When two former governors team up to pressure the current occupant of that office to spend tax dollars, working families should hold onto their wallets. Knowing those ex-governors as the bipartisan founding fathers of the Big Dig, taxpayers should prepare for a red-ink tsunami.
Three-term Democrat Mike Dukakis and twice-elected Republican Bill Weld have joined forces lobbying Governor Charlie Baker to construct a one-mile train tunnel connecting North Station and South Station. For Dukakis, another Boston tunnel is practically déjà vu, as this North-South rail link constituted part of his original transportation dreamscape, until the federal government nixed the price tab.
BOSTON – Raising concerns about potential impacts on commercial fisheries, Gov. Charlie Baker is questioning President Barack Obama's step toward designating two areas off the Massachusetts coast as national marine monuments.
The White House and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have signaled an intention to designate at least two offshore areas – Cashes Ledge and New England Canyons and Seamounts — as protected national marine monuments. In 2009, Obama issued a presidential proclamation establishing three Pacific Marine National Monuments, but there are currently no such protected areas in the Atlantic Ocean.
