This LeBovidge character over at the turnpike authority is a hoot!

Last week he turned off the lights on the Zakim Bridge, claiming the authority couldn't afford the five grand a month to keep it lit at night.  "I can't provide Rolls Royce service on a Chevette income," he has said. "That's the problem."

Yvonne Abraham at the Globe reports what happened next...

A few days later, architect Miguel Rosales, who helped design the lovely bridge, sent the authority a check for $15,000 to keep it lit for three months.

"My initial reaction is, 'Thank you,' " LeBovidge said on Monday.... "Assuming he's an upstanding guy... I'd say we need $45,000 more."

See, that's what it would take to keep the thing lit all year, and it would be so terribly tiresome to go back and forth.

"I don't want to turn them on, and turn them off, and turn them on, and turn them off," LeBovidge said.

Personally, I think strobes on the Zakim Bridge would rock!

LeBovidge is also being blamed for an epic Easter morning traffic snarl on the pike.  His response to those who would protest his staffing the pike's tollbooths with a skeleton crew on a major holiday rather than paying toll takers the overtime?

"The same people who would say 'Put more on' would say, 'Fifty-five dollars an hour? Are you out of your brain? What are you spending that for?  That's the conundrum."

Indeed it is. 

Wakefield Republican and Senate minority leader Richard R. Tisei sees a — surprise! — conspiracy at work: "There's been a decision made to make things as painful for people as possible to drum up support for the gas tax."

With or without the vast left-wing conspiracy, there will be blood.  That's a certainty. I mean, this is a reckoning we're dealing with here, and reckonings are bloody by their nature. 

As editors at the Globe explain: "over the years, the public wasn't told the truth. State officials tapped into the Pike's borrowing power to pay for the Big Dig."

And LeBovidge is right when he says "everyone knew it was a shell game."

Hey, maybe that's what we could call our sitcom!