There’s an interesting experiment going on in Boston right now — the Boston Teachers’ Union is starting a pilot school next year and is working, hard, to attract students. (Let’s not talk about the cynical process that lead to the expansion of pilots in Boston, ok?) They are facing the challenges of a start-up school. With just a building and two lead teachers (its version of a principal, I believe) in place, how do you get parents interested and committed? They are taking an interesting approach, attempting to start next year with K1, K2, Grade 1, Grade 2, and two Grade 6 classes. Why two Grade 6 classes? My hunch is that the BTU knows that there is big overhang […]

The Governor’s Budget was released today (well, some of it anyway, it’s four hours after the formal release and none of the companion bills are available yet). One really surprising finding was the elimination of Additional Assistance, a roughly $380 million piece of local aid. To see who gets what currently from this line item, look here. In principle, this is a good idea. Additional Assistance stands out among a variety of local aid programs as having almost no rationale for the distribution of aid (unlike lottery and chapter 70 education aid). But as a practical matter, it’s a pretty big pill for certain municipalities, like Boston ($164 million of a $2.1 billion budget), to swallow, particularly in a single […]

It took about a year after I left the State House to realize that no one outside the building cared when the Governor’s budget was released or who vetoed what or hundreds of other ‘events’ inside the building. With that in mind, I think its time for the House of Representatives to call themselves to order for real. The protracted drama over Sal DiMasi and the now-resolved Rogers-DeLeo spat made for great palace intrigue. But they crowded out important policy issues, like massive mid-year 9C cuts, a $3 billion deficit in FY10, and..yes..the upcoming release of the Governor’s budget.

Today’s Globe has a well-meaning op-ed that uses Jeremy Piven’s alleged mercury poisoning as its lead. This would be the ‘mercury poisoning’ that required him to go to Thailand to recuperate. For those of you with great interest in the topic, the NYPost recaps a variety of Mr. Piven’s exploits during his illness, including boozy late night parties and using mass text messages as a way of…ahem..meeting new friends. And a fisheries trade group took the liberty of posting Mr. Piven’s recent Good Morning America appearance on you-tube, with their own running commentary. In their defense, the op-eds authors do clear their throats two paragraphs into the piece, noting that Piven is widely discredited at this point. So don’t use […]

The Turnpike cranked out one of the more inexplicable pieces of public policy last week — adding a $.50/month charge for FastLane transponders. For potential new users, this is a actually a passable deal — you can get a transponder for free (versus $25.95 one-time charge) with a payback of more than four years. For existing users, this is ridiculous — you paid a flat fee upfront and the Turnpike is changing the terms of the deal. I wonder if EZ-Pass Arbitrage will increase? This space is a huge booster of open road tolling, so its disappointing to see the Turnpike do this, unless its part of some brilliant political strategy whereby the Turnpike alienates as many political constituencies as […]

Some smart aleck once said that the two most effective reforms would be to require every elected official to send their kids to public school and to fill out their taxes without any outside assistance. The second part of that point is reinforced today by the story of Treasury Secretary Geithner’s tax problems — he failed to pay a portion of his taxes during his term at the IMF and had a housekeeper who was briefly out-of-status. The point here is that the head of the New York Fed and presumptive Treasury Secretary, using an accountant, can’t properly understand the tax code. What are mere mortals supposed to do?

Several folks, including a recent commenter, have posed a similar question — if the handshake agreement between Partners and Blue Cross has raised healthcare costs so much, why hasn’t someone come up with a non-Partners insurance product? I can’t say that I have an absolute answer. But, I would point you in the direction of the closest analogue I can think of — Unicare’s Commonwealth Choice PPO plan, which is available to state employees. It limits you to a variety of community hospitals, BIDMC, and Children’s Hospital (the only contact with the Partners network, as far as I can tell. Jump on our GIC health insurance comparison website — www.gicestimator.com — and pretend to be an employee of one of […]

My colleague, Jim Stergios, mused a few weeks ago about Bernie Madoff and the lack of trust out there right now. And Jim is exactly right. In a previous life, I was part of group that attempted to raise an investment fund (obviously it didn’t work out, did it?). My colleagues were forever pitching the idea to a variety of placement agents, fund-of-fund operators, and miscellaneous middlemen. These gentlemen were always impeccably dressed, impossibly self-assured, and gave off a well-monied whiff that, by virtue of pedigree, education and/or previous employer, each had some link to sources of capital. That fund never got raised (obviously) but I was reminded of those particular types as I read Harry Markopolos’ devastating critique of […]

As I was walking to work this AM, a cab (thanks hackney license #385!) ran a red light, stopping only to berate me for walking in a crosswalk with a walk signal. It got me to thinking about the fare increase of this summer. Back in August, in the throes of the gas crisis, the city of Boston raised rates after a series of complaints by cab drivers and their representatives. I advocated back then for a break in the artificial monopoly that supresses the number of cabs in the city (read the comments too). As gas prices have dropped from $4+ in August to less then half that (at least where I live), the new, higher rates remain in […]

Interested in how your town fares under the Lottery — take a look here: Lottery Workbook This spreadsheet tells you how much your town gets from the lottery relative to the sales of lottery tickets in the community. It also calculates how much people win from those tickets and adds it into the amount of aid to give another angle to the notion of return on investment. Feel free to comment on tweaks, mistakes, or observations from the data.

Slate’s Tim Noah attempts to draw a parallel between Obama’s membership in Reverend Wright’s church and Hillary Clinton’s interview with reporters and editors at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by Richard Mellon Scaife. The clear implication is that Clinton should be held accountable for some statements of the paper’s owner, as recounted by Noah. He’s reaching. Her appearance at the 3rd most widely circulated newspaper in a hotly contested primary state should hardly be newsworthy. Particularly if Noah’s chosen candidate has (gasp!) spoken with reporters at the very same paper.

…and a birthday party broke out. Sheesh, two police reports from kids’ birthday parties — one at a Chuck E. Cheese and the other from the Good Time Emporium in Somerville. At least the second one was on Easter.