Baker finally fills MBTA board
After a rocky few months of mishaps for the MBTA, and after a nearly threemonth wait, Gov. Charlie Baker appointed five members to the T’s seven-member Board of Directors.
“The expertise and diversity of perspectives that make up this Board will allow the MBTA to continue to focus on providing safe and reliable service to riders as it invests record levels of funding across the system,” Baker said in a statement Thursday.
Transportation advocates criticized Baker last month for failing to appoint the board members after the Fiscal Management Control Board, which Baker created in 2015 as a watchdog for the organization, lapsed at the end of June.
Baker created the board after a disastrous year felled by an extremely snowy winter and several accidents, and which aimed to get the organization’s finances under control. Baker then announced the creation of the Board of Directors in late July, but was slow to appoint the members.
In the interim, several MBTA accidents occurred, including Red and Green Line crashes, an escalator malfunction in Back Bay that injured nine, and the death of a Boston University professor who fell through a rusted-out Dorchester staircase near the JFK/UMass stop.
The MBTA Board of Directors will consist of seven members, one of whom will be Transportation Secretary and MassDOT CEO Jamey Tesler. The MBTA Advisory Board appointed its member, Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, in August. He was required to have municipal government experience in the MBTA’s service area and experience in transportation operations or other related fields.
Baker appointed the remaining five members, including one person who’s a rider and resident of an “environmental justice population” and one recommended by the president of the AFL-CIO. The chair, Betsy Taylor, has served as the treasurer and chair of the Finance & Audit Committee for the MassDOT Board since 2015 and also worked at Massport.
Tesler said he’s hoping the board continues addressing “ridership and revenue challenges” wrought by the pandemic, while making investments in initiatives that improve reliability and safety.
MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak said in a statement that he’s looking forward to working with the board.
The MBTA still faces its fair share of financial challenges, though: a report released last month by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation said the T is headed toward “fiscal calamity” in just a few years, needing $1.25 billion in new annual revenue.
Josh Ostroff, interim director at Transportation for Massachusetts, welcomed the news but cautioned that the members “have their work cut out for them.”