Mass Open Books
Your Money. Your Government.
KNOW YOUR GOVERNMENT
Valuable tools and resources to help you navigate Massachusetts public policy.
Muni Share
Community Solutions
Mass Report Cards
Know Your Schools
Rate Your Community
A Citizen’s Resource
Common Core Toolbox
Reports, Media, Videos, and More.
Mass Pensions
Understanding Retirement Benefits
Or you could just give the money back to ratepayers
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byTuesday’s Globe had a story on the tug of war going on regarding the Renewable Energy Trust with some legislators seeking to move it out of the quasi-autonomous Mass Technology Collaborative (with its… ahem… own loyalties) and into the Environmental Affairs Secretariat. The Trust, like many well-meaning programs, suffers from the Ginsu Knife effect (remember – it slices, it dices, but wait, there’s more….). It offers grants, rebates, technical assistance, equity investments, debt financing, and marriage counseling. (OK, I made that last one up.) The net effect being that its almost impossible to figure out if the program is doing any good. I’m all for clean energy, but taxing our utility bills then shuffling the money off to a quasi-state […]
Some ugly numbers on deficient bridges
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /byThe Reason Foundation has posted up some data on the number of deficient bridges across the nation. The feds track this stuff for obvious reasons (mobility across states, an understanding as to how states are doing and what they are doing with fed money, and also because bridges that are rated ‘deficient’ become eligible for federal funding for repair. Overall, Reason notes that The condition of the nation’s highway bridges continued to improve from 2004 to 2005. Of the 596,980 highway bridges in the current National Bridge Inventory, 147,913—about 24.52 percent—were reported deficient for 2005 (see table), a slight improvement from 2004. In 1998 about 29.0 percent were rated deficient. However, progress is slow; at the current rate of improvement, […]
Thoreau, he most certainly is not
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /by Liam DayThis is priceless. David Wasserman, a Madison, Wisconsin middle-school teacher, recently refused to administer the state assessment to his students. It appears he was protesting No Child Left Behind’s mandatory testing requirements. As the controversial law’s first “conscientious objector” he received a fair amount of press coverage. In fact, he recently gave Newsweek Web an interview in which, when asked why he took his stand, he responded: I feel that the tests assess academic achievement in biased ways, with a challenging and confusing format of questions and answers. Shoot. I just hate that confusing question and answer format.
People v Place
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /byIn the High Court of Common Sense, the people will always win. Consider Youngstown or Buffalo. Both have seen a complete collapse in their populations. Youngstown is half the city it once was in terms of population. As Ed Glaeser points out in the Autumn 2007 City Journal, Buffalo hit a ceiling of 580,000 in the 1920s and has gone to 300,000. Noting the “billions upon billions” spent by the feds since the 50s on Buffalo and other failed “middle cities”, Ed lists out the usual suspects–Urban Renewal funds, HUD money, and lots of dough for the metropolitan rail system, even as ridership went down, down, down, as people left, left, left. Ed’s money quotes: All this spending aimed at […]
To gas tax or not to gas tax
/1 Comment/in Better Government, Blog, News /byKathleen Hunter’s piece, The Long and Taxing Road, in the July 2007 Governing magazine has some good information on Oregon’s experiment to understand the ability to replace or supplement the gas tax with technology (also a big theme here at Pioneer, see the transcript from our 2006 event Creating Mobility). Hunter notes: Every time [motorists’ odometers] blipped up by a mile, they owed the state of Oregon a tax of exactly 1.2 cents. The trip to Eugene from Portland, a 100-mile journey on Interstate 5, would cost $1.20. And that’s not counting for gas. The technology in place outside Portland counts miles traveled, avoids counting roads outside of Oregon, and can charge different amounts based on where in Oregon the […]
Too much house
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byI’ve heard people comment that there must not be a market for modestly sized single-family homes, or they would be built. Easton Developer Nick Mirrione does not see it that way. He is trying to build cottage homes in Easton, and he’s been knocking on doors to recruit supporters. In a presentation he did for us at Pioneer, he noted that for the first time in history, more than half of the households in the U.S. are not married couple households. He would like to build homes for the more than 50% of MA households that either do not have children or are single parents with children. The McMansion is often too much house for this demographic. Try as he […]
Hats off to the land of the Yanks
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byNew York may have fast fallen off the playoff charts. But the drumbeat of school reform is incessant these days, as incessant as the creaking rails and sounds of truck deliveries in Times Square. The Times, again this morning, brings glad tidings from a Mayor who is, as far as I am concerned, pitching fast balls as Mayor Menino and all of our mayors stand there with bat still firmly stuck on their shoulders. There are dozens of new charters, there is a Deval-style merit pay system, a focus on AP… And so it is this morning, where the Times reports on the Mayor’s new accountability system which gives an easy to digest grade to each school. The idea is […]
