F-Line to Dudley
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2010
- Messages
- 9,196
- Reaction score
- 9,003
I'm not really seeing how bureaucratic account transfers does anything to solve the problem. Taking MBTA Transit Police off the books will not free up funding for the MBTA, it will just transfer money to the State Police. It would lighten the books and maybe alleviate debt burden? It might be worthwhile for bureaucratic efficiency to have all state law-enforcement agencies under the same umbrella (enviro police too?) but it's not really a cost-cutting measure is it?
It cleans up the oversight and back-office in much the same way the reorganization of MassDOT put things on a path to a *little* more transparency by eliminating mundane administrative redundancies at the sub-agencies. But yeah...if you need transit-specialized security it's a purely lateral transaction that saves $0 off the T's budget because they'd be primary users. That might be something to consider once the MassDOT mothership consolidation hits its second decade and tightens the screws on some redundancies, but it's a 30th priority for troubleshooting the T's budget. And not a good idea to skimp on if we want to maintain Boston's rep for having a very crime-few transit system compared to its peers.
There's too many purely lateral moves like this that seem like busywork in the name of reform but really do nothing but shuffle paperwork in a circle. Certainly a full examination of the best way forward with The Ride is worth doing, but the list of potential admin consolidations and privatization possibilities gets very small indeed once you toss the treading-water substitues or the ones that have high probability of worsening the efficiency like mutating the commuter rail contractor setup to other modes.
No easy answers. Never were easy answers.