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MoveOn.org opposes health care bill
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byAbout three hours ago, MoveOn.org asked its members to undertake a letter-writing campaign to the Senate. No, not in support of the health care bill, but in opposition. Wow. What a difference a year makes.
MassDOT Apps Are Coming!
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThere’s a new app available for you IPhone users (who aren’t participating in Operation Chokehold in an hour) that lets you figure out when buses are arriving on certain MBTA routes. I’m not sure if its the first app out or not, but MassDOT has been doing some fascinating work reaching out to the developer community and providing them with data feeds. I was recently reading MassDOT’s 90-day implementation report (yep, I’m cool.) and was struck by a passage on data. As part of a discussion about outsourcing the 511 service, it notes their efforts to move “toward a vision of government as a wholesaler of information rather than a retailer.” That’s a mouthful coming from a public sector entity. […]
What Does $400+ million get you?
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byOr, to put it in greater detail, what does $471 million per year, plus authorization for millions in capital funding, the ability to issue tax-free bonds through your own conduit, and untold millions in soft subsidies (like, say, $250,000 for 173 pages of reports — here and here). Well, if you are UMASS Chancellor Robert C. Holub, the answer is nothing. He responds bluntly to some legislators questioning of the potential acquisition of the law school in southeastern Massachusetts: In the past months there has been a great deal of controversy about the establishment of a law school on the Dartmouth campus of the University of Massachusetts. This controversy continues even after the Board of Trustees has voted on three […]
Finally some good news on the DC choice program
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byAndrew Campanella passes on the good new that “a bipartisan team of U.S. Senators is calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow an up-or-down vote on the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program’s reauthorization bill.” According to a letter signed by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Robert Byrd (D-WV), George Voinovich (R-OH), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and John Ensign (R-NV), the OSP has “provided a lifeline to many low-income children in the District of Columbia.” The Senators set a specific deadline for floor time to discuss the OSP: January 31, 2010. Our friends in DC are buoyed by this bipartisan call: “The time has come for Senators to stand and be counted,” said former D.C. Councilman Kevin P. Chavous. […]
Maybe Hire That Guy From the Fed Ex Ads?
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byYou remember him don’t you? The Fast-Talking Guy. Senate Republicans just got Bernie Sanders to withdraw his single-payer amendment to the healthcare bill. They used some kind of parliamentary maneuver that would have forced the Senate Clerk to read the amendment out loud. All 767 pages of the amendment. It has since been withdrawn.
Semantics and the Size of State Government
/2 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThe Herald took a shot at the Patrick Administration yesterday, claiming they have added 1,300 people to the state payroll over the last year. We’ve written a bunch on this issue. In particular to question why the safety net agencies are taking such a dramatic hit relative to others.) Also, to note how difficult is has been to get this administration to play straight with disclosing the numbers. In response to the Herald piece, Secretary of A&F Jay Gonzalez shot back that the Governor has eliminated 1,930 positions. Semantics matter here. The state’s human resource system is littered with ‘open positions’ that may never be filled. Taking one of these positions off the rolls might possibly prevent spending in the […]
If you do nothing else…
/1 Comment/in Blog, News /byWatch this video of Geoffrey Canada on 60 Minutes. He and so many other charter schools deserve so much credit for insisting on success at all costs and for being unwilling to blame the kids.
