Who should keep watch over the T?
Two Massachusetts lawmakers disagree on which agency should assume safety oversight of the MBTA, but they agree on one thing: The T’s watchdog should no longer be the Department of Public Utilities.
“I think the DPU has forfeited the opportunity to continue on the job,” said state Sen. Michael Barrett. “I don’t blame the agency too much. Their climate responsibilities have grown enormously.
“One of the results is that they have lost sight of the tacked-on responsibilities the Legislature has given them over the years.”
Barrett is one of two lawmakers who filed legislation that would remove safety oversight of the MBTA from the Department of Public Utilities.
If approved, the bill would establish a “commission on transportation safety oversight and regulation,” an independent public entity not subject to the supervision or control of any other executive office of the commonwealth.
“The feds tell us they do not want oversight in the hands of an agency directly responsible to the same governor who directs mass transit itself,” Barrett said. “So we’re trying to create some separation.”
The DPU’s lack of independence from the governor’s office was one of the areas the Federal Transit Administration ordered it to address, following a months-long investigation of the MBTA and its state safety oversight authority last year.
The feds also honed in on the DPU’s staffing shortages, and legislative oversight hearings of the agency, chaired by Barrett via the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, focused on staff and leadership’s lack of transit safety experience.
Barrett said current DPU transportation oversight division staff and future hires would move over to the new commission, which would be a “truly independent watchdog” over the MBTA.
State Rep. William Straus, House Chair of the Joint Committee on Transportation, filed a bill that would create a working group dedicated to establishing a framework for moving safety oversight to the Office of the Inspector General.
This office is an independent agency that prevents and detects fraud, waste and abuse of public funds and public property, and promotes transparency and efficiency in government, according to the state website.
“I’m more than open to any other ideas,” Straus said. “If there’s another way to provide independence for a safety oversight entity that has sufficient staff and resources, that would suit me just as well.”
Barrett said moving oversight to the inspector general’s office is “probably not the best approach,” because it would recreate an existing problem.
“You’ve got a transportation function that distracts the DPU from its primary mission of climate and energy,” Barrett said. “If you move things over to the inspector general, you would create a new situation in which you distract that office from its primary mission: to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse.”
A DPU spokesperson declined comment.