One day this sieve will drown thousands of people-ng-
=============
Bargain for Bechtel, catastrophe for the rest of us
By Howie Carr | Friday, January 25, 2008 |
This is then-Gov. Mitt Romney on the Big Dig in 2006: “People should not have to drive through Turnpike tunnels with their fingers crossed.”
This is Attorney General Martha Coakley on the Big Dig this week: “We’re keeping our fingers crossed.”
That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? It doesn’t make Romney a hero, nor Coakley a villain. But it does illustrate what the state got for our $15 billion investment:
A leaky, badly built series of tunnels that are already in such poor shape that when the state and the feds negotiated a settlement, they had to make sure to include a “catastrophic reopener” in the event of a “catastrophic event.”
In other words, if the “Poseidon Adventure” is remade under the city of Boston, as we’re all keeping our fingers crossed it won’t be, the state - the survivors, you might say - gets to sue Bechtel et al.
“We hope it will not occur,” Coakley said of the so-called catastrophic event. “We are, uh, hoping it will not, we are keeping our fingers crossed.”
Don’t forget to knock on wood too, Martha.
A “catastrophic event.” That’s what the lawyers call it. The unions have a different phrase: “Don’t kill the job!” So what if a few motorists have to drown, as long as the OT keeps coming. Thank God for the Democratic Convention of 2004 - that was the excuse they needed to tear down the elevated Central Artery, for aesthetic reasons. Now they can’t reroute traffic back above ground. In the event of the catastrophic event, they’ll have to rebuild.
Bechtel will be the low bidder.
You want some more then-and-now quotes?
This is Sen. John Kerry, always right on the money, circa 2003: “This tunnel will be a bargain!”
Coakley, on Wednesday: “We can well ask whether this was a good bargain, whether we got what we paid for I do not have that answer for you today.”
That’s OK, because everybody else has the answer. The answer is no, it was not a bargain. The commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States of America, which picked up 40 percent of the tab, were both robbed.
When they started planning Tip’s tunnel back in the late 1980s, it cost a quarter to drive through the Allston tolls. Now it costs five times that, and they want to raise the tolls again, for the second time this year, to $1.50, or maybe it’s up to $1.75 now. A round trip on the Tobin Bridge has gone from 50 cents to three bucks.
So this boondoggle to end all boondoggles results in $458 million in “reparations” on a $15 billion project. Imagine if you stuck up a bank for $15,000, shot a teller and finally ended up trapped inside, surrounded by cops. The SWAT team uses a bullhorn to tell you to come out with your hands up. Instead you tell them, OK, coppers, here’s the deal. I give you back 458 bucks, and in return, I walk outta here scot-free, with the rest of the loot.
That’s the deal Bechtel and company worked out. Granted, if the case had gone to trial in the breathtakingly corrupt courts of Massachusetts, the taxpayers might have gotten nothing back. The state’s previous AG, Tom Reilly, tried to settle for $86 million - talk about selling an orchard for an apple. But Mike Sullivan, the U.S. attorney, thankfully nixed that giveaway.
Still, even if it could have been worse, when the boss of Bechtel is crying crocodile tears over Milena Del Valle, you have to figure the taxpayers blinked before the greedheads did.
“We believe,” said the chairman of Bechtel, “that this resolution is in the interests of all concerned.”
So Bechtel and its pals hand over $458 million of their ill-gotten gains, of which $100 million is already spent to patch up this month’s leaks inside Interstate Atlantis. But hey, it’s all over now, at least until the next “catastrophic event.”
Keep your fingers crossed.
Article URL: bostonherald.com |
