Let task force do what Swift won't

By Joan Vennochi, Globe Staff, 10/4/2001

SOMEWHERE IN Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden is laughing at what passes for
leadership in Massachusetts. Now it's up to a real executive, Marshall N.
Carter, to make him stop.

Carter, who retired last year as chairman of State Street Corp., heads a
special task force set up by Acting Governor Jane Swift to scrutinize
management and operations at the Massachusetts Port Authority. He and six
other task force members must do what the acting governor won't do: strip
away the politics and decide, on the merits, what is right for the safety of
the flying public and the future health of the New England economy.

In the three weeks since terrorists hijacked two planes out of Logan Airport
and crashed them into the World Trade Center, Swift barely rearranged the
deck chairs on the Massport Titanic. She reassigned, but did not fire, the
authority's public safety director and replaced him - for 45 days - with the
former head of the Massachusetts state police, a man with no background in
aviation security. At least the person she demoted had eight years of
on-the-job training.

It's an insult for Swift and her advisers to believe Massachusetts citizens
can't see the ''move'' for what it is: pure PR. But believe it they do, and
they are helped enormously by local television executives who gave the
acting governor free time to have her say, with no tough questions asked
before, during, or after her Tuesday night speech.

Here is the true, scary story behind the headlines: PR strategists are
working to protect their friends and their lucrative Massport retainers,
instead of trying to protect the public or the regional economy that is
suffering because travelers don't have confidence in Logan Airport. The
strategists care more about spin control than air traffic control.

Given that reality, I am putting my faith in Marsh Carter, and not because
Wall Street admires him for the years of growth he oversaw at State Street.
Untangling the Massport mess doesn't require complex money-making skills; it
requires simple courage.

Carter, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, is considered an expert on business
ethics. Both his father and grandfather taught at West Point. He voluntarily
left State Street last year, expressing the unthinkable for most
power-tripping CEOs - that after six or eight years, ''You lose your ability
to be totally open-minded for alternate courses of action.'' He is now a
senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

According to the Globe, some people around Swift tried to derail Carter's
selection on the grounds that he is too ''headstrong.'' While Swift did punt
decision-making over to the task force, to her credit she stood by Carter's
appointment as chairman. Let's hope she stands by the task force findings
and recommendations, whatever they may be.

In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Carter said the task force mission is
to come up with a plan for ''a Massport of the future'' - not ''to try to
assess what happened on Sept. 11'' or ''point fingers at some particular
individual.''

He said that before the governor announced the formation of the task force,
she and the task force appointees met and agreed to three things: No items
were off the table; Swift could take the initiative on matters that she
believed could not wait 45 days; and she would keep her door open to them
and any issues they felt warranted immediate attention.

Asked if he is concerned that some Swift advisers apparently consider him
''headstrong,'' Carter said, ''That says to me, that in 10 years of living
in Boston as a CEO, as I took the company to be a global player, with the
help of some 18,000 employees, I had clear and strong strategic views.''

Besides Carter, the task force includes: Sheila E. Widnall, a professor of
aeronautics and astronautics at Masschusetts Institute of Technology; Robert
F. Johnson, executive vice president of Pinkerton Security USA; Wayne Budd,
executive vice president of John Hancock Financial Services and former US
attorney for Boston; Patricia McGovern, a former state senator from Lawrence
and chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee; and John Haley,
former general manager of the MBTA.

''These are not people who are going to allow their recommendations to be
watered down before they leave the commission,'' Carter pledged.

Massachusetts, the country - and perhaps even bin Laden - will be watching.

This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 10/4/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
==========
**NOTICE: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.**
==========