I used to derive snide pleasure when I was introduced to a Globie by remarking, “Oh! You work for Dorchester’s largest daily newspaper.” I loved the double take reaction. When The Boston Globe lived on Morrissey Blvd., I would often comment that Globies couldn’t find Dorchester with a map. (Didn’t stop me from being a daily subscriber, then and now.)

My snideness was set aside recently by the concise, informative and bull’s eye reporting on May 10 by Globe reporter Taylor Dolven: “The T is paying consultants up to $610 per hour – to figure out how to save money.” Talk about a headline that says it all! Ms. Dolven starts the piece with another version of the zinger: “If you’re $600 million in the hole and have a persistent problem making budget, how do you fix your money problems? If you’re Gov. Maura Healey’s new transportation task force, you hire a team of consultants who charge as much as $610 an hour.” She goes on to point out that the Healey administration’s way of addressing the MBTA’s $628 million budget gap was to create a Transportation Funding Task Force (TFTF, pronounced “tsk, tsk”) that will oversee the consultants who will prepare a report for them. Seems like death by committee, kicking the can down the road, RIP meaningful transportation funding, insert your favorite cliché here.

Since Gov. Healey created the Transportation Funding Task Force by Executive Order 626, she owns this process to nowhere, especially since the consultants were given a contract without input from the Task Force, who, members said, have not even seen the paperwork. The governor is holding the cards close to her political chest and this lack of transparency to the Task Force members, whom she appointed, accents her sole ownership. Ms. Dolven points out that the research the consultants were hired to do has recently been done by state agencies and outside organizations. As to the directive to the consultants to investigate what other states are doing with their transportation funding, the MBTA staff have already pointed out that other states, like New York and Minnesota, have enacted new taxes to balance the operating budgets of their largest transit agencies. What are we to make of this dive by the governor into a duplicative rabbit hole?

The cynical side of my brain, the side with the hair on fire, wants to shout out that Maura is a Charlie Baker Light governor who has sworn not to raise any new taxes, who has no vision for the future of the state. That side of my brain wants to characterize her as preparing for future high office bids. If not a political future, she could emulate Baker and become the president of the Women’s NBA (basketball was her sport, after all).

The other side of my brain, the loyal Democrat side, the lifelong student of history side, wants to put on the brakes and look at the circumstances that Healey finds herself in. What would it take for her to put her spear into the ground and take a bold leadership position by proclaiming that the simple solution to funding problems is more money. How much political capital would that take and how much political capital would be left for other vital matters? And, if she put that much political capital on the table, could she win?

The last question, of winning, poses the question: “winning against whom?” Two forces that every governor of Massachusetts for the past 50 years has had to contend are the speaker of the House of Representatives (think of Tommy Finneran) and the Senate president (think of Billy Bulger). They control two of the power centers that, along with the governor, form the three legs of our government’s political stool. With overwhelming Democratic majorities in both legislative branches, it is in their selfish interest to have weak governors. Witness the easy ride that Charlie Baker had for eight years. Celluci and Swift did not even count in terms of power distribution. And Deval Patrick was stymied in his attempt to create and fund a comprehensive transportation plan.

So, Maura, what’s a good woman to do? The fiscally conservative speaker of the House lives defiantly in an opaque bubble of non-transparency with fist of steel around the throats of his members. There is no indication that the Senate president will have anything to gain for supporting real financial reform for transportation. Doing nothing has not hurt Gov. Healey. And then there is the electorate. Without a tidal wave of popular support, where is the governor to stand?

The civic brain of the voters of our state is like the proverbial frog that has been slowly boiling in a kettle of indifference for decades. No one has raised any hue and cry so there is no problem. Does Maura have the power to move the other power centers of government while at the same time building a base among somnolent voters whom she would be asking to pay more taxes? It looks like politicians kicking the can down the road with “death by study” is the ugly solution that simultaneously gives the appearance of activity while avoiding, once again, constructing a solution that is staring everyone in the face. And their faces are covered with egg.