(Disclaimer: I am in the tank for the Franklin Park Zoo. I’m a member, I go there often, I know Executive Director John Linehan (not well)) With that out of the way, I wanted to add a few items to the discussion: 1) Clause M of the Section 5 of Chapter 92b of the MA General Laws — I’m curious why this hasn’t come up sooner — it prevents the Zoo from charging admission to students on school trips. I understand the impulse but it seems unfair to expect the zoo to stand on its own (kind of) without letting them charge an important group of customers. 2) The Two-Headed Monster — The political dynamic created by the two locations […]

– Lack of Legislative transparency — Our Legislature seems to work extra hard to make things hard to understand. In some cases, it is turning around 300 page bills in less than 24 hours, meaning no one can read it with any level of care. In other cases, it’s the lack of available data about pending legislation, as detailed by State House News in a article yesterday (sub. req’d). I’d note that the Connecticut Legislature has a much more sophisticated site that allows you to track bills and sign up for email updates when anything happens related to your interests. – No 311 in Boston — Boston has an iPhone app for constituent complaints but you still have to “bumble […]

The Lowell School Superintendent tried to put out an RFP to determine if using a private vendor for school food services would save money. Other cities have done this and it is also standard practice at most colleges and universities (even the state-funded ones). So, what did this exploration of potential savings earn her? An expletive laced series of threats from school committee member Regina Faticanti. Read the whole thing here. Fun fact — Regina Faticanti is a member of the School Committee’s Discipline subcommitee.

29 Democrats voted against the budget last week and I’d like to know why. (Tip of the pen to BlueMassGroup for the roll call document.) They are Arciero, Benson, Bowles, Callahan, Costello, Creedon, Dempsey, Driscoll, Fagan, Fallon, Fresolo, Garry, Golden, Greene, Gregoire, Kujawski, McMurtry, Miceli, Murphy (K.J.), Nangle, Puppolo, Rogers, Rush, Scaccia, Smith, Spiliotis, Stanley (T.M.), St. Fleur, and Torrisi. Part of that group is probably the fiscal conservatives — I’d note Arciero and Rogers as part of that group. There’s also a number of reps from border (or close to border) districts — Arciero, Bowles, Costello, Dempsey, Garry, Torrisi among them. And lastly, there’s a curious group who voted for the sales tax increase but against the budget — […]

The Conference Budget came out late last night and its being voted on today, all 263 pages of it, which each and every legislator has doubtless read. – Our unique-in-the-nation restrictions on contracting with the private sector remain largely intact. The Senate attempted to raise the cap on projects subject to the law to $2 million (see section 7D), while the Conference budget (in section 7) only raises it to $500k (from $200k). Given the hundreds of million in additional taxes in this budget, its hard to feel good about such a small rise. – Sections 129 and 130 generate extra money for the budget from two of the murkier sources of funds. 129 continues the current year’s practice of […]

The Globe reports that the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association has objected to the Police Commissioner’s directive to get rid of water coolers (which would save $50k). The BPPA notes that the coolers were originally instituted as a health measure. Given the recent findings that allegedly harmful chemical Bisphenol A (which is found in almost all water cooler bottles) leaches into the water after rather brief exposure, the BPPA may be better off listening to the Commissioner.

I’m not done with the latest 2008 Investment Report on pension returns across the state. If you look through it, almost every communities’ 5 and 10 year returns (and for a few their lifetime returns) are below, way below, their expected rate of return on their pensions. Why does this matter? Well, the expected rate of return on pension assets is a key determinant of the unfunded liability. A high rate of return lowers the unfunded liability. Let’s pick a town at random and see what that means. How about…say…Swampscott? The 2007 Annual Report of the Swampscott pension fund reveals an assumed rate of return of 8%. Yet, in the past 5 years, they have had returns of 3.04% and, […]

