Mess transcends Matt

18 March 2005

Photographed from a certain angle, his face puffy and jowls bulging, Big Dig chief Matt Amorello certainly makes for an easy target. An ex-pol looking for a soft landing, he got the job the old- fashioned way: He knew someone. And, of course, we're all outraged over the Big Dig's leaks, overruns and scandals.

So for all of those reasons, you can't help but cheer as Gov. Mitt Romney begins anew his quest to oust Matt.

Still, if you want to be rational about this rather than emotional, if your goal is to fix and finish the project rather than simply score political points, you may want to ask: Does dumping Amorello actually help or hurt?

It's a question raised by U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-South Boston), who has noted that since its inception, the Big Dig has had half a dozen directors. Lynch, a former ironworker who in conversation a few months ago spoke so knowledgeably about slurry wall construction that one might think he should be running the project, argues it is precisely that revolving-door policy that has led to today's troubles. Good management, he thinks, requires stability. Without it, we lose "continuity, accountability and institutional memory."

He's right. By analogy, look at the experience Boston has had with its schools. The school system historically was a political football, corrupt and scandal plagued, limping from crisis to crisis, and failing fundamentally to deliver a decent education. The cause of that, many argued, lay in its management. Superintendents came and went. Many had great plans for improvement but none had the time or political support to put those into place.

The test of that critique came in 1995, with the appointment of Thomas Payzant as superintendent and a commitment by Mayor Thomas Menino to keep him there for the long haul. A decade later, Payzant is still around and the answer seems clear. Boston's schools still have many problems, yet there is little question that things are better. Payzant has had the time to assess principals, moving out the bad and putting in better. He's been able to restructure many of the high schools and develop innovative programs such as those on display at the city's pilot schools. More importantly, he's been able to create a new culture, one that's focused on children and achievement, and to a large degree has been able to instill that throughout the system.

Stability can yield results.

It's not enough though. With the Big Dig, there is one other element that's missing: accountability.

Go back to Boston's experience with its schools. Aside from Payzant's hire, the other significant change that occurred at the time was the elimination of an elected school committee. Up until then, the relationship between the school committee and the mayor had been fractious at best. Because the chief executive officer of the city - the mayor - had no responsibility for the schools' success, he usually would ignore them, using the system occasionally as a political whipping boy but otherwise having little interest in their success or failure. In addition, while the school committee arguably was accountable to voters, its fragmented nature and low voter turnout made it easy for members to escape responsibility for the system's failures.

The same problem plagues the Big Dig. The project is governed by the quasi-independent Turnpike Authority. Yes, governors can indirectly influence the authority with their power to choose new board members. But that's a slow and cumbersome process. Real accountability, in the sense of being genuinely answerable to someone, is missing. We end up getting a dysfunctional system where it is easier to bash someone than it is to solve a problem.

Amorello may well be gone soon, disrupting the project even further. And the Pike's independence means we will be stuck with a dynamic that encourages blame and discourages sound management. It's all good political theater, perhaps, but a lousy way to run a government.