E-Mail This Article to a Friend Taming the beast (continued)
	Related links The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority’s Big Dig page The official MTA site, including a history of the project, recent updates, and photographs. Channel 5’s Big Dig page An extensive catalog of stories on the project, with a less boosterish and more critical tone than what you’ll get at masspike.com. Attorney General Tom Reilly’s recent Big Dig testimony The remarks of the Democratic attorney general, whose political future may depend on his ability to recover Big Dig–related funds, at last Friday’s hearing of the House Committee on Government Reform. Related Reading The Big Dig: Reshaping an American City (Little, Brown, 2001) Photographic and narrative history of the project, in coffee-table-book form, by Peter Vanderwarker.

Reilly’s supporters would be tickled if this theme gained traction. But privately, some Democrats worry that by agreeing to serve as the point person on cost recovery, the attorney general has put himself in an untenable position. "I thought it was crazy of Reilly to jump into this," says one prominent Democrat. "Let’s say he recovers $20 million. I think people will say, ‘$20 million on a $14 billion project? That’s all?’ My sense is that this is not winnable." "The gain is that you’re taking on a tough issue that the governor is going to have to be part of in the future," a second prominent Democrat says. "The bad news is that you’re now affiliated with the issue. In the public’s mind, you’ve said you’re going to fix it. So how come it’s not fixed?"

This line of reasoning seems to have bipartisan appeal. "I just don’t see how he gets any substantive sort of strike against Bechtel or any of the major players before next year’s election," one Republican insider adds. "And I think it’ll be a problem for him, because he’ll have been out there 18 months on this and probably won’t have any results." Furthermore, Reilly — by taking a lead role on the Big Dig just prior to the election — might inadvertently highlight his lack of Big Dig involvement between 1998 and 2004, thereby opening himself to charges of political opportunism. "He’s going to have a hard time explaining where he’s been for the last six years," the Republican suggests. "I think he’s going to end up being labeled Tommy-come-lately."

Another potential problem for Reilly involves his refusal, after it was discovered that he’d received approximately $35,000 in donations from individuals affiliated with the very companies he would investigate in the cost-recovery process, to return the money. Because Reilly wants voters to see him as a man of unimpeachable integrity, this obstinacy makes a weird kind of sense. After all, giving back the contributions could have been taken as an admission that money actually buys influence with the AG. But most voters probably won’t ponder Reilly’s refusal this carefully. Instead, they’ll see a prosecutor who’s raked in cash from the same people he’s investigating. This may not change the way Reilly does his job, but it looks bad. "Scott Harshbarger had the same mentality — ‘How dare you question my integrity?’ " the Republican observer says of the 1998 Democratic candidate for governor, who preceded Reilly as attorney general. "By the time he realized that being right doesn’t necessarily translate into public perception, he was cooked. To some extent, it’s Harshbarger-esque."

SO WHAT adjective best describes the governor’s handling of the Big Dig? Cautious? Monotonous? Impotent? Here’s the Cliffs Notes version: there’s a new leak in one of the I-93 tunnels. Romney says Amorello should resign. Amorello says he won’t. Repeat when the next leak occurs.

You might think this pattern would leave the governor looking unimaginative and ineffectual. That, certainly, will be the Democratic argument between now and Election Day. "The governor has not been creative in any respect in terms of trying to solve the problem," Lynch tells the Phoenix. "He continues to try to call for Matt Amorello’s resignation, which I’m sure he didn’t stay up late to think of."

Will voters agree? Time will tell — but Romney, who is a very smart politician, presumably has good reason to think that bashing Amorello will be productive in the end. "Obviously, he has polling data suggesting it’s a smart thing to do," says another Democratic observer. "The public reads [Boston Herald columnist] Howie Carr. They think of Amorello as ‘Fat Matt,’ making $200,000 and change — which most people don’t — and traveling with three or four people in his entourage. And the Big Dig isn’t going well." In other words, every time Romney knocks Amorello, he scores in a lopsided symbolic battle.

In addition, the state legislature’s bizarrely consistent support for Amorello — a former state senator — actually lends credence to Romney’s master political script: Massachusetts needs a Republican governor to clean up the mess on Beacon Hill. If Democratic leaders in the State House were thinking strategically, they’d have tried to push Amorello out months ago, simply because doing so would immediately have increased Romney’s stake in the Big Dig. Instead — driven, it seems, by both loyalty and a knee-jerk desire to deny Romney any victories — they’ve stuck behind their former colleague.

"It’s possible, at some point, that Matt Amorello will see the writing on the wall and find another place of employment before it’s too late," says the Republican observer. "This is very similar, in some ways, to Romney’s battle to push William Bulger out as president of UMass. And he did win one, ultimately, when no one thought he would." If Amorello bails out close to the election, Romney will have an extremely public victory to tout on the campaign trail, one that creates the impression that he’s got momentum when it comes to solving the ongoing problems of the Big Dig. If this happens — and if, when it transpires, Reilly’s cost-recovery project still hasn’t yielded substantive results — Romney’s cautious approach will have been vindicated. And Reilly will wish he’d been a bit more circumspect himself.

Adam Reilly can be reached at areilly[a]phx.com