By Maria Saporta
MARTA’s Beverly Scott has been chosen as the new general manager of Boston’s MBTA, according to the State House News Service on the website of WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation board voted unanimously to hire Scott following public interviews with Scott and her fellow finalist, Dwight Ferrell, MARTA’s COO. Ferrell had been a finalist to succeed Scott as MARTA’s general manager, but he did not make the cut to the final two candidates.
Scott will begin her job running one of the top five transit systems in the country on Dec. 15, almost the exact date of when her five-year contract with MARTA runs out. According to WBUR, Scott will earn $220,000 a year under a three-year contract.
MBTA is a far more complex system than MARTA — overseeing a truly regional transit system that includes subways, streetcars, commuter rail and buses. It also receives significant state funding for operations — in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year. By comparison, MARTA receives virtually no state funding for operations.
Still, that does not mean that MBTA is without its challenges. The WBUR station story stated that she will take over an agency “teetering from fiscal problems rooted in heavy debt and coping with expansion demands as well as a backlog of maintenance needs that have gone unaddressed due to insufficient funds.”
The station asked Scott about her vision for the MBTA. She said that stabilizing the agency was her first goal. Then Scott said she wanted to position to the transit agency for “tremendous growth” in the Boston region. “I’ve always said I’m basically pretty much of a startup, fix-up, turnaround, transition person,” she said.
At MARTA, Scott’s hands were tied with declining sales tax revenue and numerous political challenges — from a confrontational state legislature with its MARTA Oversight Committee (MARTOC) to a failed regional transportation sales tax referendum.
Throughout her tenure at MARTA, Scott expressed a willingness to work with other transit agencies in the region to create a regional transit governance entity. She also said it did not matter to her whether the successor agency include the MARTA name, which she admitted had some baggage. “Call it Fred,” she would jokingly say.
Scott, who has 30 years in the transit business, also said that after the MBTA job, she would retire.
“This is the one where I’m going to end up,” Scott said. “This is really a tremendous opportunity. The T is absolutely just an unbelievable regional asset, one for the state as well as one for this nation.”
As reported last Friday in the Boston Globe, the Governor selected Ms. Scott for diversity and gender. Other qualifications didn’t matter as much.
Ms. Scott’s $220,000 annual salary will be $95,000 less than she was paid by MARTA; that’s a 30% salary cut. By the best information I could find, the cost of living in Boston is 38% higher than in Atlanta. Combining the two, she is taking a 50% cut. Why? Could it be that she and Mr. Ferrell know things are much worse at MARTA than acknowledged, and and want off the ship?
@Burroughston Broch This is an offensive comment. You know little about her qualifications and little about the job.
I know enough of her qualifications to know that MBTA values them at 70% of what MARTA does. I also know that MBTA is a larger system than MARTA, and a larger job.
As far as my comment about diversity and gender, that is a direct quote from the Boston Globe, quoting the Governor.
Do you often find the truth offensive?
@carrollcrs @Burroughston Broch Ms. Scott obviously didn’t know about her job either that’s why she messed it up so wonderfully. MARTA is hemorrhaging money and has been criticized for years about its overspending and poor budgeting. Burroughston Broch has made a truthful statement — please explain how it is offensive.
Here’s a clue why Ms. Scott is leaving MARTA and Mr. Ferrell wants to leave: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/transportation/marta-needs-to-privatize-functions-revamp-employee/nSKwS/.
One of the MARTA directors said, “I get tired of coming down here and hearing briefings. I want to see some execution.”
Perhaps Ms. Scott’s successor will be able to execute in addition to promise and brief.
Great! Lets see how deep she can get Massachusetts in the hole; she’s raped Georgia financially long enough. What’s wrong with the world? Someone can be so incompetent (she’s not alone on this one) for such an extended period of time and blow millions of dollars, still have a job, and be given an opportunity to screw up somewhere else, while we have to fight to keep a crummy job and it takes an act of God to be approved for another. I remember rules on being put on cashiers if their till didn’t add up within so many dollars they were fired–why can’t companies apply the same rules to their higher ups?