The bell may soon toll for delinquent Mass. Pike drivers from nearby states.
The state Department of Transportation is considering hiring a debt collector to recoup outstanding balances from drivers who haven’t paid their tolls.
The collector would target out-of-state drivers who do not use an electronic transponder and instead were billed at the address associated with their license plate.
While Massachusetts drivers without transponders can also ignore these bills, they must eventually pay them to renew their driver’s license or registration. Not so with drivers from most other states.
As of September, the state was owed about $32 million in tolls that are overdue by at least a month, according to the transportation department. The state expects to receive most of the money eventually, according to department spokesman Patrick Marvin.
State officials have only discussed the concept of a debt collector and haven’t taken any concrete steps. A different strategy to get the out-of-state money back would be striking agreements withother states to require drivers there to pay late Massachusetts tolls before they could renew their licenses and vice versa.
So far, Massachusetts has these agreements with New Hampshire and Maine, and is working to finalize a deal with New York and has begun discussions with Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.
Spirited dispute over ads
The MBTA keeps trying, but it hasn’t been able to persuade its board of directors to let the agency sell ads for beer and liquor. So far.
The latest effort came at a board meeting Monday, when MBTA officials said even limited alcohol advertising could yield $2.5 million a year. That wasn’t enough to convince the board, which deadlocked, 2-2, on the issue. The board had rejected a similar plan in 2015.
But the third time could be the charm. The issue is scheduled to come up again at the next board meeting, on Monday, and the board’s fifth member, former general manager Brian Shortsleeve, often focuses on closing the agency’s budget gap. Shortsleeve was not at the last meeting.
Alcohol ads have been banned on the T since 2012, but have drawn renewed interest as the agency faces a deficit that has swelled to $50 million.
The chief concern against the ads is their potential influence on young people. Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh — a recovering alcoholic — has championed the ban.
But MBTA revenue director Evan Rowe told board members the agency would try to minimize exposure by placing ads in stations with low student ridership, restricting digital ads to hours with lower youth use, and using exterior train wraps rather than interior ads.
New York City’s subway system recently banned alcohol ads. The Outdoor Advertising Association also recommends not posting alcohol ads near schools and playgrounds, while the adult beverage industry says it tries to ensure that no more than 28 percent of the audience that sees an alcohol ad is younger than 21.
Monica Tibbits-Nutt, an MBTA board member, noted on Monday that the agency sometimes sells ads for the alcohol delivery company Drizly, despite the ban. She said she was frustrated by the “gray areas’’ of the agency’s advertising policies. The MBTA also bans “prurient sexual suggestiveness,’’ but allows Bernie & Phyl’s ads that make clear sexual double entendres.
Boston-Springfield train backed
A proposal to establish a high-speed rail connection between Boston and Springfield has high support across the state, according to a poll from Western New England University.
Support for the idea — which Western Massachusetts legislators have unsuccessfully lobbied for in recent years — was near or above 70 percent in all regions of the state and 74 percent overall, the poll found.
But the poll may have been mostly conceptual: The university noted that few people had heard much about the rail idea, and that opinions could shift as cost details emerged.
The idea of studying the rail link has been opposed by Peter Picknelly, chief of the Springfield-based private bus company Peter Pan, who has said any study should also consider other options to improve cross-state transportation.
Adam Vaccaro can be reached at adam.vaccaro@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @adamtvaccaro.
