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 […]

The Convention Center Authority has convened a panel of Boston’s great and the good to examine the prospects for expanding the BCEC. That group is tasked to expand upon a consultant’s report that leaves a lot of big questions unanswered. I’m hopeful that at least some of the group (Hi Sam! Hi Mike!) takes it upon themselves to ask some hard questions. These might include: 1) What is a realistic assessment of the number of conventions that the BCEC misses out on solely because of facility size? The formal presentation to group suggests that the number is in the hundreds (see last slide here), but in a separate presentation (slide 18 here), the number appears to be closer to 70 […]

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 […]