Massachusetts Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro was on Martha's Vineyard Monday to talk about the report his office put out in December, which found that the Steamship Authority wasted millions of public dollars.
CAI’s Gilda Geist spoke with Shapiro about what he thinks the future could hold for the Steamship Authority.
Gilda Geist Your report from December says, "Broadly, the Steamship Authority lacks a 'tone from the top' and has failed to create a culture that values employee input." So, that would seem pretty concerning, but the Steamship had new leadership lined up to start in January of this year at the time—the new general manager Alex Kryska. What has been Mr. Kryska's involvement in terms of beginning to clean up the mess you laid out in your report?
Jeffrey Shapiro I am pleased that the new general manager, Alex Kryska, has started. We met last week when we were together at a public forum on Nantucket. I will be sitting down with both he and the chair of the Steamship Authority board later this month. So, I'm cautiously optimistic that he brings the skill, the experience and the business acumen to right, in essence, the ship. But there's a lot for him to do, for sure.
GG You also noted in the report that you were concerned about the outgoing general manager Bob Davis being given a relatively well-paying senior advisor role. So, can you explain more about why that concerned you? And, to the best of your knowledge, what's the plan with Mr. Davis's role going forward?
JS So, I was concerned because I think it's a bad tool for a board when they have lost confidence in leadership to sort of find a soft landing. If you look in the private sector, there are certainly times when a public leader is kept on for a period of time. I think it's far more common to be 30, 60 or 90 days. The difference on this was the duration of it, the amount the former general manager is to earn through this and also it [the senior advisor agreement] outlined specific tasks and responsibilities that he would be responsible for, which I thought were not in line with his skillset. And they were things that from our report, we documented as being deficiencies, in fact. My understanding is the former general manager is being used as a resource and as a tool, but isn't being utilized specifically in the areas that we identified [as having deficiencies]. So, that gives me some solace. I still do think that it's a wasteful amount of money [$239,480, according to the report] and it continues the story that we've been trying to tell about the Steamship Authority as a public entity not always being concerned with the dollars and cents.
GG What happens next? Does the Steamship Authority have to make the changes that you've recommended?
JS The Office of the Inspector General is primarily an investigatory agency, and in some instances we can make referrals to prosecutors. That's not the case here. We can make recommendations as to what we would hope the agency would do. We've done that. Additionally, we've made recommendations to the legislature. It will be up to State Senator Julian Cyr and State Representative Thomas Moakley and their colleagues in the legislature as to if they move forward on our recommendation, but we did suggest that the enabling statute for the Steamship Authority be looked at again. There are some within the Steamship Authority leadership that really do believe that they are beyond reproach and that, though they're a public entity and they have access to the full faith and credit of the Commonwealth, because they don't get a legislative appropriation, sometimes there was a view that their dollars were less than public dollars. Just because they earn their revenue and much of it comes from those who buy tickets at the fare box, those are public dollars nonetheless, and they need to be used appropriately.
GG What do you think is the most important thing for people who use the Steamship Authority to know?
JS I think the first thing that I want people to know is that the hundreds of people that work for the Steamship Authority go to work and try hard to provide an important service. Last week I had the opportunity to meet Captain Charlie, who's been a 29-year employee of the Steamship Authority. He's been doing that route and on that vessel that we were on for 20 years. He does a great job. He's conscientious. This report isn't about those people. The concerns that we have really are on past professional leadership and how the [Steamship Authority's governing] board conducted its oversight. Under prior leadership, expertise to run projects is not something that they did well. The website is just one of them that's had tremendous cost overruns and delays, but we could have reported on the boats that came from the Gulf that were retrofitted to be freight ferries. Those ran into delays and cost overruns. The construction project at the port in Woods Hole has had lots of delays and lots of cost overruns. I also am concerned about how the board has operated. If you look on page 12 and 13 in our report, there's a chart that shows delays and costs overrun. If you're look in the yellow boxes, that will show every time in the timeline that there was an overrun or a delay. There's 12 or 13 times. Two or three or four times, maybe it's okay. I think at some point when you see that number of delays, you have to really ask some hard questions.