Enough acronyms for you? BRT stands for Bus Rapid Transit. The state’s transportation planners (yes, you, Jim Aloisi!) are doing a very good thing with their latest plan to implement aspects of Bus Rapid Transit on the existing Route 28 Bus Route. They are marketing it as “28X” and they will be implementing (as feasible) dedicated lanes, stand-alone stations (as opposed to stops) and off-board ticketing. See details here, here, and here. This last item is of particular importance. On-board fare collection on buses has proven to be the Achilles Heel of automated fare collection (which this space has long supported). The continued use of paper tickets (versus CharlieCards) results in serious dwell time delays. Moving that delay off the […]

Earthfest is this Saturday on the Esplanade. If past practice is any guide, DCR will once again allow folks to park along Storrow Drive, creating a massive traffic jam that can easily stretch all the way up the Leverett Connector onto I-93. So, the convenience of a few hundred folks wins out over the thousands who use that road (average daily (probably weekday) traffic volume of 66,000, as of 2006). In the past, DCR has claimed that the cars act as a safety barrier, but I’m skeptical of that explanation. My two questions: 1) Is deliberately congesting a road and putting tens of thousands into stop and go traffic really making a great “Earthfest” point? 2) If DCR was more […]

A new study, published by the Rappaport Institute and Collins Center, examines Springfield’s experience with the transition to GIC. The author, Bob Carey, provides a lot of interesting details. My observations: 1) High Out-of-Pocket — one of the typical objections to the GIC is their (deliberately) high out-of-pocket costs. It turns out that Springfield had moved to a new health insurance plan two years earlier that had some of the highest out-of-pocket costs I have seen. That made GIC a lot more palatable to municipal workers. 2) Shedding 5% of Insureds Helps to Cut Costs — By tightening criteria (e.g. no more coverage for the Symphony) and requiring documentation (thereby reducing fraud), Springfield reduced the number of subscribers by 5%. […]

1) How many members of the commission really think pensions and other employment benefits need to be reformed? 2) Does the Governor’s office have specific ideas as to what they would like to see in the commission report and a game plan for achieving it? 3) When PERAC presents information but states that the data is not really comparable, why doesn’t anyone ask them to come back with comparable data? 4) For that matter, for a liability as large as the state’s public employee pension system and other benefits, why don’t the Administration and legislative leaders insist on better data collection? 5) Did the Commission really have a discussion of disability without even touching on the “Heart Law”, section 94 […]

Remember Tim Bassett? He’s the guy who retired, took a pension, then got special legislation written just for him that allowed him to go back onto the public payroll while retaining his pension. (And who’s wife just had her pension reduced because she tried to count years as a library trustee, except she didn’t attend the meetings.) Read the details here. He’s currently the Executive Director of the Essex County Regional Retirement Board, where the Globe estimates he is paid $123,000 annually (and don’t forget the $41,000 pension too). But that’s not enough. In his spare time, he lobbies for a variety of clients, among them are other retirement boards. The Salem Times reports today that his firm was paid […]

I opened up my Globe this AM to be greeted by this Metro section headline: “Political Momentum Builds for a Sales Tax Increase” plus a picture of a rally and an article on the topic. Interesting choices, given that the rally only attracted 40 or so people and the content of the article was much more noncommital. Contrast that with the studied inattention to the larger “Tea Party” rallies of the week before — wire story on a rally elsewhere deep in the first section.

One of my pet issues has been moving payroll and other short-lived items off of the capital budget. It’s the state budgeting equivalent of taking out a mortgage to buy groceries — using 20 – 30 year bonds to pay for salaries, computers, cars, etc. It would require roughly $200 million in operating funds to do that completely. I’ve been told many times (before the current crisis) that this would be impossible. Governor Patrick, to his credit, proposed moving a mere $10 million of payroll off the capital budget in his first budget. Again, deemed impossible and ignored by the Legislature. Now, in the midst of our great fiscal crisis, the $52 million line item for the Quinn Bill got […]