No more taxes for T
There are many unanswered questions about the frightening incident at Back Bay Station on Wednesday, when smoke filled the cars of an Orange Line train and panicked passengers broke windows to escape. Ah, but when has a shortage of information ever stopped tax-hungry pols from molding events to their needs?
Yes, the incident has inspired a number of predictable calls for higher taxes to fund the MBTA. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, for one, raised the possibility of a “temporary” tax or fee to help overhaul the T, and specifically mentioned the sales tax.
But taxpayers have increased their investment in the MBTA nearly every year — and the idea that taxpayers in western Massachusetts should pay even more because of a legacy of mismanagement is ludicrous — as is the notion that any tax in Massachusetts is ever “temporary.” Seven years later we’re still paying a 6.25 percent sales tax, which was supposed to be a bridge to get us through the Great Recession (and which has greatly benefited the T). Sixteen years have passed since voters mandated an income tax rollback and we’re still not all the way there yet.
Meanwhile Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu won the
non sequitur award in the wake of the Orange Line incident, with her tweet wondering “how often does this have to happen before @MBTA makes real plan & investments to fix infrastructure, expand service?”
Had she stopped after “fix infrastructure” we might have shared her frustration (although the Baker administration is knee-deep in efforts to do just that). But a call to “expand service”? What on earth does that have to do with what transpired at Back Bay station?
The Boston Carmen’s Union, for its part, used the incident to make a pitch for a return to two operators on board subway trains, as if that would have been a game-changer.
This frightening incident merits an investigation and a plan to reduce the likelihood that it could happen again. In particular passengers deserve to know why the operator made no announcement about an evacuation, which compelled some of them to break their way out of the train.
But given how much the state has sunk into the T, the politicians ought to take a breath and count to 10 before they issue their boilerplate demand for more money.