Governor Charlie Baker on Wednesday introduced his proposal to establish a new set of overseers for the MBTA. Maybe it will stick this year.
As part of his budget filing for the upcoming fiscal year, Baker proposed a new seven-member governing board for the transit agency that would take over next summer. The current board is on a one-year holdover from its legislated expiration in 2020.
If approved by the Legislature, the new body would include the state secretary of transportation, five other appointees of the governor, and another appointee who would represent the dozens of cities and towns served by the agency. It would take over the reins from the agency’s current governing board, the Fiscal and Management Control Board, which has led the T since 2015.
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because the MBTA was in the exact same place a year ago. Baker proposed a very similar structure in last year’s budget proposal; at the time, the control board was set to expire in summer 2020.
But the state Legislature was unable to settle the matter, and instead extended the current board’s term for an extra year, in which it presided over recent decisions by MBTA to reduce service during the pandemic because of low ridership.
Whoever winds up overseeing the agency will have the power to set policies and budgets, approve fare hikes and service levels, and plot major projects and other infrastructure work.
Lawmakers, too, will likely take the issue up again in the coming months. Based on last year’s debates, lawmakers and the Baker administration will have to sort out a few key differences.
Among them: Should the city of Boston have its own seat on the oversight panel, or is it enough to give just one seat for all MBTA-area municipalities? Should the board be permanent or, like the current one, expire in a few years?
And should the board have the power to hire and fire the MBTA’s general manager? Today, the transportation secretary has that power, but transfering it to the board would give its members more power and independence.
The current board was established following the calamitous winter transit disaster of 2015 and is set to expire during a global pandemic that has brought different challenges.
And for an unpaid position, the five-member board has fairly stable. Three members have served through the entire six-year tenure: Joseph Aiello, Brian Lang, and Monica Tibbits-Nutt. The other two members are Chrystal Kornegay and Tim Sullivan, who respectively are current and former state housing officials.
Another original control board member, Steve Poftak, is now the MBTA’s general manager.
Although they are appointed by Baker, members have sometimes bucked the governor. For example, the board recently called for new sources of funding to improve the agency’s finances, and Tibbits-Nutt fired off a series of social media posts criticizing Baker’s vetos on transportation-related legislation.
Former Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack, who left for the Biden administration on Tuesday, was not a board member but attended nearly every meeting and often chimed in during policy disputes. Her departure could mark a significant change in the board’s dynamics in its closing months.
Adam Vaccaro can be reached at adam.vaccaro@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @adamtvaccaro.
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January 30, 2021 at 01:01PM
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Baker tries again to set up new board to oversee the MBTA - The Boston Globe
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