Advocates don’t want the open seat on the MBTA control board to be filled by just another guy from the suburbs.
“We fully hope and expect that that seat represents the interests of the most vulnerable populations,” said Maria Belen Power, a transit activist from Chelsea.
Power was one of several people to speak at Monday’s Fiscal and Management Control Board meeting in favor of making sure that the next member of the panel is a person of color who’s a regular T rider from the city.
“Please consider hiring someone — who has qualifications — from the community,” said Will Justice of the T riders association.
“Governor Baker expects to make an appointment to the FMCB in the near future,” said Sarah Finlaw, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office, in a statement to the Herald.
A seat on the powerful five-member board is now open after Steve Poftak, the body’s vice chair, last week was named the T’s next general manager. Poftak, a former acting GM of the system, will start the big job on New Year’s Day, and he did not attend Monday’s meeting of the FMCB.
Baker created the board in 2015 after a brutal winter that caused widespread failures of the T. The FMCB, which provides oversight of the long-troubled MBTA’s finances and policies, is slated to run through 2020. The administration has said it wants some version of it to continue after that.
