29 Democrats voted against the budget last week and I’d like to know why. (Tip of the pen to BlueMassGroup for the roll call document.) They are Arciero, Benson, Bowles, Callahan, Costello, Creedon, Dempsey, Driscoll, Fagan, Fallon, Fresolo, Garry, Golden, Greene, Gregoire, Kujawski, McMurtry, Miceli, Murphy (K.J.), Nangle, Puppolo, Rogers, Rush, Scaccia, Smith, Spiliotis, Stanley (T.M.), St. Fleur, and Torrisi. Part of that group is probably the fiscal conservatives — I’d note Arciero and Rogers as part of that group. There’s also a number of reps from border (or close to border) districts — Arciero, Bowles, Costello, Dempsey, Garry, Torrisi among them. And lastly, there’s a curious group who voted for the sales tax increase but against the budget — […]

The Conference Budget came out late last night and its being voted on today, all 263 pages of it, which each and every legislator has doubtless read. – Our unique-in-the-nation restrictions on contracting with the private sector remain largely intact. The Senate attempted to raise the cap on projects subject to the law to $2 million (see section 7D), while the Conference budget (in section 7) only raises it to $500k (from $200k). Given the hundreds of million in additional taxes in this budget, its hard to feel good about such a small rise. – Sections 129 and 130 generate extra money for the budget from two of the murkier sources of funds. 129 continues the current year’s practice of […]

The first customer pays in about two months after getting bill, questions or rejects a quarter of the charges, and, depending on who you ask, pays substantially less than your other customer. The second customer pays within a month, questions about 5% or 6% of the charges, and pays a premium. That’s the dynamic in Massachusetts between the state Medicaid program (the first customer) and private payers (Blue Cross, Harvard, Tufts, Fallon). The contrast gives one pause as we debate the merits of ‘public plan’ competing against private plans under some form of national healthcare.

PERAC has released the 2008 results for the state and local pension funds. And the results are ugly — losses of close to 30% in many cases. It is only fair to note that PRIM (the state pension fund) lost 29.5% in 2008, while the 55 systems that invested on their own lost significantly less, with a median loss of 26.3%. Pioneer (and the Patrick Administration) have advocated for some time that smaller local pension funds should be incorporated into the state fund. See Pioneer’s white paper on local pension funds This position, using only 2008 data, would have cost money for those local funds. It is largely a function of asset allocation — PRIM has much greater exposure to […]

Enough acronyms for you? BRT stands for Bus Rapid Transit. The state’s transportation planners (yes, you, Jim Aloisi!) are doing a very good thing with their latest plan to implement aspects of Bus Rapid Transit on the existing Route 28 Bus Route. They are marketing it as “28X” and they will be implementing (as feasible) dedicated lanes, stand-alone stations (as opposed to stops) and off-board ticketing. See details here, here, and here. This last item is of particular importance. On-board fare collection on buses has proven to be the Achilles Heel of automated fare collection (which this space has long supported). The continued use of paper tickets (versus CharlieCards) results in serious dwell time delays. Moving that delay off the […]