Sen. Baddour, Champion Of Mass. Trans!

State senator Steven Baddour announced plans yesterday to create a MassTrans agency, which he says will save the state $6 billion in overhead. I, for one, was amazed to learn that so much money is being spent on the transgender community in the Commonwealth.

So I gave a jingle to Gunner Scott, director of MassTrans --aka the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition -- and asked if it was true that the organization was currently wasting $6 billion.

Scott denied the allegation. "I did notice that they're using the name that we're known by," Scott said, speculating that perhaps Baddour is creating a state agency that will be staffed entirely by transgendered employees. "That would be a great opportunity for our community."

A mutual friend speculated that Baddour's MassTrans bill was an effort to trick legislators into voting for the transgender non-discrimation bill that was also filed yesterday on Beacon Hill, by making them think it has something to do with transportation. Clever!

Scott, whose organization is pushing that bill, denies this as well (and with some 30 cosponsors already, including John Rogers and Bob DeLeo, they might not need a ploy) -- but suggests that they might try to buy the url "masstrans.org" in hopes of ensnaring people who go searching for information on the transportation bill. That would be fair turnabout, because I'm quite sure that a number of cross-dressers will find themselves on Baddour's new blog site, www.MassTransForTomorrow.blogspot.com.