Think you’ve had a tense few weeks at work? Consider potential targets of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s probe into wrongdoing at the state’s Probation Department. The Globe Spotlight Team and the Ware Report detailed the madness, absurdity, and outright corruption of the Probation Department. It’s tough to do it justice in a few words — rigged hiring, pay-to-play promotions, alleged quid pro quo between department leaders and legislators, and on and on. On January 17, the Globe reported that the US Attorney’s office had “essentially completed their investigation” and indictments were imminent. Given the number of legislators mentioned prominently in the Ware Report, this had to be cause for concern. Tick, tick, tick. Still waiting. Ten days later, the Lowell […]

I’m a bit perplexed at the latest round of expectation-setting from Beacon Hill regarding the FY2013 budget. First, it turns out we still have a structural deficit. But, didn’t the Governor tell us that the FY12 budget “eliminates the structural deficit I inherited from my predecessors”. And MTF President Mike Widmer came close to concurring, noting the near elimination of the structural deficit. Now, we find out there’s a $550 million structural gap. (Plus the cost of pushing out the pension fund, but that’s a bit harder to understand.) Working from MassBudget’s curiously well-informed preview of the FY13 Governor’s Budget, I next learn that the Consensus Revenue Estimate says we’ll have an additional $840 million in available funds for the […]

Participate in the transportation conversation long enough and you hear a familiar refrain: Why can’t we be more like Europe? Europe being shorthand for an enlightened land of high-speed rail, pervasive bike use, and public transit everywhere. (There’s notable less interest in the widespread use of private concessionaires for roadways, but that’s another post.) With the MBTA’s current financial struggles in mind, a recent study by two scholars — Ralph Buehler from VPI and John Pucher from Rutgers University — of the German public transit system yields some interesting results. During a period where US transit systems expanded their coverage area faster than ridership, German systems reduced their coverage area while seeking to increase ridership on higher volume routes. They […]

The MBTA released two scenarios to deal with a projected FY13 budget deficit of $161 million. Scenario 1 fills the gap with close to 80% fare increases and 20% service cuts. Scenario 2 roughly splits the difference between service cuts and fare increases. A quick review of the impact study tells me that Scenario 1 is the one that the MBTA wants. And that the ire of the public will quickly be focused on Scenario 2. Scenario 2 proposes a radically trimming of bus operations, eliminating 23.6% of bus trips and reducing ridership by about the same amount. The T’s bus system could use some consolidation and a greater focus on increasing throughput, but that’s a pretty big pill to […]

The Salvation Army is struggling to raise money this year through its traditional red kettle/bell-ringing campaign, with donations down 22%. It might be due to a down economy. I know that my dependence on electronic transactions frequently leaves me without bills or coins to donate. But new economic research suggests strategies to increase donations. A team of economists conducted a four day experiment at a Boston-area supermarket using two different approaches to the red kettle campaign. The first approach was passive — just bell-ringing, no speaking, no eye contact. The second was active — bell-ringing plus a direct ask for a donation. The result? People avoid being asked verbally (as opposed to the implicit, passive ask that the presence of […]

Achieving reading proficiency by 3rd Grade is a vital skill, closely correlated with important measures of academic achievement later. As one major study found: – One in six children who are not reading proficiently in third grade do notgraduate from high school on time, a rate four times greater than that for proficient readers… – For children who were poor for at least a year and were not reading proficiently in third grade, the proportion that don’t finish school rose to 26 percent. That’s more than six times the rate for all proficient readers… – Graduation rates for Black and Hispanic students who were not proficient readers in third grade lagged far behind those for White students with the same […]

It feels like a familiar story – an obscure public sector entity with a clueless (or worse) board of directors fails to do their job and the executive director makes off with bags of money. Except this time, the setting is the Chelsea Public Housing Authority rather than the Merrimack Valley (see here and here). Briefly, the Director of the Authority managed to pay himself $360,000 per year (far more than any other Housing Authority director in the state) while claiming that he was only making $160,000. His explanation for lying to the state and federal government: He’s a ‘rebel’. Once he figured out his days were numbered, he got the Authority’s bookkeeper to write him checks cashing out his […]

The more you look at Ayanna Pressley’s first-place finish in Tuesday’s at-large race, the more impressive it looks. As I noted previously, she was able to hold onto a lot of votes from the 2009 at-large election that had much higher turnout (she held onto 90 percent of her ’09 votes with only 57 percent of the total turnout). Now, the exact same people didn’t necessarily vote for her in each election, but I think it’s a useful proxy for a candidate’s popularity and GOTV effort. In fact, in a number of cases across the city (79 of 254 precincts), Pressley exceeded her vote totals from ’09. And it was relatively spread out across the city from a demographic standpoint, […]

Next Tuesday’s municipal election in Boston has a competitive at-large race and its outcome will provide some advance info on what to expect in the next mayor’s race. Here are 5 things to watch: 1) Is the Flaherty-Pressley Competition A Legit Thesis? The narrative for the early part of the race was based on Michael Flaherty’s entry into the at-large race after giving up his seat to run against Mayor Menino. This created the dynamic of four incumbents, and Flaherty (practically a incumbent as well with strong citywide name recognition) running for only four seats. As the lowest votegetter in the last race, Ayanna Pressley was viewed as the most vulnerable. Her potential exit from the council raised the possibility […]

Boston Public Schools are competing for students, whether you like it or not. In the early 1970s, the system had enrollment of over 90,000. This school year, they only have enrollment of just over 57,000. Just under a quarter of the school-aged children are educated outside the district – private, parochial, charter, METCO, special ed placement, or homeschooling. If the BPS wants to stem this long-term trend, it needs to compete for students (and parents). And that message seems to have gotten through. For years, the BPS has had access to an incredible wealth of data about what parents want – what do parents pick as their most desirable schools in the dreaded school lottery? They seem to tapping into […]

The Occupy protesters still have a variety of viewpoints represented but a clear theme is a rejection of corporate influence that they view as having taken over politics. At the same time, the success of the protests in generating attention has attracted the labor movement, which sees a popular vehicle for their goals. If you’d allow me to take the focus down to the specifics of Massachusetts politics for a moment, I’d urge the OccupyBoston folks to think long and hard about what influence money has over politics here and who wields that influence. Take a look at the top 20 PAC donors in Massachusetts from 2010 – 16 of the top 20 PACs were labor-related. Put another way, from […]

OccupyBoston has captured lots of media space with their occupation of the Greenway, but I’m still searching for the point. It has tapped into the collective unease over the state of employment in this country. Faced with flat or declining incomes over time (with compensation increases being consumed by healthcare) and the effects of the recession – high unemployment, widespread underemployment, and declining workforce participation – many are either unemployed or deeply insecure financially. The physical protest itself raises questions about the coherence and potential longevity of the movement. The protesters (from my highly unscientific inspection and reading of news coverage) appear to be mostly white 20-something males. (Side note: News photographers seem to have a knack for catching the […]