The recent announcement that State Police Superintendent Marian McGovern was going to retire prompted me to look into her compensation and her choices. (N.B. I don’t know the Superintendent and don’t question her commitment to public service. The point here is simply to look at the economic incentives provided by the current public pension system.) My first question was: Why did she wait so long? The State Police are “Group 3” employees and the only Commonwealth employees who do not have a retirement age factor in their pension calculation (only years of service). That contributes to relative early retirements — the average State Police retiree in 2009 was 53.7 years old while the average Group 1 retiree (the majority of […]

I know this can seem like a talking point, but there’s some new data to back up the claim. The Kaufmann Foundation and Thumbtack.com have done a survey of small businesses to gauge “small business friendliness”. Massachusetts doesn’t fare so well — getting a D overall. We do well on ‘Networking Programs” but most other categories, like Regulation, Zoning, etc, are terrible. The data is based on a limited number of self-selected responses but its an interesting approach that indicates the importance of licensing and regulation on business creation. One of the most important ways to create new jobs (which we need) is to get new businesses started. So, it would make sense to lower the barriers that prevent people […]

The State of Rhode Island is working hard, very hard, to make sure that Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios remains a going concern. It appears the state of Rhode Island is on the hook for $50m+ if 38 Studios defaults on its loan that is backstopped by a state guarantee. And let me be clear — no one wants the company to fail. Back when the deal initially went down, I said that Curt Schilling has every right to find the most lucrative deal for his company but that the state of Rhode Island was making a mistake. What the state did was make a big, concentrated, and multi-layered bet. Big — $75m big. Concentrated — $75m of a $125m initiative […]

Way back in 2006, Pioneer was interested in manufacturing. Our Measuring Up study on the cost of doing business in Massachusetts showed that manufacturing was still an important employer in the state and, importantly, was a source of good wages in the places it was located. More recently, we’ve been intrigued by the possibility of a resurgence in the sector based on rising costs at some of our off-shore competitors. Now, Brookings Institution has done a comprehensive study of manufacturing jobs across the country. In our major metropolitan areas (Boston, Springfield, Worcester) , manufacturing jobs account for 7% to 11% of total jobs. There’s been a roughly 30% decline in the number of these jobs over the last decade, but […]

Several months back, the egregious abuses at the Chelsea Housing Authority showed the weaknesses in oversight of municipal housing authorities. The fact that it got away with that abuse for so long, even after federal and state audits, should give one pause. Now, the Medford Housing Authority is under scrutiny. This time, its not the Executive Director’s salary that’s in question. Rather, its his habit of hiring underqualified political favorites and widespread ‘irregularities’ in contracting. In addition, there are allegations of improper usage of funds by other employees. And, once again, we have the troubling spectre of the entity which is supposed to provide oversight — the Board of Directors — unable or unwilling to do its job properly. This […]

Transit riders (like me) love to complain about how long certain trips take. We wish trains, trolleys, and buses could go faster. But a lesser known factor making trips longer is dwell time — how long you spend at stops and stations waiting for people to board. New York City has instituted a “Select Bus Service” strategy on several key routes, instituting a couple of tactics to reduce trip time by reducing dwell time. (Its also worth noting that this type of bus-rapid-transit-like service is incredibly low cost to implement relative to almost any other transit expansion or enhancement). Most importantly, this service lowers dwell time by taking fare payment off the bus. Each station on the route has fare […]

If you want the details of today’s MBTA deficit solution, take a look for yourself. Slide 4 is the key breakdown of the total solution. Service reductions account for only about 8% of the deficit reduction, fare increases account for almost 40%, and the rest is a series of budgetary nips, tucks, and rummaging through available pockets of cash. The fare increases total $72.9 million (below the $87 million to $135 million range in the original two scenarios). And they appear to have gained widespread acceptance. Imagine if the T had lead with just a request for a fare increase. It would have been ugly. Instead, they gave people a rough choice between service cuts and a fare increase. And […]

(Co-authored with Pioneer’s partner, Muckrock, which has extensive experience with public records requests at the federal, state, and municipal level) Hot on the heels of “Sunshine Week”, when MassPIRG celebrated the Patrick Administration’s commitment to transparency, we thought we’d collect some best practices in transparency we’ve learned over the years from the Administration. Massachusetts’s Public Records Law was created to allow citizens to access important government documents and provide another avenue of government oversight. After all, the documents are paid for by our tax dollars and in some cases, such requests are the only avenue to provide public accountability. But over the years, Commonwealth bureaucracy has developed increasingly “creative” interpretations of transparency, saving the public the trouble of having to […]

(See correction/clarification below) In an effort to aid in the Governor’s quest for greater accountability in state government, Pioneer turned its transparency efforts towards the UMASS Law School. Pioneer has long been a critic of the law school project but let’s see how the school’s own data grades it. First problem: Neither UMASS nor the Board of Higher Education ever laid down any initial performance benchmarks in any of their planning documents. They told us where they would go in the future, but not where they were starting from. Second problem: UMass was not wild about releasing the information on these benchmarks. 10 separate follow-ups were required to get what we wanted. And the Public Records Law? Treated as a […]

I had the pleasure of doing Bradley Jay’s radio show on WBZ a few weeks back. We talked about the MBTA, but what really lit up the phone lines was our discussion of potential savings from reform of the T’s Ride paratransit program. Most of the callers were concerned that eligibility reforms would take away their transportation. But it appears that the MBTA could save a lot of money just by restructuring the service, before even dealing with eligibility issues. The state’s Inspector General has come out with a report that analyzes the Ride alongside other paratransit programs operating within in the state and determined that a key difference in business practices between the Ride and other paratransit providers results […]

Education spending is one of those things that makes everyone feel good — we all want the best for kids, right? But that good feeling begins to fade when you see that many of the drivers of increased spending aren’t directly related to classrooms. In the (laudably detailed) proposed budget for FY13, Superintendent Johnson notes that health insurance is flat for the upcoming year but will increase by $7.7m in FY14 (on a base of $127.7m in total benefit spending). As noted in a 2010 research report, spending on health benefits increased by more than the increase in state education aid from 2000 to 2007. In other words, all the additional tax dollars the state spent on education during that […]