It’s time for Beacon Hill to start killing the MBTA’s sacred cows. Despite direct orders from the Legislature, the agency’s pension fund has stubbornly refused to abide by standard disclosure, conflict-of-interest, and open meetings rules. After this winter, when the consequences of the T’s overall mismanagement became disastrously clear, the pension board needs to stop stonewalling. If it doesn’t end its unusual practices, the Legislature and governor must force it to.
That was one of the immediate recommendations in a grim new report on the T by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which reinforces years of previous warnings about the T's parlous state. One of the most disturbing themes of the report is that, while many of the T's problems are clear enough to anyone who spent hours waiting for a train this winter, what the public doesn't know might be even more troubling. Not only does the pension board not release details, but the T doesn't even have a complete list of its unmet maintenance needs.
The pension fund is separate from the T, but half its board members are appointed by the T board and, in 2013, it received $58 million from the agency. Since the public, in turn, funds the T, taxpayers clearly have a legitimate interest in how the money is managed, but the fund has claimed that it should be regulated like a private trust instead.
That may be legal, but it's unwise: The lack of public-oversight rules has consequences, and could allow taxpayer money to be diverted from fixing the transportation needs that nearly every Boston commuter has now witnessed firsthand. For instance, the fund once loaned $7 million to a convicted racketeer, and later lost $25 million that it invested in a fund run by a recently departed former employee, a transaction that would have been barred under standard conflict-of-interest rules.
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While it may ruffle the feathers of the labor appointees to the pension board, who have resisted conforming to standard public-pension rules, bringing the T in line with other public agencies ought to be non-negotiable. The T needs a lot of help, including new funding. But it has to change its way of doing business, too, and discard outdated practices that prevent the public from knowing whether its money is well spent.
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