AT A MEETING of the MBTA board of directors on Thursday, a fairly routine discussion of the transit authority’s capital investment plan for the next five years turned into an outpouring of support for the need to increase state funding.
Normally, board meetings are highly choreographed affairs where everyone sticks pretty much to a script. At Thursday’s meeting, however, board members made clear that more money is needed for the T, even though Gov. Maura Healey has shown little enthusiasm for new taxes and fees.
The governor recently upbraided Monica Tibbits-Nutt, her transportation secretary, for suggesting border tolls and other revenue-raising measures were being considered by a task force charged with coming up with a new transportation revenue scheme for the state. Tibbits-Nutt, who chairs the task force, attended Thursday’s MBTA board meeting remotely with her video turned off. She said nothing as many of her fellow board members were calling for additional revenues.
The debate started when several board members expressed frustration that important priorities costing billions of dollars were not being properly funded in the capital investment plan, including expansion projects such as connecting the Red and Blue subway lines, extending the Green Line E branch to Hyde Square in Jamaica Plain, and extending the Silver Line connector to Everett.
Thomas McGee, an MBTA board member who previously served as a state lawmaker and the mayor of Lynn, called the lack of funding “mind-boggling in some respects.”
“The reality is we need to step up and take action as a Commonwealth,” he said. “The capital investment plans are not meeting the needs that we want to see met.”
The discussion kicked into a higher gear when Brian Kane, the executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board, which represents the 176 MBTA communities, delivered his assessment of the capital investment plan. He endorsed the plan and said it should be approved, but he wasn’t happy about it. “As inadequate as it is, it’s the best we can do,” he said.
“We just don’t have enough funding,” said Kane, who is a member of the Healey administration’s transportation funding task force. “The way the T is funded is broken.”
He noted the House and Senate in their budget proposals for the coming fiscal year provided more money for the T than the Healey administration. He urged the MBTA board to appeal to the Legislature for a specific amount of funding going forward.
“I would really urge this board to ask for a dollar figure,” he said. “The General Court will step up. They just need to know what the number is.”
McGee chimed in, asking what’s the number? Board members Chanda Smart and Mary Skelton Roberts also indicated they were frustrated with the current capital plan.
Thomas Koch, a board member who is the mayor of Quincy, said the state ranks 26th in tax burden and higher taxes should be on the table. “What is the real number?” he asked.
The calls for a specific revenue target come at a time when the task force has reportedly decided not to set a revenue target and instead plans to develop a “tool kit” for policymakers to use when they consider funding approaches. The task force is expected to come up with a report by the end of the year, allowing time to seek legislative action on whatever plan emerges early next year.
The T’s capital investment plan for 2024 through 2028 requires the transit authority to borrow nearly half of the $9.2 billion in planned spending, incurring interest that will have to be paid for decades out of the T’s operating budget.
The T is currently forecasting that it can narrowly balance its budget in the coming fiscal year, but the agency is forecasting a deficit of nearly $700 million in the following year, which begins on July 1, 2025. Kane said it may make sense to drop a planned bus network redesign from this year’s capital investment plan to reduce costs going forward.
“I’m not sure it makes sense to do bus network redesign when we’re going to be challenged to keep the lights on,” he said.
He also chided state officials for not abiding by state law by failing to file a Program for Mass Transportation, a long-range blueprint of sorts for the T’s capital investment strategy. He said the document is stalled in the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
“It’s sitting in some other office in MassDOT somewhere and who the hell knows what they’re doing. I don’t think they know what they’re doing,” Kane said. “Well, that’s just me. I can say that because I don’t work for the governor.”
MBTA officials rushed to rein the discussion in, suggesting MassDOT’s Office of Transportation Planning is putting the finishing touches on a new Program for Mass Transportation, which will likely come before the T board in June.
Lynsey Heffernan, the T’s chief of policy and strategic planning, insisted, however, that no matter how much money the T receives there will still be hard choices that will have to be made.
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