THE PIONEER BLOG

Creating Space for Healthcare Innovators in the Marketplace

Pioneer Institute’s initiatives in healthcare focus on three goals.  We promote price transparency, essential in containing costs and increasing access to care. We aim to put state programs like Medicaid on a more sustainable path and create flexibility so the programs provide higher-quality care and access to care, which too often outside greater Boston is not the case. Pioneer’s third goal is to ensure that the market continues to benefit from innovation, whether in the delivery of healthcare services or in the development of new cures. Today, the Institute is pleased to submit testimony to the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health in support of expanded access to oral care. The testimony focuses on why allowing dental therapists to […]

Managing Growth in Malden & Somerville: A Tale of Two Cities

The influx of new residents into Boston and its surrounding communities has put growing pressure on the area’s housing stock. Just recently the median home price in Massachusetts broke $400,000, and there aren’t enough units available to meet the demand among natives, let alone newcomers. Boston’s satellite communities experience greater pressure than towns further out—and the cities that sit just on the periphery of Boston have chosen to address the housing crunch in different ways. Malden and Somerville are two illustrative examples. The cities have some situational and physical similarities—both are relatively close to downtown Boston and have roughly the same number of transit stops. However, the two municipalities view future growth and long-term outcomes quite differently. By a number […]

Regulatory reform of the taxi industry is long overdue

If the events of the last several months are any indication, Uber’s future is not as certain as public sentiment might have suggested a year ago. But even though the company has taken hits on a number of fronts, Uber and other transportation network companies (TNCs) will continue to have the upper hand in the ride-for-hire market unless a number of restrictions on taxis are eliminated. 2017 has been a year of endless public relations nightmares for Uber. Beyond scandals and hits to the firm’s image, trouble has also been brewing on the financial front. The ride-hailing company has been hemorrhaging money in its battle with competitors to be consumers’ top TNC option. In 2016 the transportation giant incurred annual […]

METCO’s 50th Anniversary Focuses Attention on Pioneer’s Call to Expand & Improve the Program

The recent 50th anniversary of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) has drawn attention to the program, which gives about 3,300 Boston and Springfield students the chance to attend high-performing suburban schools, and to findings from two Pioneer Institute studies about METCO. One of the Pioneer studies was cited in a lengthy feature on The 74, an education news site, and a July 31 Boston Globe editorial echoed Pioneer’s recommendations. These include that the state commission a gold-standard study to compare the performance of METCO students to those who remain on the waitlist and reform the program to make processes, like the one used to move children off the 9,000-student waitlist, more transparent and accountable. Both publications noted that […]

The Crazy World of College Presidential Salaries Part 3: Comparing Presidential Salaries with State College & University Success Rates

  While many factors influence state university presidential pay rates, there isn’t always a correlation between those rates and student outcomes. Ideally, a university president would have a portion of his or her salary tied to student outcomes such as improved retention and graduation rates. To see how Massachusetts state colleges and universities stack up, we reviewed the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education online data tool. Graduation Rates Figure 1 below depicts each state college and university’s latest four- and six-year graduation rates. This data describes the 2009 cohort of students, i.e. those entering the school in the fall of 2009. Had they completed their studies in four years they would have graduated in 2013, and would have graduated in […]

Time for Boston to open up to limited service clinics

As a little girl I have a dim memory of my mother taking me to a medical “dispensary” in what was then not-very-trendy East Boston. I remember it being really convenient; it was just down the street from where we lived, had short wait times, and a nominal cost, if any at all. This was during a time when physicians made home visits. I guess my mother couldn’t reach our family doctor, so off to the dispensary we went. Medical dispensaries—we might call them “clinics” —were quite common in Boston beginning in the early 1800s. (That is not when I went!) Most were operated as charities for people who could not afford private physicians or were not sick enough for […]

How Do Alternative Investments Stack up in State Pensions?

There are numerous expert opinion on the proper investment strategy for public pension funds. In 2012, the Pioneer Institute’s Ilya Atanasov cited concerns about risk and subpar returns in recommending that public pension funds divest from certain complex alternative including private equity and hedge funds. Instead, Atanasov suggested funds invest in safer, more stable assets such as fixed income securities and even holding some portion of assets in gold and cash-equivalents as a hedge against market volatility. Today, private equity and other alternative investments constitute an ever-larger portion of asset portfolios. Hedge funds and private equity as of March 2017 make up 19.2% of the Pension Reserves Investment Trust (PRIT), which manages assets for Massachusetts state pensions. This is a […]

The Crazy World of College Presidential Salaries Part 2: A Deeper Look

Part 1 of this blog series on MA state colleges and universities addressed presidents’ salaries since 2010. In general, although public funding for MA higher education institutions—specifically the state college and non-UMass university system—is decreasing, university presidents received annual raises, and sometimes very large raises and expensive buyouts. The picture is a bit murky, though, because of the various challenges faced each of the nine schools in the system. So how does each school measure up? For context, Figure 1 presents an overview of how much the presidents of each college and university earned payroll in 2016. ‘Salary Rate’ refers to the annualized base rate at which the president was paid, while ‘Total Pay’ represents the net amount each received, […]

How Does MA Allocate Money to Its Community Colleges?

