Senior Official Responsible for Big Dig Project Quits

[Judi Lynn]

Senior Official Responsible for Big Dig Project Quits

By PAM BELLUCK and KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: July 28, 2006

BOSTON, July 27 — The senior official responsible for the Big Dig resigned Thursday, handing a political victory to Gov. Mitt Romney and clearing the way for the governor to have greater control over the gigantic highway project after a woman was killed when tunnel ceiling tiles crushed her car.

Matthew J. Amorello, the chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Big Dig, agreed to resign hours before a hearing at which Governor Romney was expected to fire him.

Mr. Romney, who for several years has sought control over the independent Turnpike Authority and called for Mr. Amorello’s resignation, had begun a process to remove him after the tunnel accident on July 10, which killed Milena Del Valle, a 38-year-old mother of three.

Mr. Amorello did not arrive at the Turnpike Authority until 2002, well after the tunnel was built, but Mr. Romney said that Mr. Amorello, a former Republican state senator with no engineering credentials, was “in over his head,” had been “secretive” about sharing information with other state agencies, and had not made sure that the ceiling was adequately inspected since the tunnel opened three years ago.
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/us/28dig.html?ref=us

[TaleWgnDg]

1. Amorello has never demonstrated a political savy . . .

and here he is resigning, not late on Friday night but on a Thursday night! Can you *see* the headlines of the Boston Globe and Boston Herald tomorrow morning?

Damn. I love it.

Amorello with his tail between his legs not wanting to appear b4 a (MA Supreme Judicial Court) court-okayed executive office hearing! Hahahahahahahahaha . . . oops, I'm not showing empathy!

.

[skids]

2. The MTA...

...Having worked with some of them they aren't all bad, FWIW.

Now there are legitimate questions as to whether the agency should still exist, since it wasn't chartered as a permanent agency. The folks I've dealt with worked mainly on the ex-Boston area of the Pike, and they did good work. However, one could argue that it's easy to do good work when you get a lot of funding per foot of road compared to say the MHA.

So yes they are a bureaucracy layer and they have their issues, and no doubt the part of them working on the Dig and other Boston area projects have a few more issues than the rest, as things tend to go in this state, but there are some good people mixed in there. So I'm not too happy with Romney being the one who gets to rearrange things -- he is an R after all and despite showing here that he has no compunction about laying waste to his own kind, any shuffling he does will likely be hamfisted.

Of course he may not have time to screw things up too badly before his successor steps in.

(And on that point I'm starting to see Healey ads on TV already. Pocketbook issues. As if -- more like voter pandering that won't actually amount to anything after the fact. Oh and one "fine upstanding" portrayal. Sorry but there's that scarlet letter thing you got going on Mrs. H. Please, please not another R governor, people.)

[bluestateguy]

3. All of the Big Dig problems have been under Republican governors

And that goes back to 1991.

[anotherdrew]

4. so WHO appointed a former Republican state senator to run the MTA?

who? and why?