One if by Land; Two if by Sea: The Massachusetts Legislature Heeds an Important Warning

Bay State legislators reportedly hear the call to ramp up pilot and marine safety in Boston Harbor while slamming the door shut on special interests.

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the third weekend in April always heralds the coming of Patriots Day. The annual event, replete with parades and celebrations and exciting "Minuteman" battle reenactments, is a sacred event for Bay State residents. This year, Patriots Day all but coincides with the showdown in the Massachusetts legislature between a powerful, full court lobbyist assault, a cherry-picked state senator and two competing groups of marine professionals in Boston Harbor. In other words, business as usual in the state of Massachusetts.

Like the venerable Boston Marathon which takes place every year at about this time, this dispute is long-running, but also could be poised to turn one of the safest harbors in America into a caldron of unregulated chaos. And unlike the infamous Boston Tea Party of 1773, today's cargo that ends up in peril will do more than stain a few gallons of seawater, if it is spilled. Fortunately, it looks like sanity has prevailed in the Commonwealth.

Give the Bay State's lawmakers credit where credit is due: late afternoon reports out of the State House in Boston indicate that a concerted effort to deny the first rate increase in ten years for the Boston pilots has been turned aside. This week, S515 – the bill specifying a long-overdue rate increase for the Boston Pilots – finally came out of committee clean. S515 (An Act Relative to Rates of Pilotage) – essentially the same bill that passed both houses last session and was pocket vetoed by then Governor Romney before he left office – will apparently be allowed to come to the floor for a vote.

Just last week, there was nothing standing in the way of the bill's passage: nothing, that is, except Senator Bruce Tarr, hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbyist expenditures by a local business and the effort to codify docking masters (private employees of a tug company) in a manner that would exempt them from traditional regulatory oversight employed everywhere else in America and in the Bay State.

With the last rate increase for Pilotage taking place back in 2001 (filed for back in 1998), Massachusetts politics came perilously close to setting the stage for Boston pilotage conditions to sink to the depths of that now seen in Long Island Sound. There, local pilots waited 25 years for a rate increase and in the process laid the groundwork for the most poorly organized and equipped pilotage operation in the United States today. Despite this year's pay increase, they are still – by any standard – among the most poorly compensated pilots in America. Because of this reality, there is today no mechanism to bring in apprentice pilots and little incentive for qualified mariners to apply. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Long Island pilots, all jointly administered by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOA) between the states of New York and Connecticut, are fast approaching retirement age with no one left to take their places. Connecting the dots between the political stalemate in the Bay State and the situation now present in Long Island Sound is, therefore, not a difficult exercise.

At issue is one senator's effort that seeks to codify the use of docking masters in Boston Harbor. Those efforts, now having failed as a standalone bill (S1349) for the second legislative session in a row, were then refocused on trying to attach similar language to the pilot's rate bill. The docking master agenda, which includes certification by the state – but with virtually no oversight from the pilot's commission or a ceiling on rates – has been opposed by almost every stakeholder in Boston Harbor. It appears that there is no opposition to licensing docking masters, per se, but doing so without the traditional oversight and regulations which have worked for centuries in the Bay State has been roundly rejected by all stakeholders, except the docking masters themselves.

Connecticut and New York are now collectively trying to recover from 25 years of benign neglect in Long Island Sound. In contrast, Massachusetts – if today's reports out of Boston are accurate – has narrowly avoided a similar fate. In the end, S515 – as currently written – has the full support of industry including Massport, Boston Shipping Association, Boston Marine Society, and Propeller Club of Boston. S515 costs the citizens of the Commonwealth nothing. Instead, foreign ship owners making record profits and paying no taxes to the Commonwealth are responsible for paying pilotage fees.

Docking Masters everywhere should be certified. And, in the state of Massachusetts, this IS an important issue. This also has nothing to do with the rates that pilots can charge shipowners to ensure that the Commonwealth remains as a safe destination for ocean trade. In the end, it does appear that the Massachusetts Senate (finally) recognizes the irony in the effort to certify those who refuse to operate under the yoke of a rate structure, but at the same time try to deny those who do, the right to reasonable increases every ten years. But the pilot's rate increase – which likely will provide nothing more than the funds necessary to maintain a safe and adequate local pilot infrastructure – is not yet a done deal.

Paul Revere's April 18th 1775 ride to warn the Minutemen of the impending arrival of the British Redcoats at Concord (my hometown, coincidentally) and Lexington was a watershed moment for America as we know it today. Today, the warning goes out again: the region's primary intermodal hub is in danger of losing business, credibility and more importantly, the safety that has been its hallmark for as long as anyone can remember. Why it took the state's legislature so long to figure this out is a mystery – and a tragedy.

No doubt if Paul Revere, William Dawes and Dr. Joseph Warren were to ride out on Route 2 from Boston to Concord today, they'd be shouting, "The Docking Masters are Coming. The Docking Masters are Coming." Fortunately, on April 17th 2008, the Massachusetts Senate was listening.

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Joseph Keefe is the Managing Editor of THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE. He can be reached with comments or questions regarding this opinion piece or any other article in this e-newsletter at [email protected].

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