For the last three months, Phil Eng has cut ribbons, weathered historic snowstorms, and sought to maintain trust in the MBTA while wearing two hats: T general manager and acting transportation secretary.
Serving as general manager of the beleaguered Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is a demanding job. Addressing the state’s aging bridges and roads as secretary poses a whole host of other challenges.
Eng’s boss, Governor Maura Healey, has so far given no indication she is trying to replace Eng in either role. She has not said whether she plans to make Eng transportation secretary permanently or replace him with someone new.
A spokesperson for the governor declined to answer questions about whether Healey plans to hire a new secretary, her vision for the role, or why she’s struggled to retain a permanent person in it. Spokesperson Karissa Hand said Healey hired Eng because of his track record, and “he is doing good work.”
Healey has struggled to keep someone in the transportation secretary role, and it’s a notoriously hard job to hire for in state government. Healey has had three transportation secretaries in her first three years as governor, including one who served for just eight months.
Balancing those challenges with the job of MBTA manager is a lot for one person to take on, said Monica Tibbits-Nutt, who stepped down from the secretary role in October.
“It really is 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said. “It has to be the central part of your life.”
Jim Aloisi, another former state transportation secretary, said that job is “one of the most demanding jobs in state government” — as is the job leading the T.
The roster of qualified candidates for the challenging secretary role is necessarily short, but not nonexistent, Aloisi said.
The requisite skills are diverse: experience in the field, management skills, cool temperament under high pressure, and savvy engagement with the public and the media.
The secretary inherits an aging transportation system from rail to roads to bridges. Commuters also have high expectations, policy-watchers said, and funding for the system is a perennial issue.
“They have a lot on their plate,” said Senator Brendan Crighton, cochair of the Legislature’s transportation committee. “You are constantly putting out fires left and right.”
He said that while keeping Eng at the helm for the time being will bring “stability as we juggle external issues,” ultimately, there should be different people serving each role.
“I am not concerned in the short term or even the immediate term,” the Lynn Democrat said. “Longer term, it makes sense to have separate roles. It’s not about the person, it’s about the structure.”
Tibbits-Nutt came into the role after Healey’s first transportation chief, Gina Fiandaca, abruptly left in August 2023 less than eight months after she started, making her the shortest-serving secretary appointed to the role.
No governor had more secretaries than Deval Patrick: five in eight years.
The last known instance of a secretary concurrently serving as the T’s general manager was Barry Locke, who became secretary in 1979 and added general manager to his job title in 1980. (He was indicted on corruption charges related to a kickback scheme in 1981.)
There’s a reason the circumstance is so rare. Very few people have both an understanding of rapid transit and knowledge of highways, bridges, and other infrastructure. And few with that skill set would accept a public sector wage, said Tom Glynn, who served as the general manager of the T from 1989 to 1991.
In addition to the MBTA, the transportation secretary also oversees the highway system and other infrastructure, such as the Cape Cod bridges, and sits on the board of Massport, which operates Logan Airport.
“Phil is great because he’s done it all before,” Glynn said, noting Eng’s past as president of New York’s Long Island Rail Road, interim president of New York City Transit, and years of service as an engineer at the New York State Department of Transportation.
In an election year when Healey is running for a second term, some say she has little reason to make a change.
“Voters will punish failure. But if [transit] is improving, she will get quiet credit,” said Ray La Raja, a political science professor and codirector of the UMass Poll at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “If I was governor I would say ‘full steam ahead’ with Phil Eng.”
Healey’s selection for transportation secretary will be guided, in no small part, by her policy priorities and management style, Aloisi said. He expects Healey will keep Eng by her side, at least until the election.
“Phil Eng is someone that [Healey] seems to have a very high level of confidence in and trust in,” he said. “She’s running for reelection, so it makes a lot of sense for her to have by her side a person who she feels very comfortable with, who has performed and who gets high marks from everybody.”
Glynn also predicted Eng may stay a while.
“The job is his to lose, and so far, he’s demonstrated how skillful he is,” he said.
One of Healey’s political opponents, former T general manager Brian Shortsleeve, said the turnover from the secretary position reflects on the governor’s leadership. It’s impossible to do both jobs indefinitely, he added.
“I have never worked so hard in my life,” said Shortsleeve, who served as GM from 2015 to 2017 and is now running in the Republican primary for governor. “Running the T is a full-time job. The fact that Maura Healey can’t find a transportation secretary is just another side of the failure of her leadership and her administration.”
Whether Eng has the desire, or wherewithal, to juggle the roles is another matter. Eng has said he wouldn’t have accepted the MassDOT job if he felt incapable of wearing both hats.
Neither the MBTA nor MassDOT would say whether Eng plans, or wants, to remain in both roles.
“This is not the first time that he has served dual roles within and across multiple agencies,” said MBTA spokesperson Gabrielle Mondestin.
As general manager of the T, Eng made just over $509,000 in 2025, while the secretary job pays just over $200,000. He’s currently drawing only his T salary.
Jaime Moore-Carrillo of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross.