Romney’s Big Dig moment
Jerry Markon, Washington post
Mitt Romney was used to summoning state officials and having them appear. So when the head of a troubled agency stood him up in the middle of an emergency, the Massachusetts governor was furious.
A tunnel ceiling collapse in July 2006 had killed a mother of three, the latest crisis for the massive Boston construction project known as the “Big Dig.” But Matthew Amorello, the official overseeing construction, had ignored Romney’s summons and instead held a televised news conference at the accident site.
Romney took off for the tunnel, his face red and his jaw set, aides said. He stormed out of his car so fast his staffers scrambled to keep up, and upbraided Amorello in a scene captured on Boston television. “It was the one time I saw him explode,’’ said Thomas Trimarco, a Romney cabinet member.
It was also the moment Romney took control of the Big Dig, one of the state’s most infamous and vexing problems, and one that had hung over him for 3 1 / 2 years. The project was billions of dollars over budget, years behind schedule and riddled by allegations of corruption —a mess that Romney had inherited and vowed to fix when he became governor.
Full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-romneys-run-with-the-big-dig-tells-us-about-how-hed-manage-america/2012/08/10/f78ee398-ba2d-11e1-abd4-aecc81b4466d_singlePage.html
