Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

Our View: Turnpike criticism
not just about its director

Paul Violette's resignation does not resolve all the questions about the quasi-state agency.

Longtime Maine Turnpike Authority Executive Director Paul Violette was half right when he said in his resignation letter that his leadership had become "an issue, possibly even the central issue" for critics of the organization he ran for 24 years.

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A truck and a car travel northbound on a nearly empty Maine Turnpike during a recent snowstorm. Questions still linger about the Maine Turnpike Authority, and will not be resolved by a change at the top.

2011 Press Herald file photo

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Violette's resignation was the right response to a growing concern about lax oversight of the agency, but this was never about one man's performance. Questions go deeply into the MTA itself, and will not be resolved by a change at the top.

The Office of Program Evaluation and Governmental Accountability issued a report last month that said the MTA under Violette was largely an effective agency that fulfilled its mission, but that it had excessively spent money raised from tolls on things like gift certificates, travel and lavish expenses. That kind of spending might have been normal for a profit-making private-sector business, but for a quasi-state agency during a period of fiscal crisis, it could not be tolerated.

The OPEGA report raised other questions about the turnpike authority's reliance on no-bid contracts and its lack of an operating surplus that could have been applied to other state transportation needs.

The real question is one of accountability, and that does not go away with Violette's resignation. The MTA behaves at times as if it is a private business, and finances its projects through bonds repaid by toll revenue, never having to dip into the state budget.

But the MTA is not a private business with competitors in a marketplace to check its excesses. It is a creation of the state government that delivers an essential government service. It is part of our transportation system and should be evaluated as such.

Lawmakers should take the information provided by the OPEGA report, and ask whether it really makes sense for this entity created in the 1940s to continue to exist outside the state's transportation planning bureaucracy.

At a time when the taxpayer-supported general fund is expected to be tapped to pay for road and bridge projects, does it still make sense to dedicate toll revenue, paid in large part by out-of-staters, to only one 100-mile stretch of Maine highway?

The criticism of the MTA has been constant and was not aimed at Violette alone. It should not end with his departure. It may be best to keep the turnpike an independent agency with new management, but that decision should come after a top-to-bottom review with no options off the table.