Working out the details locally

KUDOS TO Governor Deval Patrick, who has now ventured where Bill Weld and Mitt Romney both feared to tread.

In a commendable act of political courage, the administration this week took aim at the multimillion-dollar boondoggle of police details.

The proposed regulations that Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen announced on Wednesday would establish a presumption for using civilian flagmen instead of police details at construction sites on state roads where the speed limit is less than 45 miles an hour. A presumption in favor of flaggers would also govern state projects on similar local roads, unless those municipalities already have police contracts specifying details. Civilian flagmen could also be used on higher speed, but lower traffic, state roads.

Even under the proposed regulations, Massachusetts state roads will still rely more heavily on police details than most other states do. But let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good. All in all, this is a significant change.

"Nobody, including his Republican predecessors, has had the guts to take this on," notes David Tuerck, executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute and an important voice for reform of the detail system.

With that past as prologue, Patrick's carefully crafted policy represents a crucial first step.

Now, many details occur on local projects on local roads, and the new state regulations won't compel a change of practice there.

But the new policy will offer a strong example to municipalities - as well as a rallying standard for those fed up with wasteful, costly details.

And there are legions of those fed-up folks. A recent Suffolk University poll found that 86 percent of state voters favored letting flaggers direct traffic at worksites. Certainly if everyone who has e-mailed me on this subject started demanding that their local officials follow the governor's lead, the reform effort would quickly pick up steam.

It's a battle that will have to be fought on several fronts, however. Some cities and towns have a requirement for details written into their ordinances or bylaws. A similar requirement is also sometimes included in police contracts.

Boston has both - and that can create an elaborate exercise in buck-passing, as I discovered when I called a number of Boston's elected leaders.

"The City Council would have to change the ordinance for us to be able to benefit from this," said Dot Joyce, spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas Menino.

"Even if we were to change the ordinance, it would have zero impact" because the detail system is written into the police contract, maintains City Council President Maureen Feeney; the real way for detail reform to come about, Feeney says, would be for the mayor to negotiate those reforms in the next police contract.

"The city ordinance has to be changed before we can collectively bargain it," counters Joyce.

So who's right?

"It is clearly the ordinance that drives the contract," says Sam Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau.

But let's be clear: The mayor isn't calling for the council to alter the ordinance. Nor would he have any appetite for changing the detail system if the council did. His view is that details add police officers to the street at someone else's expense, Joyce says.

That overlooks this economic reality: "The gas, electric, and phone companies simply pass the costs of details on to their customers," notes Tyler.

Like Menino, citywide councilors Michael Flaherty and Stephen Murphy support the current detail system.

John Connolly bobbed and weaved.

However, it was a refreshing surprise to talk to second-term councilor Sam Yoon. Yoon, who chairs the council's postaudit and oversight committee, says that in the wake of the Patrick administration's action, he intends to hold a hearing to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of the city's detail ordinance.

"We as a city council should absolutely look at this," Yoon said. "There should be no sacred cows that get in the way of deciding how best to use taxpayer money."

Why, there's a councilor acting the way a mayor should. That is, like a leader who puts taxpayers and ratepayers first.

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com.