Thanks, but no thanks, Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro said of a state lawmaker’s proposal to move safety oversight of the MBTA into his office.
Testifying Monday at a Joint Committee on Transportation hearing, Shapiro said that he instead favors moving this watchdog role from the Department of Public Utilities to a new independent agency “focused solely on safety of the MBTA.”
He envisions two branches within this potential entity, one for the region’s subway system, which aligns with the Federal Transit Administration’s oversight authority; and a smaller one focused on everything else: buses, regional transit authorities and ferries.
“I do believe that a new safety agency, as defined by the FTA, is needed,” Shapiro said, referring to the feds’ critique in last year’s safety management inspection that state safety oversight be independent from the governor’s office.
“That agency should not be the OIG,” he added. “Rather, the OIG would have oversight of the new safety agency.”
This solution would free up the DPU to focus on its “many other statutory responsibilities,” particularly those regarding climate and energy. It would also allow the Office of the Inspector General to expand its independent statewide oversight role to this new safety agency, which is to prevent and detect fraud, waste and abuse, and monitor public and private transportation spending, he said.
Notably, the inspector general’s proposal dismissed the notion that safety oversight should be moved to his office, as suggested in legislation filed by state Rep. William Straus that was considered at a Monday hearing that Straus co-chaired.
Shapiro, instead, offered a solution that more closely aligned with the one proposed in a bill filed by state Sen. Michael Barrett, who is also seeking the establishment of a new independent commission that would take on this watchdog role.
However, they differ somewhat in their approach.
While Barrett envisions a new commission that would take on all transportation responsibilities from the DPU, Shapiro said a new agency should solely focus on safety. The more administrative tasks like setting tariffs and carrier rates and managing buses should be handled by a separate entity, Shapiro said.
Barrett, however, said keeping certain transit responsibilities within the DPU would exacerbate the situation the state is facing today, “where transportation safety and climate change are at war with each other.”
Whenever one situation explodes, like the safety failures facing the embattled MBTA, the DPU is forced to ignore climate, or vice versa when the other takes precedence at a particular moment in time, Barrett said.
Another point of disagreement revolved around the appointing authority for the new commission, as outlined in Barrett’s bill, which calls for three members apiece to be appointed by the Senate president and House speaker.
Straus said he did not think a structure where two leaders of the legislative branch appoint commission members who go on to perform executive branch functions would work.
Another transportation committee member, Sen. John Keenan, expressed similar concerns, saying that this format may be too “political” and threaten the independence that the Legislature would be seeking to establish with a new oversight authority.
Barrett said he was open to an appointing authority that was determined by the transportation committee, saying that others had been considered prior to the bill being finalized, including constitutional officers like the secretary of state and the mayor of Boston.
While there may have been points of contention, the general consensus among those who testified was that a new commission dedicated to safety oversight was the better option.
MBTA Advisory Board Executive Director Brian Kane said the new agency could be modeled over those already in place in New York City and Washington, D.C. Shapiro agreed, but said this approach should not simply be “copied and dropped into Massachusetts.
The most sobering testimony of the day, however, came from the parents of David Jones, the 40-year-old Boston University professor who died after falling through a decrepit staircase that had been closed to the public at the JFK/UMass MBTA station, in September 2021.
Calling his death “preventable,” had certain safety protocols and oversight been more stringent, Jones’ mother and and stepfather, Debra Bingham and Kent Hamilton, said they hoped it would at least lead to a “massive structural change.” Both testified in support of a new oversight commission.
Jones’ wife filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the MBTA and MassDOT last November.
“David’s mother and I are asking our state legislators to stop the deaths, stop the injuries, stop the pain and suffering caused by the lack of effective leadership and oversight,” Hamilton said. “We strongly hope David will not have died in vain and that his loss will help create the conditions to ensure a safe transportation system for Massachusetts.”