, which featured a lengthy piece on a mental health initiative in Zimbabwe and its potential lessons for the U.S.
Let’s just say it’s the kind of piece you’d expect to get the juices going of an editor at the International Journal of Mental Health Systems, not the Globe.
Buried deep inside the section was Jeff Jacoby’s provocative, but well-reasoned, argument against reparations for slavery - rather timely, given that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu this week unveiled a panel to study the issue.
With pieces like these, the Globe’s Ideas section is not exactly setting the world on fire
So why not put the piece by Jacoby, the Globe’s token conservative, on the front of the Ideas section alongside another column by an advocate or expert arguing for the need for reparations?
Now that would have been interesting. But then again, maybe being interesting is not the point of the Ideas section.
President Walsh? Former Boston Mayor came within a heartbeat - Ok, several heartbeats - of the presidency Tuesday night
That’s because was Walsh was chosen as the designated survivor for President Biden’s State of the Union address.
For a few hours, Walsh was hidden away at an undisclosed location in case a stray comet or a North Korean missile just happened to slam into the Capitol.
Walsh is 11th in the line of succession behind obvious people like Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, along with some less obvious candidates like Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (got to keep those farms going).
Marty Walsh was the designated survivor Tuesday night in case of a North Korean missile attack or other catastrophe
Now one of the most successful of Biden’s cabinet members, Walsh is expected to announce soon that he will be leaving as labor secretary to take a new job as head of the NHL Players Union.
An avid, lifelong Bruins fan, Walsh got his start as a union construction worker, rising to become head of the city’s building trades union and then, of course, mayor.
Definitely sounds like a dream job for Walsh.
Marty, Part II: After Wu throws shade, Walsh offers a veiled defense of his mayoral accomplishments
During her State of the City address, Mayor Michelle Wu painted a rather grim picture of life in Boston under her predecessor.
While never mentioning him by name, she characterized Boston in the Walsh years as overrun with development and with a focus on “building buildings rather than communities.”
Well, two can play at that game. Walsh, during a recent speech before the business-backed New England Council, attempted to set the record straight - of course, all without mentioning Wu by name.
Walsh touted the 50,000 housing units approved by City Hall during his time as mayor, $48 billion in new development, and a triple A bond rating, according to a story by the Dorchester Reporter’s Gintautas Dumcius.
But he also stressed his administration’s “historic investments in our neighborhoods,” including “fully renovated libraries in Roxbury, Dorchester, Roslindale and other places.”
Certainly sounds like Walsh was sending a message.
City Hall shuffle: Boston gets a new director of planning
That would be Aimee Chambers, former planning chief for Hartford, Conn.
Chambers - not to be confused with Chief of Planning Arthur Jemison, who will be her boss - will head the planning team at the Boston Planning & Development Agency.
But not for long, for Chambers and other city planners are slated to move to a new City Planning & Design Department, part of Mayor Michelle Wu’s sweeping revamp of how the city oversees and guides new development.
Stay tuned.
So who really benefits here? Giving teachers a green light to strike would hurt students
By David Mancuso
It’s not a secret that Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) and its president Max Page have two obsessions: one is to the kill the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, the other is to win the legal right for teachers to strike in the Commonwealth. The fight to cancel the MCAS is for the future. The right to strike is the topic grabbing the headlines now.
Earlier this week the Boston Globe's Editorial Board called on lawmakers to resist the Sirens’ call to change the law denying Page and the teachers the right to go on strike.
The Globe made a point to differentiate between dedicated, hard-working teachers and administrators and the state’s largest union, which seems bent on accruing enough power to hold students and their families hostage with a comprehensive work stoppage. To its credit, the Globe questioned whether the right to strike is in the best interest of students.
Later in the week, Gov. Maura Healey told the Globe she did not support the MTA’s push for the right to strike, declaring she’s “not a fan” of the proposal. “While I have a lot of sympathy and want to make sure that ... educators are getting paid what they should for the important work that they do, it’s still paramount that our kids be in schools.” Healey has shown real leadership by putting student interests before that of the adults in the system. One can hope she will show as much when the conversation turns to preserving the MCAS.
