A death foreshadowed?
ON JULY 10 , two tons of a Big Dig tunnel crashed and crushed Milena Del Valle. Her death is certainly tragic. However, we should wonder whether it is surprising.
Massachusetts has long had a political culture that has not put a premium on quality in public construction. Events over many generations show a pattern of corruption and shoddy work. Del Valle's death raises unanswered questions about whether this pattern has recurred.
Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis got his start in public life combating corruption in one of Boston's first tunnel systems. In 1901, the Legislature had voted to grant a private monopoly to build and own the subway system. Working on behalf of private businesses, Brandeis established sufficient suspicion of corruption to persuade the governor to veto the legislation.
Preventing the private monopolization of public works did not end corruption. Ironically, it created many more opportunities for it. In 1960, proceedings concerning public contractor Thomas Worcester produced compelling evidence that his company had generated $275,000 in cash, some of which was given to Massachusetts Turnpike Authority Chairman William T. Callahan (for whose son the tunnel is now named).
The Worcester case generated a highly publicized scandal. It also prompted the creation in the 1960s of the Massachusetts Crime Commission, which investigated the construction of the Boston Common underground garage.
However, by 1978 two state senators had been convicted of extortion in connection with public construction contracts that resulted in dangerous defects in the parking garage at the University of Massachusetts campus in Boston and at its library in Amherst. As a result, Governor Michael S. Dukakis appointed another special commission.
The commission was chaired by John William Ward, the president of Amherst College. It received overt support, but covert resistance, from many powerful political figures.
In 1980, the Ward Commission report demonstrated that in state public construction contracting, ``corruption" -- meaning bribery, extortion, and abuses of the campaign financing laws -- was ``a way of life in Massachusetts;" and that ``(s)hoddy work and debased standards [were] the norm.' The commission found that 76 percent of the studied buildings constructed in the previous 20 years had a structural flaw that threatened safety as a result of incompetent design or inferior construction. The estimated cost to repair the defects was $2 billion.
The Ward Commission generated some reforms. As it recommended, a state Office of Inspector General was created. However, the commission's bill was surreptitiously revised in the Legislature to prohibit the inspector general from referring evidence of a federal crime to federal prosecutors and from subpoenaing legislative records.
Ward felt that his commission's work was only a beginning. He was skeptical about whether, in the long run, its efforts would make a difference. He thought it would take more than 10 years to tell.
In 1982, acting on information developed by the Ward Commission, US Attorney William F. Weld's assistants, including myself, successfully prosecuted the chairman of the state Senate Ways and Means Committee, James Kelly, for extortion. Nevertheless, Del Valle's death suggests that Ward's skepticism may have been well founded.
It has been reported that testing in 1999 revealed that the bolt and epoxy system that held the cement panel that killed Del Valle occasionally failed, and that construction workers questioned the safety of the system. This raises obvious questions. Did ``shoddy work and debased standards" again become ``the norm?" Indeed, did corruption again become ``a way of life?"
Criminal investigations concerning Del Valle's death are being conducted. However, these investigations will not address more fundamental questions. How could a project launched by Dukakis and built substantially during Weld's tenure as governor have become so costly and catastrophic? What is there in our political culture concerning public construction that seems more powerful than even the most well-meaning leadership? And in view of the culture of corruption so vividly demonstrated by the Ward Commission in 1980, was enough done to discover, punish, and deter possible abuse while the Big Dig was being built?
Once again, there are calls for a special commission. As Ward wrote: ``Special Commissions are not a good way to conduct public life. . . . If public life relies upon spasmodic outrage to correct the ills of public life, then public life is in dire shape, indeed." However, we may be in sufficiently dire shape to need another special commission. If so, a meaningful commission will need the authority to focus on far more than engineering issues; the power to investigate possible corruption; people capable of exploring discerningly the deepest questions the Big Dig presents concerning political culture and accountability; and the resources to fulfill its mandate.
One can fairly question whether yet another commission can succeed in improving the quality of public construction and, indeed, of public service. Ward himself concluded that ``skepticism means that, whatever one's doubts, one must act as if one can make a difference." Perhaps some redeeming value can be given to Milena Del Valle's death if this generation emulates Ward's example.
Mark L. Wolf is chief judge of the US District Courts for the District of Massachusetts and chairman of the John William Ward Public Service Fellowship for Boston Latin School . 
