Free Republic

Remember the public debate last year over whether the state should raise the gasoline tax or tolls to pay for the rotten roads around here? Well, the debate’s over. There’s been a compromise. We’re going to raise both the tolls and the gasoline tax. Or so says the Mass. Transportation Finance Commission. They haven’t officially come out and said they want higher gas taxes and tolls. First they’re going to have the traditional “public hearings.” Of course it’s all a complete bag job. Just look at the tell-tale phrases in the news stories about the “shocking” conditions of the state’s...

online exclusive Fat Matt Amorello was a complete boob to the bitter end. Two weeks ago today, he had a deal on the table that would have paid him through the end of the 2007 fiscal year - $223,000. Here it is, exactly 14 days later. The bloated fool spent upwards of $1 million on white-shoed lawyers, and he ends up with a deal by which he leaves the payroll on Feb. 15, 4 1/2 months earlier than under the first deal. So Fat Matt is out $85,000 - and it cost him a million bucks to lose the money,...

We were all very disappointed. Matt Amorello, the $200,000 man - and then some - failed to show. However, the rest of us were packed in tight, more exquisitely-suited lawyers than reporters yesterday at the meticulously renovated $200-million-plus marble, mahogany and leather John Adams courthouse. Like the Big Dig, and so much else around here, the price tag of Adams’ renovation skyrocketed - from $96 million to $200 million - while other courthouses endured take-your-chances elevators, bad toilets and dirt floors. “It is somewhat frustrating to have that amount of money spent on” the John Adams “while we are basically...

Fat Matt Amorello is a big fan of “The Simpsons.” That’s where he got his idea for a monorail to Springfield. And now we find that he lives by the “three little sentences” that Homer Simpson told Bart will get him through life. No. 1, Cover for me! No. 2, Oh, good idea, Boss! Those first two served him well in his initial 15-plus years in the hackerama. But now he falls back on the third of Homer Simpson’s maxims: “It was like that when I got here!” That’s his excuse. For $223,000 a year, he has no control over...

<p>When the southbound side of the Big Dig opens this morning, a new era of better traffic flow will begin, not only in Boston, but well beyond, project managers say. Speeds are projected to increase throughout the urban core, with bumper-to-bumper conditions occurring only during peak evening rush hour, in the case of the southbound side. Fewer entrance and exit ramps will mean less traffic jumping on and off the Central Artery, and the elimination of the direct connection from the Sumner Tunnel to Interstate 93 south will reduce volume on the downtown stretch further still.</p>