Centerfield

People's Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Chapter MXVII

Our brand-spanking new progressive democratic governor Deval Patrick set a land speed record in backing down to the unions over our fiscally embarassing policy of mandating police details for almost all road construction work.

Yesterday, the president of the State Police union, John Coflesky, praised Patrick for declining to take on the detail issue. He said that replacing police with flaggers would not save much money and that there would be a public safety cost.

"I know how construction people feel," he said. "They would much rather have a state trooper or local police officer standing at their detail with cruisers and lights and first-responder capabilities and radios."

Massachusetts is the only state that requires police officers, rather than less-expensive flaggers, on nearly all road work sites.

Emphasis mine. Don't miss that those "construction people" are union members, either. To be fair to Patrick, you can't blame him alone for this, only for being especially full of crap in dodging the issue. Gov. Weld tried and gave up, and IIRC Romney didn't even really try.

Still, I haven't heard any complaints from the other 49 states about how threatened their public safety is by the use of civilian flaggers. Let's face it, directing traffic around holes and bulldozers, while important, is in most cases not quite rocket science. These folks know how to use cones and flags and safety vests and radioa and cell phones. And the practice of using state troopers or local police officers for MOST such work is not just grotesque overkill, it's something our state's law enforcement folks themselves ought to be embarassed by.

I'm also not pleased that so many of our public safety officers are tiring themselves out doing such relatively trivial work on OT details. But it'll probably never change. Few folks have a taste for sticking out their neck on this.