Massport slow to end Logan Airport parking perks

The Massachusetts Port Authority has for years allowed a host of former and current board members and others with ties to the agency to rack up thousands of dollars worth of free parking at Logan International Airport, a perk that just ended.

Massport has spent the last several years getting back so-called Silver Passes and on Dec. 15 finally shut off those few remaining holders of the lifetime card, citing a new parking system and security considerations. The passes also allowed for free passage over the Tobin Bridge, avoiding the $3 toll.

Since 2003, according to documents released by the agency under a public records request, a handful of cardholders had been avoiding the charges that Logan visitors have to pay.

For example, former Massport board chairman Robert M. Weinberg, a Boston developer, has saved at least $1,584 in parking fees at the airport. In July 2003, Weinberg's free parking totaled $330. The charges range from $22 a day in the Central Parking Garage up to $50 a day in the Terminal B lot.

The figures cover all of 2003 and the first half of 2005; Massport said it could not locate the figures for 2004 or the second half of last year.

The perk was not limited to present and former board members. Kevin Harrington, a member of the Logan Business Advisory Committee, saved money parking at the airport, but he insists it is not the $1,368 that the documents indicate.

For example, he is listed in March 2003 running up a $946 tab, a charge he says could not be correct. If he had parked in the central garage, that would require a 43-day stay, but if he had parked in the Terminal B lot, the stay would be about 19 days.

''That has to be a mistake," Harrington, who is a business executive, said yesterday. He said he used the pass primarily to attend meetings of the advisory board, which adjourns several times a year at Logan.

But Danny Levy, a spokeswoman for Massport, said the agency stands by the records it released to the Globe.

Levy said the cards were originally issued many years ago as a convenience for board members and others to attend meetings at Logan. When Craig P. Coy started as Massport's executive director in April 2002, he ended the practice of issuing passes to new board members, then ordered an evaluation of the perk and the security issues that it raised, she said.

Levy said the authority is now putting in place a ''revenue control system" that includes parking reimbursements for those doing official business at Logan.

The records show that board members from the 1970s and 1980s -- some of them millionaires -- used the passes as recently as several years ago.

Travel executive David Paresky, a former board member, accrued at least $668 worth of free parking since 2003, the documents show.

Mark E. Robinson, a former Massport board chairman and the chief of staff to former governor William F. Weld, used his card for $196 worth of parking in 2003, the year after he left the board.

In the first days of the Weld administration, Robinson stripped state employees, many of them appointees of former governor Michael S. Dukakis, of their perks, including parking and the use of state vehicles.

Robinson promised in 1990 to overhaul state government, saying ''a lot of the things that go on there don't pass the smell test for either me or Bill Weld."

He could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The list of cardholders as of Dec. 1 includes a host of political figures who apparently didn't use the privilege. They include Dukakis and Weld; Senator John F. Kerry (who was issued a pass as lieutenant governor in 1983-84); former governor Paul Cellucci; former Senate president William M. Bulger, and former House speaker Thomas M. McGee.

Some, such as Weld, Kerry, and Dukakis, who had been issued passes years ago but never used them, should not have appeared on the list, Levy said.

The special parking system was first reported in the Globe in a 1996 article that outlined how 65 people with ties to the agency were getting free parking.

At the time, Weinberg led the list, having used his privileges 93 times between 1993 and 1996. Paresky was second, with 72.

Weinberg, who was board chairman from 1977 to 1985, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

But in 1996, he defended the parking privileges, saying he accepted the perk as a '' token of appreciation" for the time he served.

Massport sent form letters to Silver Pass holders seeking to get the cards back.

Among the documents released by Massport is a May 2004 letter from Miguel A. Satut in which he says he apparently lost his pass on his move to Michigan nearly 13 years earlier.

The Rev. Albert J. Sallese, a former Massport board vice chairman, returned his pass, but said in his February 2004 letter that while he rarely used it, he treasured the ''luxury."

''Seems funny that the Port Authority could not find some way to 'honor' those members who served in the past, and presently serve the authority, without monetary compensation," he wrote.

Mac Daniel of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Frank Phillips can be reached at phillips@globe.com.