Two Massachusetts lawmakers disagree on which company ought to assume security oversight of the MBTA, however they agree on one factor: The T’s watchdog ought to not be the Department of Public Utilities.
“I think the DPU has forfeited the opportunity to continue on the job,” stated state Sen. Michael Barrett. “I don’t blame the company an excessive amount of. Their local weather obligations have grown enormously.
“One of the results is that they have lost sight of the tacked-on responsibilities the Legislature has given them over the years.”
Barrett is one in every of two lawmakers who filed laws that will take away security oversight of the MBTA from the Department of Public Utilities.
If authorised, the invoice would set up a “commission on transportation safety oversight and regulation,” an impartial public entity not topic to the supervision or management of another government workplace of the commonwealth.
“The feds tell us they do not want oversight in the hands of an agency directly responsible to the same governor who directs mass transit itself,” Barrett stated. “So we’re trying to create some separation.”
The DPU’s lack of independence from the governor’s workplace was one of many areas the Federal Transit Administration ordered it to handle, following a months-long investigation of the MBTA and its state security oversight authority final 12 months.
The feds additionally honed in on the DPU’s staffing shortages, and legislative oversight hearings of the company, chaired by Barrett by way of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, centered on workers and management’s lack of transit security expertise.
Barrett stated present DPU transportation oversight division workers and future hires would transfer over to the brand new fee, which might be a “truly independent watchdog” over the MBTA.
State Rep. William Straus, House Chair of the Joint Committee on Transportation, filed a invoice that will create a working group devoted to establishing a framework for shifting security oversight to the Office of the Inspector General.
This workplace is an impartial company that forestalls and detects fraud, waste and abuse of public funds and public property, and promotes transparency and effectivity in authorities, in keeping with the state web site.
“I’m more than open to any other ideas,” Straus stated. “If there’s another way to provide independence for a safety oversight entity that has sufficient staff and resources, that would suit me just as well.”
Barrett stated shifting oversight to the inspector common’s workplace is “probably not the best approach,” as a result of it could recreate an current downside.
“You’ve got a transportation function that distracts the DPU from its primary mission of climate and energy,” Barrett stated. “If you move things over to the inspector general, you would create a new situation in which you distract that office from its primary mission: to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse.”
A DPU spokesperson declined remark.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”