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Green Line extension’s workforce could be a problem, report says

The Green Line extension would stretch past Lechmere Station and into Somerville and Medford. Aram Boghosian / The Boston Globe

By Adam Vaccaro

3 minutes to read

When state officials decided to rejigger and continue the MBTA’s Green Line extension project last month, they did so with the understanding that it will likely require a new team of up to 50 people — plus new management to oversee them — if it’s going to go forward.

That plan was called out as a concern in a report released Thursday by the business-backed budget monitoring group, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

The report, which also said the T’s repair costs could be higher than has been reported and suggested increasing MBTA manager salaries to help attract talent, said the Green Line extension “could be the right project at precisely the wrong time for the MBTA,” because of the staffing requirements.

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Poor internal staffing and over-reliance on outside consultants was cited as one of several reasons the Green Line extension’s budget bloated to the point of a near-death experience last year.

T consultants hired to correct the project’s course said last month that ideal staffing for the extension would entail creating an agency within the agency. Its leader would answer to the T’s GM. But the rest of the team would be insulated from the rest of the MBTA and focus exclusively on the project.

Because these employees would need to be hired at a higher pay scale, that setup could lure the best candidates away from the T’s troubled existing system, the MTF report said.

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“[E]stablishing different compensation packages within the MBTA structure will create unnecessary tensions while encouraging personnel to move from the core of the MBTA to the GLX project – a potential talent flight that the T cannot afford,” the report reads.

The Federal Transit Administration, which has agreed to provide $1 billion in funding to the project, must approve of the reworked Green Line extension plan before it will move forward.

In a letter last month, the FTA gave an initial thumbs up, but said it would need to take a closer look before granting a formal green light. In the letter, the agency’s regional director said the timing of its decision would depend in part on the T’s progress in hiring the project’s new team.

According to the MTF report, this could cause the T to prioritize hiring for the Green Line extension over staffing management positions in the existing system. Finding top-flight management candidates has been one of the agency’s primary challenges, according to T board Chairman Joseph Aiello. The T’s top management ranks took a hit early this month when MBTA General Manager Frank DePaola announced his pending retirement.

“Given that the T does not have a permanent general manager and has had considerable difficulties recruiting senior management for a range of unfilled positions, changing search priorities to recruit … for the GLX project increases the T’s already daunting recruiting challenges,” the MTF report said. “Hiring another 40-50 project staff should the project go forward puts even more pressure to recruit for the MBTA’s core system.”

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Gov. Charlie Baker has often said he is focused on improving the core T system rather than expanding service. He doubled down on that position Thursday, saying: “I don’t expect to cut a lot of big ribbons over the course of the next few years.”

Baker and T officials have said killing the Green Line extension is still on the table if it faces further issues, even though the project is legally required as environmental mitigation for the Big Dig. Ending the project prematurely would result in a forfeiture of the federal money, the threat of further litigation, and hundreds of millions of dollars already spent with little to show for it.

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