Last night, Secretary of Transportation Jim Aloisi called for a sense of urgency in reorganizing and reviving the state's transport bureacracies. "This is the moment," he said. The plan to take down the tolls outside 128 and raise the gas tax 19 cents, he said, cannot wait until next year. The MBTA faces a $165 million operating deficit, the T and the Turnpike face crippling debt, and many regional transit authorities are facing deficits and cutting services. And in 2010, he pointed out, many politicians will be averse to raising the gas tax in an election year.
I asked about the MBTA pension system. "23-and-out" (23 years of service = fully-vested pension) is gone; instead 55 will be the new retirement age. That may be an improvement, although it doesn't seem particularly Spartan to me. Aloisi does not expect to run into labor disputes over reforming the T's pensions; but made it sound like dealing with labor issues at the Turnpike will be on a case-by-case basis.
Governor Patrick famously quipped that Aloisi "knows where the bodies are buried"; among other things, Patrick seemed to be referring to legislators' tendency to stash friends and relatives at the Turnpike -- famously and extensively documented by Howie Carr. It will be interesting to see how Aloisi deals with the inside-the-building politics of getting rid of this old beloved custom.
Famously or infamously, the new plan envisions a Vehicle Mile Traveled tracking program, in which RFID chips are used to measure how much a vehicle is driven. Aloisi says this comes out of a concern that gas tax revenue may shrink as consumers move to more efficient cars, even as they continue to use roads and public transit. He compared reliance on the gas tax to the MBTA's share of a penny on the sales tax: As sales tax revenue has declined, the MBTA has been stuck with that falling revenue. The Vehicle Mile Traveled (VMT) fee would be creditable against the gas tax, in this scheme.
Aloisi insisted that privacy would be maintained, that the state would not misuse the data; and expressed relief that this system has been piloted (though not universally implemented) in Oregon, and is apparently feasible -- at least technically. We'll see about the politics. As Ezra Klein serendipitously writes today about VMT, "Crap. This is hard to sell." Still, we might do well to keep an open mind, noting well the necessity to plan for future diminishing revenues for un-diminished demand for services.
