The hole `the Dig’ dug

As much fun as it may be to look to Massachusetts and shake one’s head in bemusement, there’s little amusing in the news that the Big Dig — a multibillion-dollar project to improve traffic through Boston — has gone bankrupt. Not only was this project of importance to transportation, it represented the ability of government — at the state or federal level — to accomplish big things.

Disturbing enough is news that a project originally slated to cost $2.5 billion is now likely to cost almost six times that figure. In fact, the latest cost overrun — $1.4 billion — puts the price for the Central Artery / Third Harbor Tunnel project at as much as $13.6 billion by 2005, the scheduled completion year. The financial mismanagement of the project, at both the state and local levels, takes the overruns past the pale. A federal report on the mess includes accusations that the Big Dig’s managers transferred $400 million in debts to the Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority and appropriated nearly $900 million in insurance funds, which are not yet available, to hide the overruns.

Already, the federal Department of Transportation official who had oversight of the project has been transferred out, and James J. Kerasiotes, the Big Dig’s original project manager, has been replaced.

Forget, for the moment, that Massachusetts probably can’t bail itself out of this mess, and will likely need federal help. Forget that, even as members of Congress near and far insist they won’t clean up this fiscal mess, that they probably will have little choice but to do so — meaning all Americans will pay. The Big Dig fiasco tells Americans not to trust government officials when they say they can take on large projects. It doesn’t help that some in Congress had said previously that they no longer wanted to fund large demonstration projects.

The Big Dig is likely to cast that sentiment in stone.