Mass Pike "tourism" pork cut - pols defied by CEO LeBovidge

For more than a decade the Turnpike Authority has been a regular dispenser of political pork in Massachusetts. Each year since 1996 for example under the guise of tourist promotion it has provided scores of handouts to groups around the state. By Washington DC pork standards the Boston pork has been pretty trivial - tens of thousands from Beacon Hill compared to multi-millions from Capitol Hill.

The Turnpike Authority's tourism grant program is required by law to be:

- between $500k and $1 million/year spent outside Boston (west of MA128 the Boston beltway)

- at least $250k/year to be handed out within Boston

In practice the program has recently been kept to the minimum or below specified by the pols: about $500k outside Boston and $200k within Boston for a total of around $700k.

The kinds of grants are illustrated by some of the applications this year:

- $103k advertising for Greater Springfield Visitors Bureau

- $80k for Boston Harbor Islands

- $145k Berkshire Visitors Bureau

- $10k marketing a Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival

- $38k Nuestras Raices a self-styled economic, human and community development organization with projects in food and environmental programs

- $70k for an Arts in the District event in Westfield

- $100k for signs, streetlighting and tree projects in Chicaopee

- $15k for a harbor walk and promotional website in Winthrop

- $35k Community for Sustaining Agriculture South Deerfeild

- $10k Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts

- $55k Lupa Game Farm in Ludlow

- $150 Worcester Center for the Performing Arts

- $15k marketing Passport Holyoake a group of tourist attractions

Charity or pork

Many of these can be defended as local coooperative support, or as charity type contributions.

They are of course liable to be steered to the politically connected and to become part of quasi-corrupt or corrupt favor trading known as pork.

But all these arguments become academic when the Turnpike is facing a severe financial crunch, when it is deferring toll system modernization, reducing positions and is in so much financial trouble that it's looking to the state highway department for help. (Toll increases have been ruled out - for now - by the Administration.)

Several weeks ago Turnpike CEO Alan LeBovidge said the grants would have to be suspended because of the financial crisis, and this week he acted. The hundred odd organizations applying for the grants were told by email that the program was cancelled.

LeBovidge told reporters it would be "ridiculous" to continue with grants, given the Turnpike's financial difficulties.

Is it legal to suspend the grants?

The Turnpike CEO is testing the limits of his power as an executive - facing down the pols.

The grants program is required in a bill put through the legislature and signed into law by Gov William Weld (Repub) back in 1996. The law has never been repealed.

Called a tourism grant program the law says: "The (Turnpike) authority shall establish and implement for the turnpike a local tourism grant..."

Is LeBovidge defying the law in closing down the program?

This wouldn't be unbostonian or even unamerican.

After all this country was founded on the breaking of bad laws, not least in Boston, their "Tea party" and the tarring and feathering of tax collectors, and all that.

The question is whether LeBovidge can get away with it.

So far it looks like he can.

Reading the local press there has been hardly a peep out of the politicians and even the recipients aren't complaining too loudly - saying things like: "We weren't exactly waiting by the mail box for the check."

The 1996 law does make the grants "subject to the rights of the holders of notes or bonds of the authority" so if he gets hauled before legislators LeBovidge can say that his suspension of the program is necessary to protect bondholder rights.

Text of the tourism pork law

Full text of law repealed by LeBovidge:

PART I. ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT

TITLE XIV. PUBLIC WAYS AND WORKS

CHAPTER 81A. THE MASSACHUSETTS TURNPIKE AUTHORITY AND THE METROPOLITAN HIGHWAY SYSTEM

Chapter 81A: Section 18. Local tourism grant program

Section 18. The authority shall establish and implement for the turnpike a local tourism grant program for the benefit of cities and towns located within the turnpike corridor. Such grant program shall be funded, subject to the rights of the holders of notes or bonds of the authority issued for the turnpike, from turnpike revenues, on an annual basis in an amount of not less than $500,000 nor more than $1,000,000; provided, however, that notwithstanding any requirements of this section, for each of the calendar years nineteen hundred and ninety-seven, nineteen hundred and ninety-eight and nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, a sum of not less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and not more than three hundred thousand dollars allocable to the tourism grant program shall be directed annually to the Commonwealth Visitor Information Services Travel Alliance established by section nineteen of chapter one hundred and two of the acts of nineteen hundred and ninety-five or to such cities, towns or other public entities that said Travel Alliance may recommend to the authority. Said grant program shall be administered in accordance with procedures promulgated under chapter thirty A.

The authority shall also establish and implement for the metropolitan highway system a local tourism grant program for the benefit of cities and towns through which the metropolitan highway system runs and the municipalities contiguous to such cities and towns. Said grant program shall be funded, subject to the rights of the holders of notes or bonds of the authority issued for the metropolitan highway system, from metropolitan highway system revenues, on an annual basis in an amount not less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Such grant program shall be administered in accordance with procedures promulgated under said chapter thirty A. END TEXT

TOLLROADSnews 2008-08-17