City Councillor John Tobin has proposed a sliding taxi fare scale tied to gas prices. Given that fares were just increased (in response to $4/gallon gas prices), this seems logical but hard to implement. Careful readers of this space will recall that we pointed out this issue in January — that taxi fares were raised in response to high gas prices but no cuts were implemented after gas prices moderated. Very careful readers will note that Councillor Tobin has a (laudable) history when it comes to vehicular issues. He led the effort to put GPS monitors on all Boston Public School buses as well.

The Patrick Administration’s publicly stated (still!) strategy for placing Senator Walsh in the Assistant Director’s position at HEFA is to facilitate the merger of HEFA and MassDevelopment. As part of their business, each of these entities serves as a conduit for non-profits to issue debt. The Administration believes that the overlap between these two entities is bad, as it drives down fees to the non-profits, limiting the amount of money these entities collect. Paul Levy, among others, points out that having a competitive environment allows non-profits to access financing at lower rates. Which is a good thing, I think. I would also note that if overlap is an issue, MassDevelopment and MassHousing have competed with each other for a much […]

(Great minds think alike — My colleague beat me to the punch. I’m posting anyway.) Today’s Globe has an editorial calling for an end to the practice of funding transportation for schoolchildren attending private school in Boston. Within the piece there was this little nugget: Crowded school districts in many suburbs are only too happy to pay to transport private school students while saving the much higher cost of educating them. But such equilibrium does not exist in Boston, where the infrastructure and staffing can support thousands more children than currently attend the public schools. [Emphasis Added] That’s a mouthful — given that the Mayor is planning on laying off hundreds of teachers, I’d like to know if these layoffs […]

The Carol Aloisi story was in yesterday’s Globe, but no one has stopped to ask about how legislative staff gets hired. From the story, Ms. Aloisi was “was assigned by DiMasi’s office to work for Springfield Representative Cheryl Coakley-Rivera in 2005”. Then, “his office reassigned Aloisi to Kaprielian’s office in August”. Next, Garrett Bradley shows up, finds her in the office and puts her to work. “Aloisi came with Bradley’s new State House office assignment in February, the lawmaker said.” Are legislative staffers typically assigned by the Speaker’s office? Do individual legislators not choose and hire their own staff?