Some of my political friends are having fun today, poking and playing at protest, out in the beautiful July weather, of our MBTA, which is an easy mark for fun pokings. I wish them a good time and hope that they meet  many of our citizens on their way to work and enjoy some fun conversations on this cusp of holiday day.

The fun was invited by a City Councillor who proposed this as a “Boston Tea Party” — as if we didn’t already have enough tea parties. But I guess we didn’t yet have enough, for my friends who are out dancing up this one.

Buzzing up behind the party-celebrants there’s more bad City temper for our much-abused MBTA. Mayor Walsh has proposed that the City be given its own, Boston government seat on the MBTA governing board. At the same time,. the Councillor who hosting today’s caper insists that the MBTA’s six percent ( 6 %) fare hike not go into effect. (Notice : it has.) I’ll deal this suggestion next, but first, the Mayor’s demand for a Boston seat on the MBTA board, which I will dispose of in two brief paragraphs :

( 1 ) the City spent decades getting the legislature to repeal laws by which the Governor had the right to appoint members of the Boston Licensing Board. We were well within our rights to do this. So why, now, does the Mayor think that it is right for the City to have what it correctly insisted the Governor should not have ?

( 2 ) The State governs the MBTA, which receives the overwhelming bulk of its funds from the entire State’s taxpayers, with whom the State has a direct relationship. Why should Boston City hall have any part of that direct relationship ? No City administration is part of state administration; each is elected separately. They should remain separate.

Now I will dispose of the Councillor’s argument concerning T fares, which rose by six per cent today :

( 1 ) the City’s budget for FY 2020 has increased by three percent, thus burdening city taxpayers an extra three percent. Why is it OK to increase the burden on taxpayers, but not on T riders, for whose benefit taxpayers pay most of the T budget ? The T is NOT a taxpayer gift to riders. Riders must pay their share of this service, as we do — I too am a rider, and I am not burdened by an extra $ 4.50 a month. (Some protestors say that this fare hike burdens low income riders. I doubt that $ 4.50 a month — at most — is that huge a burden.)

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Meanwhile, has anybody noticed, or protested, the City’s raising its parking meter fines ? I guess that that’s OK, because it hits only car users, and in Boston today, car users are the devil…

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It is all too tempting for politicians, whose appetite for attention exceeds their capacity, to chew the most available issue candy, the sweetest gripe ice cream, the juiciest policy hot dog. But public policy is not food at a block party. The MBTA — indeed, all of MassDOT — had, in 2014, suffered through at least 40 years of neglect. It cannot be made good quickly, because all of it has to be USED, which means that repairs have to wait until late night hours and on the weekends; and even weekend road and T closures cause mighty disruption. Politicians with eyes bigger than their stomachs want to order the entire menu of taxpayer money, but if the T had $ 80 billion, not just the $ 8,050,000,000 that it now has, it could not repair itself very quickly without massive, cataclysmic disruption. Were the T to institute this , the public outcry would make today’;s caper look like a will o’ the wisp. It ain’t gonna happen.

Fact is, the T will be upgraded and made good, in all its aspects — including its enormous fiscal imbalances that none of the caperers dare talk about — in the shortest time frame that the public will tolerate having T service disrupted. Meanwhile, new trains and electric buses are coming into service — and I’m betting you that not one of todays’ caper-cutters will utter so much as a peep of thank you.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere