The Boston Globe
If you might have $600 million in your pocket and consistently have trouble budgeting, how do you solve your money problems?
If you're Gov. Maura Healey's latest transportation task force, hire a team of consultants who charge as much as $610 an hour.
Looking at a Budget gap of $628 million For the following fiscal 12 months, the MBTA signed a $450,000 contract in April with consulting firm Ernst & Young to check how transportation is and could possibly be funded in Massachusetts and the way other states and countries are doing so.
The hourly rate for the nine consultants ranges from $244 to $610.
The contract is considered one of the primary initiatives overseen by a brand new task force created by Healey to handle among the state's long-standing transportation problems. Consultants will prepare the Task Force's final report on sustainable financing for transportation in Massachusetts by December. According to the contract.
But some Task force members expressed concerns in regards to the reliance on expensive consultants, whose firms are sometimes hired by state agencies to do all types of presidency work.
“The last thing Massachusetts needs is another consultant-generated report,” said Brian Kane, who serves as executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board. “What we need is political action.”
State transportation agency MassDOT spokeswoman Amelia Aubourg said the brand new contract is an addition to an existing contract the consulting firm entered into with the MBTA and that MassDOT will reimburse the T.
“We value thought leadership and wanted to examine what is happening in the national landscape when it comes to transportation funding,” Aubourg said in an announcement. “It helps to have these economists who have analyzed the industry and have access to provide the full spectrum of what is possible now and in the future.”
Ernst & Young didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Much of the research into the issues and solutions of federal transportation financing that Ernst & Young consultants were hired to conduct has already been conducted by government agencies And outside Organizations in recent times. MBTA officials have also provided the agency's board with details about what other states are doing.
Healey founded the Transportation Financing Task Force in January when she released them Budget proposal for the fiscal 12 months starting in Julywhich provides $172 million to shut the T's estimated $628 million budget gap. The task force, Healey said, is predicted to submit recommendations to her by the tip of the 12 months for a statewide “long-term, sustainable transportation financing plan.”
Healey announced the duty force's 31 appointments in February, a few of whom are members of her government. The chair is Transport Minister Monica Tibbits-Nutt and the deputy chair is Administration and Finance Minister Matthew Gorzkowicz.
The MBTA pays Ernst & Young's senior managing director, Jon Godsmark and two other senior executives, Tom Rousakis and Andrew Phillips, were paid $610 an hour for his or her services. LinkedIn profiles of the advisers show that Godsmark and Phillips are based in Washington DC and Rousakis is predicated in New York.
For a task force meeting this month, consultants were tasked with preparing a “presentation of an analysis of current public transportation funding sources, projections of future revenues and key drivers,” in response to a duplicate of the contract. Next month, consultants are expected to organize a “presentation summarizing international and U.S. peer analysis to identify a number of potential new transportation funding sources.” In July and August they are going to present possible sources of revenue and the “potential economic and social impact” of those sources.
By October, consultants will draft a “technical report for review by task force members” after which submit a final report for review by task force members in the primary week of December, in response to the contract.
The contract requires consultants to satisfy weekly with MassDOT, Administration & Finance and the MBTA.
A Globe report earlier this 12 months found that Minnesota and New York Passed latest taxes to balance the operating budgets of its largest transit agencies for years to come back.
Last month, Healey told a business group that she “no plans to propose new taxes or increase existing ones” and destroying an idea popularized by Tibbits-Nutt to levy customs duties at state borders.
Some task members expressed frustration at the choice to have interaction the consultants without jointly determining what the scope of the contract ought to be. Members said they’d not seen the contract.
Member of the duty force Amie Shei, executive director of the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts, said there may be “no transparency” about what consultants are focused on.
“More transparency about what consultants are working on would be helpful so we don’t duplicate work,” she said. “For someone serving Central Massachusetts, I want to know that regional equity is a consideration and that consultants don’t just focus on the MBTA.”
Kane, of the MBTA advisory committee, said he doubts MassDOT will reimburse the MBTA for the contract, citing the proven fact that the department still hasn't reimbursed the T for $7 million in transportation mitigation costs in the course of the 12 months Closure of the Sumner Tunnel last 12 months. MassDOT's Aubourg said the MBTA shall be reimbursed once the consultants' work is complete.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this again,” he said of the research. The advisory board has prepared Dozens of reports about MBTA funds.
Task force member Jim Rooney, CEO of the Boston Chamber of Commerce and former general manager of the T, said he believes the duty force needs outside help and praised Ernst & Young's qualifications, saying it was useful having latest eyes is the issue.
However, the duty force's end product will likely look less like a path forward and more like a “menu of possible solutions.”
“I don’t think we can definitively say, here’s the plan,” Rooney said.
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