Lane Glenn, vice president of academic affairs at Northern Essex Community College, had an astounding quote in yesterday’s Globe: “The fear is, of course, that we’ll be asked to do what our K-12 colleagues have been asked to do, come up with seven to eight important things and then teach to the test,’’ Glenn said. “We’re not interested in that.’’ He’s speaking in reference to a plan by MA public higher ed institutions to put new accountability measures in place. Its a good goal, but Glenn’s disdain of K-12 accountability standards reflects an almost comical level of ignorance. Massachusetts’ strong accountability standards have been a key part of a larger effort that has shown undeniable results — world class performance […]

I’m not sure how much of this is political theater or unrelated events, but both Connecticut and New Hampshire are pretty seriously considering border tolls. It seems pretty certain that Massachusetts would respond by putting up a border toll on I-93 (seeing as how the Pike tolls largely act like a border toll now on the short piece of I-84 in our state). Drivers are not going to like it, but it will leave each state with more transportation money. The last piece of the puzzle would be a move to open-road tolling, which seems to happening here.

Got your attention? The State has put a wealth of disclosure from health insurers and providers up on the web. I lack the time and, frankly, the chops to really get at all the good stuff but I did find a few interesting pieces of disclosure. In Partners’s disclosure, they note the rates they charge insurers could have been 18% lower in 2008, if government funded programs had covered their costs. (Yes, I am naively assuming that the insurers would pass that savings along to consumers.) Put another way, Partners had negative operating margins of -33% on Medicare and -44% on Medicaid in 2009. Also, floating around in the ether around the federal health care reform debate is a proposal […]

I’ve written about New York’s insane political world in the past, and it took another turn this week, when the NY Times finally (after two whiffs) printed its stunning piece on NY Governor David Paterson. To start at the beginning, Eliot Spitzer got elected Governor with a little known LG, David Paterson. Spitzer had to resign after the “Client 9” scandal and Paterson took over. During the fighting over control of the state senate, Paterson appointed Richard Ravitch as LG. To give you a sense of the drama involved, Ravitch was sworn in tableside at Peter Luger’s steakhouse to beat a court injunction. His appointment was invalidated, then allowed up the rungs of the court system in NY, before finally […]

Its not easy being the Attorney General. You step on too many local officials and you end up like Scott Harshbarger — you might get nominated but everyone sits on their hands when you need them to work for you. Martha Coakley seemed to have solved that problem through her office’s seeming disinterest in public corruption of high-ranking public officials. During a period that has seen an unprecedented level of indictments and investigations, the US Attorney’s office has done almost all of the heavy lifting. Now, the Amy Bishop case has captured the headlines and raised serious questions about who among the major players — then-DA no-Congressman Delahunt, Braintree Police, and State Police — was delinquent in their duties. The […]

The Legislature is rolling out a “Municipal Relief Act” today, shepherded by Committee Chairs Representative Paul Donato and Senator Jamie Eldridge. Unless I’ve missed some grand strategic plan to insert plan design on the floor, this Act is an embarrassment. Everyone agrees that healthcare costs are killing local governments. By my estimation, its gone from roughly 6% of local budgets to over 12% over the last ten years — no other municipal department is growing like that. One potential avenue to controlling healthcare costs is joining the state employee’s insurance pool, the GIC, but many municipalities either object to that or don’t think it will save money. The next option then is to give municipal managers greater control over health […]

Charlie Baker and Deval Patrick seem to agree on something. In June 2009, the then-CEO of Harvard Pilgrim complained that loose enrollment rules were letting individuals hop in and out insurance policies, depending on when they needed a high volume of services. The Governor’s Small Business Jobs Bill tries to limit that practice by permitting two open enrollment periods a year for the purchase of individual coverage. I just got the GOV’s Bill, so I don’t understand exactly what he means by that. (Will you only have two chances per year to get coverage as an individual? What if you lose group coverage at a point in time outside the open enrollment period?) I’ll post a clarification once I fully […]

Let’s hear it for the MCCA — they just posted their audited financials online. Good for them. A tip of the pen to Jim Rooney and Mac Daniel. And to make it more impressive, they did it on a day while they are simutaneously dealing with a State House protest by Patrick Administration appointee (and union head) Janice Loux about the Authority’s new food service vendor. Let’s hope the other authorities follow suit. They may have to — the Senate’s economic development legislation (filed yesterday) contains no less than 12 provisions about transparency at the quasi-publics — including the disclosure of audited financials.

Adrian Walker picks up where his colleague Yvonne Abraham left off last month. While Abraham’s column was primarily a 640 word exercise in ad hominem attack, Walker actually talks to the current SNESL (and future UMASS law school, apparently) dean. It’s a shame that neither columnist could divert from their talking points to ask a few basic questions, like 1) Why isn’t the current performance of the students at SNESL mentioned in UMASS’ proposal to take over the law school, 2) How do you reconcile the almost $10m discrepancy in library assets between UMASS’ proposal and SNESL’s tax return, and 3) Why would current SNESL leadership (which has failed to achieve accreditation for ten years) be retained? But don’t worry, […]

Our state will have two downballot constitutional races this year, for Treasurer and Auditor. The Auditor’s race is attracting candidates — Guy Glodis (just today!), Suzanne Bump, and perhaps one or two more for the Democrats, Mary Connaughton for the Republicans, and Kemal Jain for the Independents. Meanwhile, Steve Grossman is hanging out there all alone on the Treasurer’s ballot. Are the promise of deep pockets and the whispers of inevitability really stopping others from running? Ask Governor Reilly and Senator Coakley how that worked out. Its not as if Grossman’s 2002 Gubernatorial candidacy was a juggernaut. (Nothing personal against Grossman, I just want a competitive race.) One challenger has already dropped out and another (Boston City Councillor Steven Murphy) […]

The Board of Higher Ed staff has just put out a recommendation that the board approve the UMASS law school. The document hardly qualifies as analysis, as its largely a cut and paste job of the original UMASS application. Here’s my favorite passage: staff finds that the proposed University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Juris Doctor meets review criteria and that the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth will be able to start and operate a law school that can achieve ABA accreditation in a reasonable timeframe. This is predicated on attainment of enrollment goals [Emphasis added] Well, of course, and my getting rich is predicated on me making a lot of money. That doesn’t mean its going to happen. One would hope that […]

Pioneer has weighed in on the UMASS-Dartmouth law school issue — here and here. And we’ve gotten swept up in the collective reponse, which seems to consist most of ad hominem attacks. Has anyone asked about the management team that will lead the law school to accreditation? The cornerstone of any private sector business plan is the quality of the management team. As put forward by the University, their proposal is remarkably thin on the management team. They note faculty members at UMass that have law degrees but are silent on the specific skills of managers. Has anyone asked why the proposal never provides any information on the current achievement levels of the SNESL student body or an assessment of […]

Dear Secretary Mullan, Last year, I criticized manual toll collection, saying “Few other government services are executed with the deliberate inefficiency and expense of manual tolling.”. But I have a confession – its practices like this that make my job necessary. That’s why I’m so concerned about the MassDOT Developers project. What could be a standard issue example of overly long and complex government procurement, with expensive consultants, millions of dollars of custom code, and little interest in actual customers, is becoming something very different. Although in a pilot phase, they’ve shown the ability to bring products to market quickly, leverage outside skillsets the state could never hope to hire, and do it at minimal cost. Most importantly, the results […]