Page didn’t like the Globe editorial board’s perspective, complaining to Contrarian Boston in an email that the editorial “obsessively focused on educator unions and completely ignored the role of the employer in bargaining. The Globe failed to mention the interminable delays…designed to avoid good faith bargaining and rely on outside parties such as state mediators to settle contracts.”
Then Page blamed school committees for hiding behind high-priced union-busting lawyers. Apparently, high-priced pro-union lawyers at the MTA are different.
Page is holding out hope that he can change Healey’s mind and convince lawmakers to adopt his legislation to permit strikes. He may be thinking that a rope-a-dope strategy will win the day. “Our bill stipulates that a union could not strike before completing six months of good faith bargaining,” he told Contrarian Boston. That sets up the MTA’s ability to play the stall game they accuse other of, knowing that in the end, collective bargaining can set the table with their demands. Then they can use the nuclear option of a strike to get what they want anyway.
To Page, the right to strike is all about balance. “The legislation restoring the right to strike is crafted to prevent the crises that have led to strikes by balancing power at the bargaining table,” he writes. However, Page’s definition of “balance” is having the right to strike, which, in turn, will somehow prevent strikes. And balance looks a lot like being able to keep students out of the classroom until you get what you want, without the influence of pesky third-party mediators in the room.
Of course, that sort of balance is grand if you believe that what is good for a labor union and its members is good for students. When asked how the right to strike will specifically benefit students, Page suggested that when the adults working conditions are good, then student learning conditions will be good as well.
“The right to strike levels the playing field in bargaining so educators can bargain for whatever learning conditions that their students need,” the MTA chief contends.
Conditions for learning are one thing, actual learning is another. Page did not address the actual learning part of the question.
Since May of 2022, when Page took over the MTA, teachers in Woburn, Brookline, Malden, and Haverhill have gone on strike.
When asked if the MTA will be picking up the tab for the illegal actions taken by their members, or will leave it to local union members and their supporters in the communities in question to pick up the bill, Page offered up a nonanswer. “Individual MTA locals and members, in addition to community supporters, have been making contributions to local associations that have been ordered to pay fines,” he argues.
That sounds like a “no.” Local teachers and their supporters, not the state’s largest union, will be paying for violations of the very law that Page and the MTA want to change.
It feels like this kerfuffle is all about power, but the teachers’ union is already very, very powerful. For some perspective as of their latest public tax filing: The MTA has a war chest of close to $100 million, annual revenue between $45-$50 million to fuel that war chest, 115,000 members, 376 employees, and senior management earning an average of $187,000 in base pay. Reports have indicated that MTA had invested close to $40 million to advocate for passage of the millionaires’ tax ballot question and was similarly active years back in the fight against increasing charter school options.
If you don’t think the MTA is already powerful, try to get anyone in business or education to offer constructive criticism of the organization on the record. Off the record, some will say that they keep their opinions to themselves to avoid risking the wrath and backlash of the union, its members, or pro-MTA politicians. Perhaps Healey’s position will inspire a bit of courage elsewhere.
Healey is standing up the MTA on behalf of students. So is the Boston Globe. Lawmakers should get on board too and reject the idea of authorizing teacher strikes, and soon.
Clarification: An earlier version of the story inadvertently implied that local governments might be forced to pick up the cost of penalties and damages owed by teachers’ unions in Woburn, Haverhill, Malden and Brookline for their illegal strikes. Local teachers and their supporters will pay the costs.
Quick hits:
Well, they definitely need it: “Long overlooked, child care industry may finally get a permanent lifeline from Beacon Hill” Boston Globe
Remember that line from that old Ricky Nelson song - “You can’t please everybody, so you’ve got to please yourself?” Wu’s rent control plan is taking fire from both activists and landlords: “When it comes to rent control, Wu’s plan aims for a delicate balance” Boston Globe
Shrewd move. Republicans will someday regret underestimating him: “Biden names Republicans seeking changes to Medicare, Social Security” Washington Post
What is Contrarian Boston?
I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
· Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;
· The media and why it does what it does;
· Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;
· And whatever else catches our fancy.