The MBTA failed to win friends or influence people with its plan to auction off billboard advertising rights in 60 locations in eastern Massachusetts. Predictably, some affected communities are seething. Leaving aside the issue of visual pollution along the state's highways and byways (Dan Grabauskas, how could you???), the plan is expected bring in the […]
State House News Service
Posted inState House News Service, The Download, Transportation
Yes to regional equity, no to privatization: The transportation reform debate continues
Secretary of Transportation James Aloisi, who's engaged in a high-profile tussle with Senate President Therese Murray over the contours of transportation reform, shifted gears by giving a shout out to the other "r" in the "reform before revenue" tug of war. That would be regional equity. Playing down the revenue piece at yesterday's Joint Committee […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Watch the video of MassINC’s “No Contest” forum on the shortage of candidates in Mass.
The Bay State's longtime shortage of candidates for public office was the topic of "No Contest: Why So Few People Run for Office in Massachusetts – and What to Do About It," a MassINC forum held last night at the UMass Club in Boston. State House News Service recorded the event and has let us post their […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download, Transportation
Money for nothing: Still dire straits at the MBTA
Reforms alone aren’t going to cut it for the MB (as in “broke”) TA. That’s the song MBTA general manger Dan Grabauskas has been singing for years. Asked this morning as he headed into a legislative briefing if there are specific reforms that could be delivered in time to avert draconian cuts, Grabauskas served up […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics, State House News Service, The Download
“Starting Line 2009” tackles DeLeo, State House scandals, and the bleak economy
Is new House Speaker Robert DeLeo really just "a hamburger guy", and are other members of the House no more than "sheep"? Do voters pay more attention to public pension abuses than to the state's fiscal crisis? Last Friday, four of the state's most perceptive political jounalists talked about these and other questions at "Starting Line […]
Posted inEnvironment, State House News Service, The Download, Transportation
Up, up, and away in my beautiful gas tax trial balloon…
When last we saw Team Trans, we were waiting on the mother of all transportation plans, the one that would save our roads, our bridges, and our mass transit from a fate worse than…our current fate. Instead, Team Trans delivers not the plan we’ve given up waiting for, but a proposal for a gas tax […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download, Transportation
Pennies saved at the MBTA
Having your employer pay for your $10 commercial driver's license sounds fair. So the MBTA used to send bus drivers a $10 check reimbursing them for their license fees. They could look forward to the “pinkish” (by one account) checks on or near their birthdays. An average of 2,100 employees received this annual perk. But as the […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download, Uncategorized
Starting Line 2009: February 6 at the Parker House
It's the start of the legislative year on Beacon Hill — and the middle of a national economic crisis that brings increased demand, diminished resources and high expectations. How will the legislature respond? What priorities will emerge? Who will step up to the plate? And what is most at risk? Learn what Massachusetts’s leading political […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, State House News Service, The Download
Kayyem hailed for “responder revolution” in state homeland security
Juliette Kayyem, the Massachusetts undersecretary for homeland security, gets kudos for her success in shaping up Boston's notoriously territorial first responders from HSToday Magazine, a McLean, Virginia-based monthly that provides news and analysis of the homeland security sector. (See Page 11 of the PDF.) "The Boston Police Department, State Police and Executive Office of Public Safety […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download, Transportation
The MBTA isn’t the only transit agency in dire straits
The MBTA isn’t the only transit agency in the country with fare hikes or service cuts on the horizon. Transportation for America, "a broad coalition of housing, environmental, public health, urban planning, transportation, equitable development, and other organizations," took a look at 38 transit agencies from Seattle to Washington, D.C. that face fare increases, service […]