Happy as a Clam
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /by Liam DayA few comments on news items of note this week. Some serious, some less so. In response to Dan Brown’s op-ed in today’s Boston Globe: I love it – just love it – when people who have been teaching all of a year or two feel emboldened to speak with authority about education policy. (I’m reminded of Boston’s old pal Rick Pitino, who had the gall to publish Born to Coach when he’d only been one for about five minutes. But more on him later.) I also always appreciate it when people believe they speak for all teachers, as if teachers and their views of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind were one giant monolith. Psst, there are some […]
Oh, the days draw out like the blade of a knife
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /by Liam DayOne that cuts both ways, that is. On one side, longer school days, an idea being pushed right now at the state level, make sense. They allow for more instructional time, as well as for time for all of the activities that seem to be being pushed off the agenda by the need to meet state and federal standards as measured by MCAS. On the other hand, extending the school day will be frightfully expensive, which yesterday’s Lawrence Eagle-Tribune correctly pointed out in an editorial regarding Andover’s participation in a state grant program for longer school days. This comes on the heels of passionate parent testimony at a recent Methuen school committee hearing to discuss extended day learning in that […]
Going through the motions
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byEver get that feeling that you were doing just that, without really paying attention to the world around you? Apparently the Legislature sometimes has the same problem: …lawmakers, meeting in an informal House session, recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Halfway through, they realized that the flag they were pledging to, normally propped up above the rostrum in the rear of the chamber, had been taken down… From State House News Service (sub. req.).
A shrinking dependency ratio
/0 Comments/in Blog, Housing, News /by Liam DayBut fewer younger, healthier people are joining the state’s workforce to defray the costs incurred by the older, sicker population. Thus spake the Boston Globe this morning and their assessment is correct. The Commonwealth’s population is stagnant. We are losing young workers even as we gain dependents. Their focus, however, is another matter. We must begin with the fundamental question, which in this case is: Why are so many young workers leaving the state? The easiest answer to that question is the high cost of living. And, yes, double digit increases in health insurance premiums are part of the problem. Its crux, however, is not health insurance; it’s housing. We should be focused on ways to reduce the cost of […]
Goodbye, Camelot
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Liam DayMr. Robert Goulet, the pride of Lawrence, died yesterday. You may be more familiar with his work in Camelot and Man of La Mancha, but for those of us weaned on ESPN, he will always be remembered for the series of faux-lounge college basketball commercials he made during the 90s. Pure genius.
Drip, drip, drip
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byEver heard of the “Heart Law“? It says that certain public safety officers who develop hypertension or heart disease shall be assumed to have developed said condition in the line of duty and puts the burden of proof on the employer to demonstrate otherwise. There is currently legislation wending its way through the Legislature, in informal session, with no debate or roll call votes, that will extend this law to county corrections officers. I don’t know if its a good law or a bad law. But our 2006 report on pension costs prompts me to ask the following questions: 1) How much will this bill add to the pension liability? and 2) Who will pay for it? Wait, I think […]
An Interesting Idea — Behind the Counter Medications
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, Healthcare, News /byA recent op-ed in the LA Times calls for certain medications to be prescribed by pharmacists. This suggestion is on a continuum with a few other ideas that move select portions of medical practice from its traditional delivery mode to more convenient and cost-effective (but still clinically rigorous) modes. Increasing the practice rights of nurse practitioners and allowing Minute Clinics are ideas along these lines. The gist of the idea is that for certain medications, it is a appropriate for a pharmacist to prescribe directly to customers who come in and complain of specific symptoms. This should be familiar to anyone whose ever gotten mildly ill in Europe — where the practice is widespread. Although this seems like common sense, […]
Murray’s Healthcare Moment
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, Economic Opportunity, Healthcare, News /byThe prospect for dynamic reform on Beacon Hill seemed slight a week ago. New initiatives seemed to be breaking down in a familiar pattern — Governor proposes ‘bold, new’ (expensive) initiative, Legislature promises ‘careful, in-depth’ review (and plenty of revisions. Then, Senate President Murray gave her speech at Wednesday’s Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce meeting. She proposed the following: 1) Public hearings to document the causes of premium increases above 7 percent 2) Realigning of payment methodologies to encourage quality and efficiency, not just the volume of services provided. 3) Increased recruitment of primary care providers 4) Allowing nurse practitioners to serve as PCPs for some patients 5) Permit “limited service clinics” proposed by the Department of Public Health. 6) […]