Massachusetts

MBTA fiscal woes take center stage at State House

MBTA fiscal woes take center stage at State House

State House News Service

BOSTON – The Massachusetts State House was abuzz Monday with reports and comments concerning a financial crisis gripping Boston's public transit service and how to pay for a planned Green Line expansion into Somerville and Medford that may cost as much as $3 billion.

The projected costs of extending the trolley line ballooned earlier this year, which may have stemmed from the way the contract was set up, according to consultants hired by the MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board.  In essence, the state enabled the contractor group, White Skanska Kiewit, to take advantage of it, did not cap indirect costs, did not allow the state to check the books on the contractor's costs and allowed the contractor to hone in on the maximum allowable price, according to the consultant, Terry Yeager, managing director of Berkeley Research Group.

Campus activists stir defenders of free speech
Princeton University

Campus activists stir defenders of free speech

Evan Lips

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Voices are emerging to counter the din raised on college campuses by self-styled social-justice advocates as students who don't accept the need for "safe spaces" defend free speech against activists who would muzzle peers to weed out "microaggressions."

At Princeton University, where activists have staged campus demonstrations and sit-ins to force administrators to remove former President Woodrow Wilson's name from schools, buildings and grounds, a group calling itself the Princeton Open Campus Coalition recently coalesced to counter the activists, according to a report in National Review, a conservative magazine.

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