Report: MBTA lost $450M in savings because of Pacheco Law

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/07/report_mbta_lost_450m_in_savings_because_of_pacheco_law



HIGH COST: Gov. Charlie Baker backs a new report from the Pioneer Institute that says the Pacheco Law has cost the MBTA big bucks.

Report: MBTA lost $450M in savings because of Pacheco Law
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Matt Stout

The controversial anti-privatization law known as the Pacheco Law — which has swirled at the center of the MBTA reform debate — has been a “black hole” that’s cost the beleaguered transit agency nearly $500 million in savings since the late 1990s, according to a new report.

The findings, detailed in a Pioneer Institute report to be released today, provide what author and former state Inspector General Gregory W. Sullivan said is among the first looks of the Pacheco Law’s impact on the MBTA.

“This amount of lost savings would have gone a long way to reducing the MBTA costs and allowing it to replace older equipment. Instead the money just went into the black hole of the Pacheco Law,” said Sullivan, who studied two contracts the T approved in 1997 to outsource bus services that were later rejected by the state auditor’s office under the anti-privatization statute.

The law, in existence since 1993, creates roadblocks to privatizing public services, and has been a hotly debated topic in discussions to reform the T. Lawmakers announced yesterday that they included a measure in their budget to suspend the law’s provisions at the T for three years — representing a compromise between the House, which sought five years, and the Senate, whose leaders had resisted it.


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Outsourcing is never good for local jobs.