Posted on 07/27/2006 7:05:56 AM PDT by raccoonradio
CBS4) BOSTON: Turnpike Chairman Matt Amorello has agreed to resign, effective August 15th. CBS4's Jon Keller has also learned Amorello will also relinquish his spot on the turnpike board.
Amorello announced his decision around 8 a.m. Thursday, an hour before a scheduled hearing in the governor's office during which Gov. Mitt Romney planned to seek his removal. He lost a bid in the state's highest court Wednesday to postpone the hearing and his ultimate dismissal.
"I think this is good news for the commonwealth, the right step for Matt Amorello to have taken," Romney said. "Clearly it will save the taxpayers and the rate-payers the cost of an extensive legal battle, and it also allows the citizens and toll-payers to have confidence again in the Turnpike Authority and new leadership that will be installed."
Amorello's resignation will be effective Aug. 15, but he will continue to receive his $223,000 annual salary through Feb. 15. Lawyers for Amorello and Romney hammered out details of his resignation late Wednesday, after Supreme Judicial Court Justice Francis X. Spina ruled Romney could go forward with the administrative process to remove Amorello.
The governor said the deal was signed Thursday morning.
Romney reiterated his plans to launch a nationwide search for a new leader of the Turnpike Authority who won't come out of the political arena but instead has relevant transportation experience. He said he did not have anyone specific in mind and had no timetable.
"It will be a person who comes to the job to do a professional, workman-like leadership role in a very important position, but not somebody who's a long-term politician and knows how the wheels of politics turn," Romney said. "I want somebody who knows how the wheels of automobiles and trucks turn and how engineers can do a fine job finishing the work of the Big Dig."
Amorello, 48, a former state senator and failed congressional candidate who served as Massachusetts Highway Commissioner, was appointed to head the Turnpike in February 2002 by Romney's predecessor, acting Gov. Jane Swift.
Calls for his resignation intensified after ceiling panels from a Big Dig tunnel crushed a car July 10, killing a 39-year-old Boston woman.
The collapse led to the closing of nearby tunnel sections and restricted traffic in the nearby Ted Williams harbor tunnel while engineers investigate the cause and devise fixes. The focus has been on epoxy-bolt fasteners that anchored the ceiling panels in those areas.
The collapse is also under investigation by state and federal prosecutors and regulatory agencies.
Makes one wonder if he really did 'resign' or if Govenor Mitt 'made' him 'resign'......
The nosy wants to know....
Six months severance pay?
When did Romney give up the LDS and take up drinking?
Sometimes people do the right thing.
Whatever the reason.
Of course, with one's arm twisted around and up between their shoulders, and being frog-marched to the podium with the live microphone, and not being allowed to leave until the words "I resign" have been croaked out, it would SEEM to be coercion, but I submit that it was still an act of free will.
Because the alternatives were spelled out pretty clearly.
The time is now, Governor: appoint HOWIE CARR
Cripes, I'd appoint Howie Mandel!
He probably couldn't do any worse than Amorello!
While I won't mourn the passing from the scene of Fat Matt, I will state that the problem with the Big Dig was created by the state legislature.
The state legislature here in Massghanistan has a propensity for creating "independent commissions". An independent commission is one over which the "independent board" which allegedly oversees the "independent commission" has no oversight from the executive branch of the state government.
The legislature usually ends up with political hacks (or other idiots) dominating both the "independent commission" and the "independent board" overseeing the "independent commission".
The result is that those who are supposed to be overseeing the project, authority, or whatever, do not have the requisite skills. In the case of the Big Pig, that vacuum essentially left Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff and Modern Continental to do whatever they wanted. The result? We have two pissant tunnels that are leaking and falling apart and a bridge that is structurally unsound. The orignial estimate of about $3 billion ballooned to about $15 billion and will now put such a hit on Bozotown's economy as to cost the businesses downtown several more billions in lost revenue.
Were the series of disasters with the Big Pig avoidable? Yes. Christie Mihos and Jordan Levy relized there were problems when they were on the board. They were "rewarded" for speaking up the same way the inspector who noted the construction problems were rewarded--by being fired. The Supreme Judicial Court later ruled the firings--by the acting governor--were illegal because the board was outside the control of the executive branch of government! In reality, the project was not only outside the control of the executive--it was simply out of control because that is the way the corrupt politicians on Bacon Hill designed it.
it is proboblay a bargin, considering we would have to pay for the prosecution and the defense out of our pockets.
You think it was part of the deal?
I'll resign if you give me 6 months pay, and don't prosecute me?
I dont know if that was part of the deal, I know that it cost us $40K for matt amorello to go to court Tuesday and try to get the hearing dismissed, but the judge said the hearing was going to go on.
so not the prosecutiton in the sense of criminal charges we would have been paying for the lawyers that were tyring to fire matt and the lawyers that were defending matt.
Progress becomes possible.
That was at the end of the week the ceiling came tumbling down, and he turned that "offer" down.
Also, according to Carr, he hired, at taxpayers' expense, half a dozen lawyers to the tune of $60K+/day to defend himself.
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