Transportation secretary gets our attention, but not in a good way
It’s not as if Governor Maura Healey hasn’t enough to do — what with a migrant shelter crisis on her hands and budgets still in the works and a tightening state fiscal picture. Did she really have to spend time and political capital putting out the fire started by her own transportation secretary, Monica TibbitsNutt?
The secretary, in an exceedingly candid conversation with a friendly audience at WalkMassachusetts (had no one ever told her of the dangers of playing to the crowd?), fessed up that she’s a huge fan of putting tolls on the state’s borders and more generally “going after all the people who should be giving us money to make our transportation better and our communities better.”
Well, never mind that the voters thought they were doing that when they passed the millionaires tax, there are way more pockets to be picked, according to Tibbits-Nutt.
“I’m going to talk about tolling. I’m going to talk about charging [transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft] more,” she said at the meeting earlier this month, first reported by CommonWealth Beacon. “I’m going to talk about potentially charging more for package deliveries, charging more for payroll tax — basically going after everybody who has money. And when I’m talking tolling, I’m talking at the borders. I’m not talking within Massachusetts.”
The secretary was talking about the job assigned by the governor to a Transportation Funding Task Force set up in January and due to report back by the end of this year. But clearly TibbitsNutt has her own unique take on the lay of the land.
The comments allowed New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu to take yet another potshot at our state. “Looks like Massachusetts has found yet another way to unnecessarily take your money,” Sununu said in a statement. “All the more reason for more Massachusetts residents to make the permanent move to New Hampshire.” And then there’s state Auditor Diana DiZoglio who tweeted, “creating a border war is not the answer and it’s definitely families within Massachusetts who would ultimately be hurt by this move.” The auditor comes from the border community of Methuen.
By Monday, Healey needed to step in with her gubernatorial-sized fire extinguisher.
“The Secretary’s comments do not represent the views of this administration, and to be clear, I am not proposing tolls at any border,” Healey said in a statement. “I have spoken to the Secretary and made that clear, and that I have confidence in her leadership moving forward in this important time as we work to ensure a strong and robust state transportation system.”
So the governor shut down the highly unlikely possibility of tolling on roads whose construction involved federal funding — an idea that has kicked around for well over a decade. But how on earth does she make up for the arrogant and downright insulting comments of her Cabinet secretary?
“Our top priorities are making Massachusetts a more affordable place and bringing people together to get things done,” Healey said in her statement. “The Healey-Driscoll administration is committed to collaborating with the Legislature and all stakeholders to make Massachusetts a more affordable, competitive place.”
That won’t exactly erase Tibbits-Nutt’s comment that, “The budget this year is brutal and the House came back with something even uglier,” a reference to the House version of the budget up for debate Thursday.
The secretary was also rather candid in her thoughts about those who opt for pickup trucks as their vehicle of choice.
“I am 100 percent passing judgment on someone who wants to drive basically an 18-wheeler as their personal car. We have no control over it,” she said. But hiking the excise tax on those heavier cars and trucks, Tibbits-Nutt added, “Oh, that’s already on my list.”
Nice to know.
It would also be nice to know if that Transportation Funding Task Force is going to be something other than window dressing for the elitist views of its chairperson — who has clearly already made up her mind on the key issues it is charged with deciding.