Steamship Enabling Act in the Crosshairs Again

Sixty-five years ago, Massachusetts Gov. Foster Furcolo put his signature on a hard-fought piece of legislation that created the Steamship Authority as we now know it today.

At the time, the law was sought to excise the required daily service from New Bedford in order to cut costs and keep the ferry service out of the red. Now, more than six decades later, the waste of millions of dollars as detailed in a recent inspector general’s report has lawmakers, Steamship officials and Islanders wondering if the act from 1960 that created the Steamship Authority needs a new round of edits.

“You can’t read the inspector general report and not wonder whether changes need to be made as to the oversight of the Steamship Authority and the oversight of the manager,” said Sen. Julian Cyr, whose district includes the Cape and Islands.

Transporting nearly 3 million passengers and carrying more than 500,000 cars and trucks annually, the Steamship Authority was created by the legislature as a quasi-public agency that is governed by a board made up of members from the port communities.

Known locally as the enabling act, the law essentially created a state-mandated private company that has to operate under public meeting and procurement laws. The ferry line is not overseen by the state, not part of the Department of Transportation, and is entirely controlled by the port communities of the Vineyard, Nantucket, Falmouth, Barnstable and New Bedford.

Tasked with providing “adequate transportation” necessary for the two Islands, the Steamship Authority receives no regular state subsidy, instead funding its operations almost exclusively from the sale of tickets.

This governmental structure has been questioned many times over the years, but recently has drawn scrutiny from Massachusetts inspector general Jeffrey Shapiro. Last month, Mr. Shapiro penned a scathing report that took the Steamship’s general manager to task for wasting millions of dollars on a new website that never went online, and called out the board of governors for failing to provide proper oversight of the situation.

Given his discovery, Mr. Shapiro recommended that the state legislature convene a special commission to determine if the 65-year-old enabling act was ripe for revisions or updates.

The idea has drawn serious consideration from the region’s legislative delegation and introspection from Steamship board members.

“I think that this report definitely shows that there are a lot of eyes on this, including far outside of our region,” said Thomas Moakley, the Island’s state representative who lives in Falmouth. “I think now is the time to take a hard look at if the enabling act needs to be changed.”

Mr. Moakley and Mr. Cyr recently met with Mr. Shapiro, as well as with Steamship board members and the new general manager Alex Kryska, who started earlier this month.

Mr. Cyr said he and Mr. Moakley are working to bring the inspector general to the Island to talk about his report, the findings and his recommendations for moving forward. The legislators have also been studying other transportation authorities, including the Alaska Marine Highway System, to look at what potential models work elsewhere.

Talks about changing the enabling act have come up over the Steamship’s 65 years, though only a handful of changes have been made in that time. The Steamship board’s makeup and the Islands’ weighted board votes have been some of the more debated pieces of the enabling act over the years.

When the precursor to the Steamship Authority was established in 1948, the ferry line was required to offer daily service to the Islands from New Bedford and decisions were made by a five-member board named by the state governor.

Prior to that, several different private companies attempted to run ferry service, but few could make it work economically, resulting in a patchwork quilt of service that was riddled with holes.

When the 1948 Steamship Authority struggled to stay in the black, a battle broke out that resulted in New Bedford being cut out of the ferry service in the 1960 enabling act. With New Bedford gone, all ferries went through Woods Hole.

At that time, the board had just three members, one each from the Islands and Falmouth. About 40 years later, still bitter about being removed, New Bedford led a campaign to return to the board. Eventually the Whaling City and Barnstable, which had started to service Nantucket through the village of Hyannis, were granted members on the board via changes to the act.

It was a politically fraught time, but a compromise was struck by the legislature, said Eric Turkington, who served as the Island’s state representative from 1989 to 2009. Because the ferry is designed to service the Vineyard and Nantucket, the two Island communities were granted weighted votes of 35 per cent each and can override the mainland governors, who each get a 10 per cent vote.

“It’s worked for 25 years since,” said Mr. Turkington, who lives in Falmouth.

Still, many of his constituents have been upset with the power largely lying with the Islands. Falmouth senator Susan Moran attempted to change the enabling act to give the mainland communities more weight in 2021 and 2023. Under a pair of ill-fated bills, Ms. Moran sought to require any affirmative vote of the board to include at least one mainland town, in an attempt to break up the Islands’ grip on the governance.

More recently, state senator Dylan Fernandes, the Vineyard’s former state representative, has put forth a bill that seeks to put term limits on the board of governors. The members are currently appointed by a government entity in their individual communities, and there are no limits on how many terms they serve.

Under the bill, members could only serve three terms. This has been met with a mixed reception, with some feeling that it could be a way to break up entrenched ideas within the authority. Others see it as an arbitrary demand of communities who may be happy with their representation.

Joseph Sollitto, the Oak Bluffs member of the Steamship’s advisory committee known as the port council, has disagreed with the idea. In his eyes, the communities could change their membership as often as they feel is necessary and they shouldn’t be mandated to do so.

“They could put their own moratorium on that,” he said.

The recently formed Steamship Authority Citizens' Action Group, a group of Island and mainland residents unhappy with the ferry line, has stumped for the bill. Group member Amy Cody also suggested the Steamship consider adding independent non-voting members appointed by the Gov. Maura Healey to help guide the board.