State funding for community colleges is widely considered to be allocated on the basis of enrollment. The bigger a school’s student body, the more money it receives. However, Massachusetts does not appear to follow this pattern for every campus. As demonstrated in Chart I, the bigger schools – Bunker Hill and Middlesex, for example – are on the upper end of state money appropriations for 2016. Conversely, the smallest – Greenfield, Berkshire, Roxbury – receive less. The schools that defy this size-money correlation are Bristol, North Shore, Massasoit, and Springfield Tech. At 6,286 students, Springfield Tech has fairly modest enrollment relative to its peers (As a frame of reference, Bunker Hill and Middlesex have 13,142 and 9,021 students, respectively). Yet […]

The Internet Sales Tax: Gone But Will It Be Back?

On June 30th, two days before it was scheduled to go into effect, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue (DOR) pulled a directive that would tax online retailers without a physical presence in the state. Under the directive, any company that has over 100 transactions and at least $500,000 in sales in the state in the prior year would be subject to a 6.25% sales tax. An internet sales tax is not, however, as easy to implement as it sounds. In 1992 the Supreme Court ruled in Quill Corporation v. North Dakota that that states could not levy taxes on businesses unless they had a physical presence in the state in which they were being taxed. To get around the ruling, […]

Welcome to the Crazy World of College Presidential Salaries – Part 1

In a world of skyrocketing college tuition and student debt, the issue of college administration costs has become highly visible—and infuriating—for those footing the college bills. A large part of a higher education institution’s administrative costs come from salaries, including pay for presidents, executive boards, deans, and provosts. But these positions also sometimes come with not-so-straightforward perks, including buyouts upon retirement and significant pension plans. While controversies may seem more likely in private institutions, taxpayer-funded public universities and colleges also have their share of issues. While Massachusetts’ nine state universities are supposed to provide a more affordable option for students, still some administrative salaries are increasing as tuition continues to rise. To gain a simpler view of how such salaries […]

The Downgrade: Perhaps A Yawn But We’re Not Alone

Since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, economic indicators have been largely positive. The U.S. GDP in 2015 reached $16.3 trillion, finally surpassing the $16 trillion before the recession. U.S. unemployment has fallen to 4.3%, down from 10% at  the height of the recession. Yet despite the recent growth, 13 states including Massachusetts have seen bond rating downgrades from at least one rating agency in the past two years. Five states have suffered downgrades from all three. Their stories should serve as a warning to Massachusetts not to follow in their footsteps. Bond ratings measure the risk that an entity will be unable to pay back its bond holders. As bonds get riskier, bond issuers are forced to […]

“A Source of Wonderful Ideas and Terrific Innovation”

“…yet another idea that came out of the Better Government Competition, in real-time, delivered by Pioneer Institute to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts…This organization, this event, for years and years and years has been a source of wonderful ideas and terrific innovation, and I want to, on behalf of the Commonwealth, thank you for your leadership and your work in so many different spaces…” – Governor Charlie Baker (view Governor Baker’s remarks in their entirety by clicking on the image above!) The Tall Ships weren’t the only attraction drawing a crowd to Rowes Wharf on Monday evening. Now in its 26th year, Pioneer’s Better Government Competition (BGC) Awards Dinner welcomed Governor Charlie Baker, MIT’s Dr. Joseph Coughlin, and BGC winner Kim […]

Understanding the Downgrade

S&P Global Ratings (S&P) recently downgraded Commonwealth and certain other Massachusetts agency bond ratings one notch from AA+ to AA. The AA rating is still considered a high mark in terms of the investment grade of the bonds, meaning S&P believes the state will meet its debt obligations.  While it is fair to say that the downgrade is not a calamity, it is certainly a warning signal as to what could happen should the state continue practices that do not lead to long-term fiscal health.  It’s a reality check to which we should pay close attention. As shown in Figure 1, the state’s S&P rating on Massachusetts bonds is still well above 2001 levels and is now at the same […]

Aging, Technology Take Center Stage at 2017 Better Government Awards Gala

Last night, on an inspiring evening, against the backdrop of the beautiful Sail Boston parade of tall ships, Pioneer Institute held its annual Better Government Awards Gala. Longtime supporters and new friends gathered at the Boston Harbor Hotel to celebrate the country’s most innovative ideas to improve care for the aging, and leverage their skills in new ways. The audience heard from Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, who discussed his administration’s initiatives on transportation, healthcare, and his new council to address healthy aging. Kim Brooks, the Chief Operating Officer of Senior Living at Hebrew Senior Life, accepted the top prize for her Better Government Competition entry, “The Right Care, Right Place, Right Time: Effectively Integrating Senior Care and Housing.”  And MIT AgeLab’s Joseph Coughlin, […]