SAFETY OVERSIGHT DERAILED?
New DPU appointments hint at watchdog change
Notably missing from Gov. Maura Healey’s three appointments to the Department of Public Utilities was a commissioner with transit safety expertise — a deficiency highlighted by state and federal lawmakers in past MBTA oversight hearings.
Two observers said the move to appoint commissioners focused on climate and energy rather than transportation signals a larger plan from Gov. Maura Healey to shift MBTA safety oversight from the DPU to a new state agency, pointing to legislation that has already been filed for such a change.
But the Healey administration denied this yesterday, saying that the governor’s appointments are part of her efforts to create a “21st-century DPU, which includes expanded, in-house expertise in transit safety.”
Healey’s EEA Secretary Rebecca Tepper appointed Jamie Van Nostrand, a 30year veteran of the energy industry, as DPU chair and Staci Rubin, vice president of environmental justice at the Conservation Law Foundation, as commissioner.
Cecile Fraser, an attorney with more than a decade of experience in the energy and utilities industry, was reappointed as the third commissioner.
“The DPU is committed to ensuring the safety and reliability of the MBTA under its new leadership, including through increased safety staffing, regular inspections and transparent communication with the agency,” said Maria Hardiman, a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
“Already, the DPU has made significant progress in expanding its rail transit commission,” she added. “The DPU will continue to work diligently to identify safety issues and protect riders.”
But, given the safety issues that continue to plague the MBTA and, until last week, the hands-off approach the DPU appeared to be taking in its oversight role — highlighted by the feds in their safety management inspection report last year — two observers said the appointments are laying the groundwork for a larger change.
“I think it speaks to the governor’s plan to break away transit safety oversight from the DPU and put it somewhere else, which I think she’s committed to,” said Brian Kane, executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board. “And there’s some stuff filed that would do that, so I have a feeling that this is in anticipation of that.”
State Sen. Michael Barrett and Rep. William Straus, respective chairs of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy and Joint Committee on Transportation, both filed legislation that would remove MBTA safety oversight from the DPU.
The bills offer different approaches, but each seeks a new T watchdog that is independent from the governor’s purview, a key criticism the Federal Transit Administration lodged about the DPU in its safety management inspection report.
Barrett, whose bill would establish a new commission on transportation safety oversight and regulation for the MBTA, said Wednesday that he liked Healey’s DPU appointments.
The expertise among the two new commissioners and the holdover member indicated to him that the DPU would be freed up to focus on climate and energy, once its transit responsibilities are stripped.
“The DPU has its plate overflowing with incredibly complicated energy and environmental choices,” Barrett said. “I think this is an acknowledgment that climate and energy is the name of the game as far as the DPU is concerned. It always was, but now even more so.
“Just given the nature of the climate crisis, transportation safety and the regulation of common carriers really need to go somewhere else.”
Barrett said he plans to testify for his bill when it comes before the Joint Committee on Transportation, which he expects will set a hearing sometime within the next 12 months.
A campaign spokesperson for Healey said in October that “as governor, Maura will instruct her transportation safety chief to review the Department of Public Utilities’ role in MBTA safety oversight.
The governor missed her 60-day self-appointed deadline to hire a transportation safety chief last week. A Healey spokesperson directed comment on her DPU appointments and the agency’s future oversight role to Energy and Environmental Affairs.
The EEA defended DPU’s oversight role on Wednesday, pointing to the 35 track inspection activities its rail transit division performed in February and March, to verify the MBTA’s work associated with a corrective action plan.
The rail transit director noted poor track conditions during these inspections and decided to perform additional inspections, the EEA said.
Last Thursday, the MBTA implemented a systemwide 10-25 mph speed restriction on all subway lines, following negative findings from a Red Line track inspection conducted by the DPU.
Block speed restrictions remain in place on the Red, Blue and Orange Lines, and speeds remain capped at 25 mph on the entire Green and Mattapan Lines.
Kane said this shows the DPU “has heard the urgency of the need for them to get out there and do more,” but Barrett says “it’s too little, too late.”
“The staff that took the recent DPU action should survive and move over into an agency that can give it the support it deserves.”
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, who criticized DPU oversight in an October Senate hearing in Boston, did not respond to a request for comment.