Pols & Politics: Battle brews on extending T’s Pacheco Law waiver – Boston Herald

Gov. Charlie Baker said last week that the MBTAs Fiscal Management and Control Board should stick around well past its current 2018 expiration date but another major reform at the T isnt getting the same latitude.

The 2015 budget that created the control board along with the option of extending it to 2020 also included a three-year waiver exempting the MBTA from the Pacheco Law, which gave the agency more freedom to explore private contracts for whats currently public work.

And so far, T officials contend, its living up to its potential: The agency is saving money by outsourcing the work of its parts warehouse and its cash room. Its also credited with pushing the Ts largest union, the Carmens Union Local 589, to the bargaining table, where it agreed on a new $1.6 billion contract hailed the State House over by elected officials. But when it comes to the three-year waiver, the law doesnt include the same option for an extension.

Its unclear if T leaders and Baker will push to maintain it, but any talk of doing so was framed not just as premature but unlikely to sit well with the head of the Senate.

The Senate was opposed to the Pacheco Law freeze and Id personally like to see this run its course, Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg said last week. The Amherst Democrat said his hope is that everything (is) going so well at the T that you wouldnt even have to think about that.

That, of course, remains to be seen. The T last week surfaced another potential outsourcing plan, this time targeted at bus maintenance. Rosenberg said its his understanding that there already are discussions going on between the T and Local 264, the union that represents many T mechanics, indicating the potential privatization could be used as another wedge in negotiating.

Rosenberg admitted he hasnt spoken with folks in organized labor for at least six months. But even when talk of privatizing the core parts of the T first got serious last fall, a sense of buyers remorse bubbled up around the Democrat-dominated Legislature thats long-leaned on union support.

With Bakers backing, the Fiscal Management and Control Board is all but ensured to be around until 2020.

But by then, it may not have one of the key tools its used over the last two years.

Pay raise, part 4,567

The controversial pay raises lawmakers passed last month have proven to benefit far more than the lawmakers themselves.

Given their positions throughout the judiciary, those including the father and uncle of sitting senators, the wife of another senator and the partner of the attorney general all scored pay hikes.

You can add another to the list: State Sen. Mark Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat who supported the pay hikes, disclosed in an ethics filing that his yes vote also helped ensure his brother-in-law a clerk-magistrate by trade also got a boost to his paycheck.

Under state ethics law, such a situation doesnt preclude lawmakers from casting a vote on general legislation that could substantially benefit their immediate and extended family. All theyre required to do is acknowledge it.

Legal bills

Felix D. Arroyo, the suspended Suffolk register of probate, has made clear he intends to fight the allegations that prompted officials to put him on paid leave.

(Those have not yet been made public.)

And doing so, apparently, will not come cheap.

Arroyo has set up a legal defense fund through the states Office of Campaign and Political Finance, a move that allows elected officials to defray the costs of a legal fight connected to their job.

It hadnt yet reported any deposits, but costs are already mounting. Arroyo reported spending $5,000 out of his separate campaign account on the law firm Prince Lobel Tye, the home of his reported attorney, Walter B. Prince.

Or at least, it appears that way. In the filing, the $5,000 tab was attributed to Prince Label, with a note explaining that the stated purpose of the bill was not readable.

Either way, he may have to find funds quickly. With the payment, his campaign account dipped to just $3,527.

Pols & Politics will not run next Sunday, and will return on March 5.

State House reporter Matt Stout can be reached at matthew.stout@bostonherald.com.

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Pols & Politics: Battle brews on extending T's Pacheco Law waiver - Boston Herald