Will Brownsberger — Transparency Champion
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byToday’s Globe story on the state’s huge legal expenditures on behalf of former Speaker DiMasi and his staff buries a nugget deep within. The data comes from a spreadsheet that Rep. Brownsberger had requested from the Comptroller, then posted on his website. It’s a truly impressive posting — Brownsberger displays a very impressive grasp of the minutiae of state budgeting and his analysis in the later worksheets is fascinating. It’s this type of thoughtful inquiry, made with a desire for hard data rather than political calculation, that we need more of. If you’d like to see more information along the lines of what Rep. Brownsberger has presented, check out our website, www.massopenbooks.org. If you go to the disbursements section, you […]
Getting Healthy
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byBoston Mayor Thomas Menino made his first public appearance in several weeks today at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast. He’s been laid up since the election with a serious knee/quad injury. The Globe profile of his recovery noted that City Hall staffers were ferrying document out to house twice a day (be sure to hit Tutto Italiano while you are out there). All kidding and policy issues aside, we offer our good wishes for his recovery. In the meantime, the famously in-charge Mayor (who generally does not encourage subordinates to draw attention to themselves. See Bratton, William and several others) has had to delegate some of his public role. It seems odd to read about another city official […]
How to stop investment in urban areas
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byGreg Peterson knows the development world and related environmental issues about as well as anybody I know. (Full disclosure: I often sought out his advice when thinking through puzzles at the state’s environmental affairs office.) I have been hearing an earful from folks involved in clean-ups as part of the 21E program run by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The short version is that that state in the 1990s moved to a partially privatized program where Licensed Site Professionals (LSPs) were allowed to audit and certify compliance with the state’s clean-up standards. The program allowed the state to turbo-charge clean-ups–something that is necessary if we are serious about revitalizing our older industrialized cities. Together with the 1998 Brownfields […]
The Cake Is Baked, Convention-Center Style
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /bySunday’s Globe brought a supportive editorial asking for a careful look at the Mass Convention Center Authority’s planning process around doubling the size of the BCEC. It introduced a new line of argument — the larger size is needed to attract life science conventions, our expanded center will attract classier conventions than Vegas, and somehow being the site of life science conventions will result in innovations being spread around the world that benefits Boston’s reputation. That’s a pretty delicate reasoning chain, particularly during a recession when taxpayers will look skeptically at a follow-up request for $1 billion in funding, or perhaps more. Its intriguing to look at the data on our existing convention calendar (pulled 12/7 off the MCCA’s event […]
Growing discomfort with P21?
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byEdWeek‘s Stephen Sawchuk gives a wide-ranging look into the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (subscription req.) After seven relatively quiet years of work, P21 is facing a vocal chorus of detractors of its initiative, primarily from among advocates for a liberal arts and sciences curriculum. (“Backers of ’21st-Century Skills’ Take Flak,” March 4, 2009.) “The closer we look, the more P21’s unproven educational program appears to be just another mechanism for selling more stuff to schools,” Lynne Munson, the president and executive director of Common Core, a Washington group that advocates a stronger core curriculum, wrote in a recent blog item. Ken Kay, the president of P21, may consider that criticism to be a “cheap shot.” I haven’t looked at […]
Hard hitting WaPo piece on scholarships
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byAnthony Williams, the D.C. mayor from 1999 to 2007, and Kevin Chavous, former D.C. City Councilor and co-founder of Democrats for Education Reform, penned a powerful call for the President to show leadership in the Washington Post. Despite the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program’s five-year record of success in helping children from low-income D.C. families attend the best schools they have ever known, President Obama, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. José E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) are threatening to end it… Plain and simple, the position of Obama, Durbin and Serrano is to let the program die. Williams and Chavous are especially sour on Serrano: In his Nov. 28 Local Opinions commentary, Serrano said that the Opportunity Scholarships were “imposed” on […]
Whining About Legislative Process
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byYesterday’s Globe highlighted a troubling aspect of the state Legislature’s current process: cramming really detailed pieces of legislation into a few short days. What does this do? It concentrates power in the hands of lobbyists (who provide drafts of amendments) and staffers (who create the actual product). It drains power from elected representatives, who have no hope of actually reading, analyzing and pondering the consequences of all the paper that flies through the chamber. And it also cuts the press and the public out of the process almost altogether. The Globe piece examined an amendment offered by Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz that severely limited the number of districts where the charter cap might be raised. From my read of the amendments, […]
Awkward Juxtaposition Department — Probation
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byToday’s Globe detailed a new Boston Foundation report that shows state spending on the probation department rising at a rate of 163 percent over the last ten years, far outstripping almost every other part of state government. So, where’s the money going? Well, it appears that at least $2 million of it just walked out the door with one of their accounting clerks.