The Big Crumble (part III)

UPDATED (07/21/06): The Washington Post has coverage of Romney’s response to the Big Crumble (hat tip to Tom Bevan at the RCP Blog), while the Boston Globe does the same (hat tip to Kathryn Lopez at NRO). ..bfw..

UPDATED (still 07/20/06): Gov. Romney has ordered the eastbound lanes of the Ted Williams Tunnel shut down, apparently due to discovery of bolt slippage. ..bfw..

UPDATED (07/20/06): I’ve added some links below and a few additional points. ..bfw..

Tom Bevan over at Real Clear Politics cites an op-ed piece by Adam Reilly at the Boston Phoenix, who in turn thinks that the Big Dig Crumble could be “Mitt [Romney]’s Katrina”. It’s a curious assertion, given Romney’s efforts to force the resignation of Amorello, the person actually in charge of the Big Crumble. Reilly’s logic:

Here’s Mitt’s big problem: the SJC didn’t tell Romney he couldn’t demote Amorello last year; instead, the court simply refused to give the governor the legal reassurance he was seeking. Consider the following remarks made by Romney at Tuesday’s press conference, after the Phoenix asked if firing Amorello could have worked at an earlier date: “I don’t think it’s within the realm of my experience to predict what a court would or would not do, and what kind of challenge might be made. We’ve read very carefully the decision that was handed down when [acting governor Jane] Swift took action to remove two board members” — Christy Mihos and Jordan Levy, in a 4-3 ruling issued in 2002 — “and we tried to follow that decision as well as we can. But there’s always uncertainty in assessing where a court would come out.”

In other words, Romney could have forced the matter. But this would have meant looking foolish if Amorello managed to keep his job. So the governor played it safe and protected his well-burnished image. But now comes the uncomfortable question: if Romney had acted differently, might Del Valle’s death have been prevented?

In short, Reilly thinks that Romney didn’t try hard enough to force Amorello’s resignation, and that, in turn will cause people to blame Romney for the Big Crumble’s collapse, which in turn will hurt Romney’s presidential asperations.

Sorry, but this doesn’t make much sense for several reasons:

• The Big Crumble project started in the late 1980s and had opened in part just after Romney was elected (2003).
  
• The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority had and has full control and responsibility for the Big Crumble;
• Matt Amorello became head of the MTA the same year that Romney was elected (and before Romney took office);
• As even Reilly notes, Romney has been trying to force the resignation of Amorello since the Big Crumble’s opening in 2004, likely because of the problems (leaks, bad concrete, etc.) that plagued the tunnels even then;
• As an example of “Katrina’s impact”, Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, managed to get himself re-elected in spite of his questionable performance before, during, and after Katrina.
• Finally, there is a major assumption in Reilly’s piece: that if Romney had indeed managed to force Amorello out some time last year, that any resulting inspections would have necessarily caught the particular flaw that cause the concrete panel to collapse before it did so, causing Ms. Del Valle’s death.
  

In short, Reilly posits a long sequence of assumptions, tenuous connections and what-ifs in order to place the blame for Ms. Del Valle’s death at Romney’s feet, rather than where it belongs: with the MTA and the contractors and inspectors who built the Big Crumble.

My own opinion is that the Big Crumble will be at worst a wash for Romney. And if he can actually get Amorello out of the MTA and perform an actual independent inspection and turnaround, then Romney will likely be able to use this as a plus.

Here are my previous postings on the subject:

• The Big Dig starts to crumble
• Update on the “Big Crumble”

Hat tip to Katheryn Lopez at the Corner at National Review Online for the pointer to Bevan’s posting. ..bruce..

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Category: Main, Project Management, The Big Crumble