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$150,000 salary, not Big Dig lighting fixtures, might be too much of a strain for state transportation czar to handle
By adamg on Thu, 07/14/2011 - 4:02pm
The Globe reports Jeffrey Mullan will depart as state transportation secretary this fall because he needs to make more money, not because of any concerns over his handling of Big Dig safety issues.
Mullan, however, issued a statement after the Globe report came out:
Reports of my departure as Secretary of Transportation this fall are premature.
In May, I discussed with the Governor my intention to transition from the administration within the year for personal reasons. However, we made no final decisions regarding my future at that time. While I still intend to transition out this year, I have made no final plans. I am fully engaged in the role of Secretary and CEO at MassDOT and look forward to leading the organization in the weeks and months ahead.
Mullan presided over the amalgamation of a variety of formerly independent state departments and authorities into a single Department of Transportation.
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Comments
That's too bad. He may not
That's too bad. He may not have handled the most recent issue spectacularly, but he is very smart and has a lot of institutional knowledge about transportation in MA the MBTA.
Agreed. Before returning to
Agreed.
Before returning to public service, Mullan was a partner at the law firm of Foley, Hoag. Presumably, the door is open for his return there. Last year, they recorded $840,000 in profit per equity partner.
Obviously, the state can't compete with that. And it shouldn't. But Mullan has two kids in college, and wanted a raise. He was earning less running DOT than he had when he ran MassPike - and his new job entailed running MassPike along with a host of other agencies. Bumping him, at the least, back up to his old salary would've been a smart move.
I understand why it's politically difficult to give a bureaucrat a raise, when he's already earning a multiple of the median income. And I don't exactly feel sorry for Mullan; I wish I had his problems. (I think I could muddle through quite nicely on $160k - sure as heck would like to give it a try.) But the reality is that the folks best qualified to serve in state government at the senior levels are those with other options. And I'm sorry to see Mullan go.
DAVEY IS THE MAN
GM Rich Davey sets the standard by taking a pay cut and working his butt off. It would be interesting to see a list of people at the T making more than him. A friend told me that there are bus drivers and cops that make double what Davey makes.
We do not get the best people for less.
See my comments below.
Look, Davey is a nice guy, and so far as I can tell, a good man. He certainly appears to work hard. I am sure that there are people at the T who make more than him, and that is part of the problem. Those people do not respect him or his authority (which he does not have much of, because everyone knows that he will do exactly as instructed by the Governor).
He should be the chief of operations, where that hard work attitude would be better applied. You need people with heft in the CEO spot - people who can change the game and who are not afraid to call the governor and the legislature out on their responsibility for underfunding the T. In this particular situation, someone like D'Alessandro (former head of John Hancock), who does not need the money, would be perfect - but he would never take the job because of the nonsensical political and media environment I discussed below.
Arguably, Davey taking the job for that little has hurt us all by validating the idea that the heads of agencies could and should be paid less. We do not get the best people for less.
No one left to blame
More likely he's leaving because he's run out of other people to blame for his problems.
The Governor is Purging the Best from State Gov.
Mullan is a talented and devoted guy who has more knowledge of the Commonwealth's transportation infrastructure and history of it than nearly anyone else in the state. Someone has got to get through to Patrick that his purge of the "high salaries" of the heads of agencies in the name of "good government" and "shared pain" is incredibly short-sighted and will leave us with nothing but a bunch of imbeciles in charge of really important stuff. As a matter of fact, it already has caused the few talented agency and authority heads to go back to the private sector, where they can make 2-5x as much money right out of the gate and do not have to deal with the vindictive Boston media and the idiotic political nonsense. The most unfortunate thing is that most of these people are in transportation, which is arguably the most important function of state government.
Furthermore, this notion that $150K/year is a lot of money regardless of the work to be done is nonsense. How could you expect Mullan to remain in a job that pays less than the 24 year old first-year lawyers who know absolutely nothing at big downtown firms make? It was stupid to begin with, and the $10K decrease in pay was a huge slap in the face. The short and long of it is that you're not going to get a competent person to run an organization of 4,000 employees which manages hundreds of millions of dollars a year and oversees billions of dollars of the Commonwealth's most important assets for $150k.
What has been set up here is a race to the bottom - and everything is going to go down the drain as a result.
Exactly
Well said. In this day of cops, firefighters, and other public employees with very little responsibility making well over $100K, $150K for a job like Mullan's is a veritable bargain.