Managing the unmanageable at the Mass. Pike
The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is facing an unprecedented crisis. It is $2.2 billion in debt from the Big Dig. Its bonds are one notch above junk status, and Governor Deval Patrick has floated a plan to dismantle the authority rather than try to rescue it from collapse. The man in the middle of the mess is Turnpike Authority executive director Alan LeBovidge, who is struggling to manage problems that even he concedes are unmanageable. LeBovidge spoke recently with Globe reporter Casey Ross about his unusual life in government and the bizarre twists it's taken at the topsy-turvy turnpike.
After a long career in private business and then at the Department of Revenue, why take this job that involves so much political conflict? I don't worry about the political side of it. Everything I've done since I retired from the dreaded private sector has been involved with not-for-profit entities. Government is a not-for-profit entity, and so is the turnpike. I just view it as a problem that needs solutions, and if I can help find them, then I'm happy to do that. I've just had the run of luck to have probably three of the most hated jobs in the state: 1. Commissioner of DOR, 2. Chair of the Springfield Finance Control Board, 3. and now the Mass. Turnpike, which has a different set of problems, some of which are solvable and some of which are just not solvable.
What has surprised you about the difficulties of operating the turnpike? The surprise was really the depth of the problem caused by the Big Dig. They had management issues. The deferred maintenance and the continuing maintenance of the Big Dig adds to the debt. We don't want to take a really valuable asset and let it deteriorate. It's an unbelievable project when you go into the bowels and see it, but it's going to take much more than I anticipated. I understood the management issues. I understood the overuse of consultants at the Pike. But you can't appreciate that it's going to take $100 million a year to take care of this.
How do you approach the job every day, with so many things you've got to balance, the daily maintenance, the fire drills that come up, and the financial problems? My background is more on the financial side, so I try to focus more on that. You learn from people. You learn from everybody. I always tell people I learn from them, I don't say whether I learned not to do what they did, or to do what they did. A lot of people you learn not to do what they did, because they do some really stupid things in my mind. So I try to learn from that and say, 'Look it, get good people, get out of their way, and just stay informed.'
Is the turnpike obsolete as an organization? I don't know if obsolete is the right word. I think it needs to be changed, the organization. The governor came out within the last month at a press conference and said that he's directed the secretary of transportation to come up with a plan to dismantle the Pike. That can mean a lot of things. I didn't get inside his brain to find out exactly what it means. But sometimes to save the organization, you have to change the organization, so I support that. It's a vital asset. It's the most important road in Massachusetts. But the structure of the authority should be changed, and there are variations to how you can do it. We'll see how it comes out.
What is the biggest obstacle to reforming the authority? There is no way the Mass. Pike can handle the costs that were on it. It wasn't built for that. It was built as a road, and all of a sudden it has this mega project on it, most of which is untolled and I think will remain untolled. I don't think there's any appetite for tolls on Interstate 93. But the problem here is maintenance costs and a debt burden that's killing the Pike. It's what's happened to America: too much debt. People borrowed on their credit cards, they borrowed their home equity, they borrowed on everything.
Having worked in the world of finance, at PricewaterhouseCoopers for three decades and then at the Department of Revenue, you must have an opinion on what it's going to take to bring us out of the financial malaise. It's going to be tough to get out of it, I mean really tough. I believe America is a strong enough country that it will come back. The question is how long is it going to take. We're still a superpower, but we might not be the financial superpower that we were before. 