Patrick admits state budget leaner than he thought

BOSTON -- Gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick ticked off then-Senate President Robert Travaglini two years ago when he pledged to cut $1 billion in waste and "inefficiencies" from the state budget. Today, as he's closing a $1.4 billion budget deficit and fearing even more cuts, Gov. Deval Patrick is more sympathetic on that point.

"I do think that, frankly, with all the fiscal stresses, there's some real opportunities there for us to get at some of the things that have been hard for people to deal with at the political level and in state government for a long time," Patrick said Thursday.

"But having combed through this budget, line by line, for some while now, I'm convinced there's no where the amount of fat that people think there is."

During his monthly appearance on WTKK-FM radio Thursday, Patrick also said he would not be opposed to raising the state's 23.5 cents-per-gallon gasoline tax to pay for transportation programs.

Yet, Patrick said he would do so only if it was part of a comprehensive package to streamline the state's transportation bureaucracy, and if there was an assurance the money wouldn't be spent elsewhere when the economy recovers.

A Patrick majority on the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board recently proposed doubling Boston-area tolls to finance Big Dig debt, prompting talk of a gas-tax alternative.

"I just don't see how the public says, `I'm going to pay the tolls I pay and an increase in the gas tax and get nothing in exchange,"' he said.

Patrick added: "If that was a part of the whole package, and we could assure ourselves that that addition wouldn't be diverted to something else when we were on a better path to manage, then that's a package I'm ready to talk about."

In addition, Patrick said prior governors are partly to blame for the state's transportation financing problems.

"They're not my bills. They're not some abstract state bill. They are the public's bills," he said. "And they have a lot to do with the way, over the years, former governors and others have taken elements of the Big Dig debt and tucked it in different places, a lot at the Turnpike, a lot at the MBTA."

The call-in show offers the most sustained questioning of Patrick each month and is part of his strategy to use alternate media venues to bypass the Statehouse media corps. He answers questions directly from callers, as well as e-mails and queries posed by co-hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan.

In other subjects discussed Thursday, Patrick said:

--He does not favor term limits as a means to create Beacon Hill turnover and reduce Statehouse corruption.

"No," he said, "because I think it's an abdication of citizenship. People want to put everything on autopilot, including their government. If you want to make a change, get out there. Stand for election. Support candidates who do. Vote. People, it's one of the great messages, I think, of the Obama campaign, is that people have all the power they need to make all the change they want."

--He was incensed when he learned that Parsons Brinckerhoff Americas, part of the consortium that built the problem-plagued $15 billion Big Dig, had been hired by the Massachusetts Port Authority to design and manage construction of a $377 million parking garage at Logan International Airport.

The firm, which earlier this year joined in a $458 million settlement with the family of a woman killed in a Central Artery tunnel ceiling collapse, will be paid $37 million for its work. Massport officials say the project will be led by a different team of engineers.

"You did not want to be on the other end of the phone when I heard that," the governor said. Patrick refused to reveal with whom he spoke, but he labeled the news "enormously disappointing" and said despite the explanation, "the optics are terrible."

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)