THE PIONEER BLOG

Scott W. Graves

Life support for the Globe?

/0 Comments/in , /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela Dawson

Been traveling so catching up on some items. In case you missed it, the Globe‘s circulation is down 6.66% (to 361,000) and the Herald‘s 8.7% (to 186,000). I loved the November 6 Globe’s headline: “Newspaper circulation still on decline.” All true, though the numbers for the Globe and the Herald were decidedly steeper than for all newspapers except for the Dallas Morning News and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While it might be interesting to understand why the circulations of Boston papers are headed in the opposite direction from that of the Philadelphia Inquirer (up 2.3% to 338,000), the broader, more important question is why the decline in newspaper readership is steeper in Boston than elsewhere? Other cities and regions have Metro […]

Steve Poftak

Another first from the paper of record

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I’m confident that no previous New York Times’ article has ever mentioned this level of alcohol consumption.  From the NYT’s helpful guide to carving a Thanksgiving turkey: “One year the turkey took a long time to cook and I went to carve it after about 13 beers,” said Maurice Landry, who lives near Lake Charles, La. “The way I remember it, I bore down to take off the leg and the whole thing went shooting off the platter and knocked over the centerpiece.” Happy Thanksgiving!

Steve Poftak

A Small Step for Transparency

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Buried in the outside sections of Governor’s latest supplemental budget is a provision to move the Mass Turnpike’s accounting system into the main state accounting system (that’s NewMMARS for you budgeting enthusiasts). This change will now make the MTA’s accounts (and spending down to a very detailed level) transparent to state budget officials. I’m not sure whether to be happy about the progress or sad that such a basic thing counts as progress.

Steve Poftak

Another Great Idea from the central planners

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From today’s Globe editorial promoting universal wireless in Boston: Boston is trying to invent a more open model, with a network to be built and maintained by a newly created nonprofit using donated money. This nonprofit would pursue the civic mission and welcome commercial partners. So, for example, Verizon might offer low-cost e-mail service. [Emphasis added] Great idea, you could call it Hotmail. Or maybe Gmail. No wait, how about…….

Liam Day

Boston vs. Buffalo

/0 Comments/in , /by Liam Day

The Patriots rolled to victory again last night. The victim this week – the Buffalo Bills. Football, however, is not the only field in which we appear to have a distinct advantage. It seems, at least according to msn.com, that Boston and Buffalo will be the most and second most expensive cities in which to heat your home this winter. Msn.com surmises that Buffalo comes in at no. 2 on the list because, well, because it’s quite simply a godforsakenly frigid city. Boston, however, is a different story. We top the list because we rely much more on heating oil than natural gas, whose price has inflated only 72% in the last decade compared to oil’s 234% increase. This obviously […]

Steve Poftak

Stopping the Drip, Drip, Drip

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I posted a few weeks ago, regarding the quiet, unchecked potential expansion of legislation that would greatly increase pension costs. So, its only fair that I give credit to the Joint Committee on Public Service for putting a severe limit on this type of behavior. They are requiring that all ‘reclassification requests’ (the practice of changing the classification level of an employee or class of employees, thereby increasing their pensions through statutory action; one of the many gaming techniques detailed here) come with an estimate of the cost and a written opinion from the Retirement Board that actually has to pay out the money. Its apparently angered at least one of their colleagues, but we salute their common sense request […]

Steve Poftak

Ummm, ahhh, the number is 617-723-2277

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Heh, heh, still waiting for the Patrick Administration to call. Did you feel a palpable shift in the oversight of state government last month? Sure you did. October 18th marked the expiration of my term on the Commonwealth’s Finance Advisory Board. Still waiting for that reappointment phone call from my friends in the Administration.

Steve Poftak

Or you could just give the money back to ratepayers

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Tuesday’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 […]

Scott W. Graves

Some ugly numbers on deficient bridges

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The 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, […]

Liam Day

Thoreau, he most certainly is not

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This 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.

Scott W. Graves

People v Place

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In 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 […]

Scott W. Graves

To gas tax or not to gas tax

/1 Comment/in , , /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela Dawson

Kathleen 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 […]

Amy Dain

Too much house

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I’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 […]

Scott W. Graves

Hats off to the land of the Yanks

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New 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 […]

Liam Day

Happy as a Clam

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A 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 […]