“Unless the board changes, we do worry there could be more of the same in the future,” she said.

Other potential ideas for changes have also bubbled up in recent months. Because the Steamship Authority is required to maintain year-round service to the Islands, it is also given broad licensing power over other ferry operations. The Hy-Line out of Hyannis and Seastreak all have to seek the blessing of the Steamship Authority before operating service to the Islands.

This monopoly has irked some who call for broader competition, while others say it is essential to ensure the continued existence of the Steamship Authority and winter service.

Ms. Cody said the citizens group has raised the idea of having the state consider the proposals for other ferry services instead of the Steamship Authority.

“We feel that licensing is a real issue right now,” she said. “This could incentivize improved service.”

Calls for privatization or putting the Steamship Authority in the hands of the state has long been a common outcry in response to Steamship blunders. But neither are realistic in the eyes of lawmakers and Steamship officials.

Though there are obvious challenges, the Steamship has on a broad scale been fiscally run well and avoided a deficit since the 1960s, according to Mr. Cyr.

“This isn’t the MBTA,” he said. “I think state control, I’m not convinced that would make a huge difference.

Officials also note that the free market’s attempts to fill the gap failed epically in the 1940s, and few ferry services want to operate like the Steamship Authority does: at a loss for most of the year before recouping the costs in the summer.

“We tried that, it won’t work,” said James Malkin, the Vineyard Steamship board member.

Mr. Malkin said he believed the Islands were best served by the existing government structure and local control, but he did see a potential benefit for setting qualifications for board members and upper levels of management.

“Where there are changes necessary, perhaps, is in the qualifications and abilities of authority staffing, as well as the board and port council appointees,” he said.

Peter Jeffrey, the Falmouth Steamship board member, has wanted to look at potential amendments to the enabling act in order to shore up funding for the Steamship Authority.

He has seen the costs for construction and steel grow, making capital building projects and the potential for new ferries an expensive endeavor that the Steamship will struggle to maintain. He wondered if there was a way to incorporate more state funding while maintaining local control.

“I think it would make sense to at least take a look at not only the governance and management, which was the focus of the inspector general report, but also the funding,” Mr. Jeffrey said.

Other ferry services, such as Washington State Ferries, are incorporated into the state transportation system, meaning taxpayers from across the state subsidize the service. Massachusetts hasn’t really expressed any interest in stepping into the Steamship situation, and many people interviewed for this story said that the state isn’t exactly known for providing stellar transportation services with the MBTA trains.

“The state doesn’t run transportation entities well at all,” said Mr. Turkington.

The idea of the state having any control has also historically made Island officials nervous. If there is a statewide budget crisis, ferry service could be an easy place for mainland lawmakers to make cuts, said Robert Ranney, the longtime Nantucket Steamship board member.

Mr. Ranney said talks about changing the enabling act are cyclical. They come up every few decades, and usually don’t amount to major changes. Nevertheless, each time it does come up raises concerns for him. He worries it could create a scenario where control could be taken away from the Islands, the very communities the Steamship is supposed to serve.

“This sort of thing, it seems to be on a roughly 25 years-ish schedule,” he said. “Each time we go through this kind of cycle, it seems to me that the Islands lose some control of our lifeline… I get nervous when people say the state should look at this.”

There are also mixed feelings about the creation of a special commission to look at the Steamship Authority’s issues. For one to be formed, the legislature would need to pass a bill that delineates who can sit on the commission, its responsibility and a timeline for a report.

For Mr. Cyr, that would be a years-long process that would essentially arrive at the same conclusion: the Steamship Authority has management and oversight issues that need to be resolved.

“We would spend another year or more trying to understand an issue that we already know,” he said. “I would like us to take action this legislative session.”

He was also interested in looking at the standard qualifications for board members.

“What the inspector general pointed out to me [is the] sole criteria to serve on the board of governors is purely geographic,” Mr. Cyr said. “We have no criteria for what we are looking for.”

The senator, who has climbed the ranks of state leadership and now serves as the assistant majority whip, tried to allay fears that opening the enabling act could result in loss of local control or other unintended consequences.

“I appreciate the historical concern,” he said. “But there is no legislation that will be passed that I don’t agree with….There is no scenario as long as I’m in office where Islanders will be disadvantaged.”

Many interviewed for this story welcomed the new general manager to the Steamship and hoped fresh eyes could help usher in a culture change for the organization, which has been often cited as lacking vision.

Mr. Turkington said that bringing in new management was a good idea, and probably the easiest way to make a difference.

“That is usually where you go to see improvements like this,” he said. “You don’t rewrite the governance.”

Though the ferry line has its management issues and the inspector general’s report detailed questionable spending, board members defended the Steamship.

Both Mr. Malkin and Mr. Ranney said they understood the concerns, but felt that overall the ferry line has succeeded in shepherding Islanders to the mainland and back. They both felt that compared to any other state-run transportation service, the Steamship Authority is doing well.

“I can find no statistics from any ferry line that the Steamship Authority is far worse or not as good as others,” Mr. Malkin said. “Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. Is it necessary to change the enabling act? I don’t believe so.”

This article appears in January 30, 2026.