A huge campaign issue for him every achieving the GOP nomination, is
his record as a businessman who exhibited poor judgment, wasting billions on a tunnel that was faulty and constructed with substandard materials.
As Governor of the state of Mass., Romney headed up the disastrous Big Dig of the tunnel in Boston’s Fort Point Channel. The major capital overruns in the expenditures of this project indicates Mitt Romney’s lack of judgement and his careless misplaced leadership skills as an intelligent businessman.
The tunnel was only 3.5 miles long to reroute the Central Artery Interstate 93 into the tunnel, plus construction of the Ted Williams Tunnel, The Leonard Bridge, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway where the I-93 elevation existed.
The initial projected cost was 2.8 billion to be completed in 1998, but the end result after criminal investigations revealed shoddy materials and four deaths were much, much higher. The final costs when the Big Dig project was completed in 2008, ten years too late, was 14.6 billion dollars which was five times the initial cost projections. After you calculate the interest on the tab, and make adjustments for inflation, the cost will likely be
22 billion dollars to the taxpayer. The cost will not be paid for until 2038 which is in another 27 years!
On July 10, 2006 a concrete ceiling panel of the tunnel weighing 12 tons fell onto a car killing a passenger and injuring the driver and the tunnel was closed for a year.
Through an investigation it was discovered that the tunnel was never designed to include ceiling panels that were badly constructed with faulty fasteners and Governor Romney was on vacation.
When he returned, he ordered the closure of the tunnel and then had to pay for a 20 million dollar survey of the safety of the tunnel, which was finally inspected from stem to stern. More problems were found with the ceiling fans, the fasteners and the contracted company that built the tunnel.
Thousands of leaks were found, substandard materials, problems with the frozen ground and lighting fixtures just to name a few discoveries. Just about everything in the tunnel had defects, problems and cost overruns plus a very badly executed capital investment project hailed by the overseer Mitt Romney, in the city of Boston the heart of the state.
Romney was implicated with accepting campaign contributions from that contractor, and bears the ultimate responsibility for causing a death. Further, a list of over 2000 maintenance problems over the next year were still an on going problem for Romney.
In May of 2008, another large contractor of the Big Dig McCourt Construction Company, pled guilty to charges of defrauding the government, by over-billing for three years and by lying about what work was done by workers at a higher rate of pay. McCourt was paid 245 million dollars for their work on the tunnel but that was not enough they also over charged $ 314,494.00 more. Yet another electrical company attempted the same practice and over billed by $80,000.00 that they were not entitled to receive payment.
In June 2008, the Modern Continental Corporation that had earned over 3.2 billion dollars and who were the largest contracting company that built the tunnel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company hid shoddy workmanship, and were held criminally responsible for the collapse of the ceiling in the tunnel.
The corporation attempted to protect its assets from further lawsuits which they knew were coming by filing bankruptcy protection. Another example of shoddy business decisions Romney made to work with such a contemptible company.
On August 10, 2011 a report from Engineers in Boston indicates a space under one section of the tunnel has opened and cannot be fixed. The soil during construction was apparently frozen, to keep it from collapsing and now under that soil is an opening. The repairs to this tunnel has cost taxpayers 15 million dollars in subsequent repairs, millions more due to the shoddy construction. The financial settlement to the family of the person who was killed was 28 million dollars and there were many lawsuits.
A major pipe also had to be replaced costing 1.2 million, plus this new problem which cannot be fixed. it has been 9 years of a financial fiasco for Bostonians who have had to put up with Romney’s mistakes.
So much for the Businessman in the Real Economy. If Mitt Romney mislead taxpayers on the Big Dig safety, he can hardly handle the whole USA economy and it speaks to his great problem of ethics and sound judgment.
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