Cashing in on Last Week's Faux Pas

Today's Boston Metro reports that Turner Broadcasting Systems and Interference Inc. have agreed to pay the Commonwealth approximately $2 million as a result of causing last week's fiasco in the Greater Boston Area. As you may have already guessed by the the title of the blog entry, this is literally a result of our adept local public officials grabbing TBS and Interference by the udders and seeing how much they could actually milk them for. Because, let's be honest--the pricetag went up like the Big Dig as local officials, especially the seems-to-always-have-Boston's-back Mayor "Mumbles" Menino, kept piling on random charges: $500 K... $750 K... one million. And an extra million for Homeland Security, are you kidding me?! If anything, I think the two agencies agreed to the additional charges out of sympathy and in hopes that the region will use the money to put better (read: smarter) resources to work to avoid another widespread panic and traffic and mass transit tie-ups (gee, Train Mon, do you mean like the nine other cities "afflicted" by the "guerrilla advertising"-- yes I do).

But my favorite part of the article has to be this section:

"MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas and Joseph Carter, the chief of the MBTA police, assured the public the money [the homeland security allocation to the MBTA] would not be spent on overtime or other intangible expenses.

'We will develop a list of meaningful and effective homeland security and customer safety programs that will have an enduring effect on our customers,' Carter said."

Translation: more bag searches and special training on how to correctly aim security cameras.
Oh yeah... and the Dan Grabauska's recorded "Safety is our number one priority" message" in rapid transit stations and the "Please report any unattended bags or suspicious packages to the bus driver" on buses will repeat even more often (hence, "enduring"). I can't wait.

At the very least, I hope people who were inconvenienced more than a half hour by the T last week are dutifully reimbursed as part of the T's "restitution" allocation.

-TM