Massachusetts News Staff

February 24--With federal investigators on their way to Boston this week to ask about the $1.4 billion shortfall in Big Dig estimates, and while state politicians look to assess the blame for massive cost overruns, and the governor takes the heat for a cover-up, and Turnpike Chairman James Kerasiotes ducks for cover from political enemies out to settle a few old scores, and Congressman Joe Moakley says the project might never have been approved had Congress known of the real costs way back when, the question on no one’s mind is the one David Tuerck, head of the Beacon Hill Institute, says needs to be explored: Why didn’t they know?

"The only thing I can figure out is, there is a perceived political gain from either ignoring this matter or professing that it is under control," Tuerck said in an interview with Massachusetts News. "It doesn’t take a lot of careful analysis to get a handle on what these costs were. It didn’t take very much for us to do this back in 1993. I don’t think anybody else who thought about it very long would have been fooled either."

But fooled is what everyone is now saying they were. Kerasiotes assured Department of Transportation officials last fall that the project was not over budget, and project manager Patrick Moynihan says he didn’t know of an overrun until about a year ago. 

Tuerck says if state and elected officials were fooled, it was of their own doing. "I don’t think it is remarkable that we came pretty close to figuring the costs" of the project seven years ago, when the Beacon Hill Institute stood alone in warning of massive cost overruns. "What I think is remarkable is the perception that there is political payoff in pretending that the project is going to cost a lot less, or ignoring it," he said.

Whatever the reason, taxpayers are now faced with the prospect of paying for the error and being told the tax relief promised will have to be put off. "The moral for this from the point of view of the taxpayer is something like this: Not only are elected officials not to be held accountable for this, but taxpayers are now to sacrifice by denying themselves a tax cut. As it turns out, the ballot may be the only way for taxpayers to express their outrage over the situation." 

While most of the press has focused on the $1.4 billion shortfall, Massachusetts News has focused almost exclusively on the denials being proffered by elected officials who say they are just now learning of the debt problem. Tuerck says the press may have something to do with the surprise. 

In 1993 when the Beacon Hill Institute released a white paper on the likely costs, few papers or other media picked up their forecast that the $2.5 billion project would actually cost $12.4 billion before it was finished. "We sent [press releases] out for all the media. So it was available for anyone who wanted to read it," Tuerck said.

"It might be that the press was somewhat to blame, too, for ignoring it as they did. We didn’t get any coverage for it. So it becomes part of a broader culture of denial. We have both the major papers in Boston enthusiastic supporters of this project and we have a culture in which the respectable thing to do is to operate always as a cheerleader for this kind of spending. So doomsayers like us are ignored because it becomes uncomfortable to face reality."

It may have taken years, but reality is finally setting in with the impact of an exploding bomb. Tuerck says he is planning on addressing the issue in a strong letter to the Congressional Transportation Committee Chairman, Frank Wilson from Virginia. 
 

RETURN TO FRONT PAGE