Posted on 05/06/2009 10:24:23 AM PDT by raccoonradio
BOSTON — A state official says Massachusetts Turnpike Executive Director Alan LeBovidge has resigned.
LeBovidge’s agency has been under fire for turning off the Zakim Bridge lights and allowing massive traffic backups on Easter. The state official said LeBovidge submitted his resignation Wednesday, effective immediately. The official spoke on condition of anonymity before the news was publicly released.
LeBovidge became wealthy as an accountant, before turning in his later years to public service. He served as Revenue commissioner for former Gov. Mitt Romney.
Most recently, he has been charged with cost-cutting at the Turnpike, a notorious patronage haven.
Howie Carr list ping
Most recently, he has been charged with cost-cutting at the Turnpike, a notorious patronage haven.
Can’t be having any of that in MA...
From April 13:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1165378
>>Pike boss: Blames drivers, not sick days for massive backups
>>Expect more holiday-killing traffic backups like the ones that hit this past weekend unless motorists get transponders, warned Pike Chief Alan LeBovidge.
At a hastily arranged press conference this afternoon, LeBovidge said the cash-poor Massachusetts Turnpike can’t afford to add extra staff for toll booths on holidays and called for drivers to get Fast Lane transponders. He blamed the back ups not on workers banging in sick on a major holiday but on commuters not doing their part.
>>“Not enough drivers had Fast Lane transponders,” LeBovidge said.
Thousands of motorists were stuck in miles-long traffic backups on Easter weekend because Mass Pike tolltakers called out sick on the holiday, at one point leaving one busy plaza with just one working cash lane.
Under a penny-pinching policy put in place in the last two months, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority no longer calls in employees to work overtime when other workers call in sick.
That policy coupled with holiday traffic caused massive backups Friday night, Saturday afternoon and all day and night yesterday, Pike officials and drivers say.
>>“We are trying to conserve money as best we can,” said LeBovidge.
Great way to save money: LAY OFF THE TOLL TAKERS
FREE THE PIKE.
Doesn’t it cost 80 cents of every dollar collected to pay them?
Cost-cutting during a recession? Okay. Cost-cutting during a recession in Mass.? Travesty.
Amen!
Cost cutting is a CRIME?!? ;-P
Why are the people in Mass complaining their government does not work. It never has...
I did not read why he turned off the lights? Any local info?
is one of the requirements of being head of a department in the public sector an IQ not to exceed 75? I mean, jeez, this is a situation that did not have to happen. And then to have the unadultered nerve to blame the citizens he is supposed to be serving? 55 gallon jug “o” tar, and 1 pickup truck bed of feathers should do the trick, the hell with resignations...
As Howie Carr frequently remarks, your average hack has no other marketable skills and thus must be pried out of office with the Jaws of Life. So you have to wonder what LeBovidge has waiting, ahem, down the Pike...
This highway should have been paid for, and tolls taken down, back in the 80s. For years they alternately praise what great shape the road’s in, then say it’s in horrible shape when the bonds need to be renewed...the tolls stay up, then go up.
Didn’t Weld (IIRC) take down the tolls (or made them free)
in Western MA with the hope the whole pike could someday be free?
As for “everybody should just get a transponder” I have heard horror stories about them.
>>a notorious patronage haven.
Among them the brother of Cheryl Jacques—rhymes w/ fakes
>>One of Boston’s most recognizable landmarks, the Zakim Bridge, went dark last night as the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority launched its most audacious effort yet to save money and stave off insolvency.
Since it opened in 2002, the electric blue lights on the towering bridge have been nearly as identifiable with Boston as the Eiffel Tower is with Paris, appearing on television backdrops and even gracing the Turnpike Authority’s home page.
Bruce Springsteen played “Thunder Road” at the dedication of the bridge, as 2,000 people marveled at the melding of modern engineering and aesthetics.
But the $15 billion Big Dig project, which created the span, has left the Turnpike Authority billions of dollars in debt. Alan LeBovidge, the authority’s executive director, said he decided earlier this week to shut off the decorative lights at night to save about $5,000 per month.
Hmmm...make he can join Fat Matt and Swifty Jane.
btw he donates his salary to charity...a fact I think I remember him telling Dan Rea of WBZ
As for the Easter Sunday move, he tells commuters to
grin and bear it. It took some people 8 hours to get from
Albany to Boston that day.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/05/turnpike_direct.html
Globe:Massachusetts Turnpike Authority chief Alan LeBovidge has resigned, Patrick administration officials said this afternoon. LeBovidge has steered the Turnpike through difficult times as it staggered under the burden of debt for the massive Big Dig project and proposed steep toll increases. He also drew flak recently over lengthy Turnpike backups on Easter Sunday.
>>LeBovidge, 66, is a latecomer to government after a lucrative career in finance, and he relishes bold statements, quirky gestures, and a few fights along the way. He donates his $160,000 salary to charity.
>>When he was hired to run the turnpike in late 2007, he described the agency as a mix between a “dictatorship and an absolute monarchy,” where employees are afraid to do anything that will get them noticed and depend on consultants to avoid taking responsibility.
In a money-saving move that backfired, he cut staff levels along the Massachusetts Turnpike, creating the Easter traffic delays that, in some places, stretched for seven miles. The day after, he refused to back down, telling drivers they would have to “grin and bear it,” buy Fast Lane passes to get through more quickly next time, and understand that his agency’s lack of money would hurt service.
>>His move last month to shut off the the lights on the Leonard P. Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge as a money-saving measure also was criticized by some as a flashy provocation designed to highlight the authority’s poor financial condition. The Turnpike also touched off a firestorm of controversy when it voted in November to raise the cash toll to $2 at booths inside Greater Boston and to $7 at the harbor tunnels.
Which one of Deval’s neighbors will be chosen in the AHEM; “Nation Wide Search”?
I thought it was "only" about 70 cents, but you could be right! ;-)
Do the toll takers make time and a half for holidays? Just wondering -- if they do, it would certainly make sense to eliminate the tolls for holidays. The "not enough transponders" argument is idiotic for holidays, I think -- I would imagine the people who have transponders are those who use the Pike daily for work; holiday travelers may never use it at all except for big holidays and may not even be MA residents (lucky ducks!).
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