THE PIONEER BLOG

Mary Connaughton

Sunshine Week 2016: Highlights from Pioneer’s Government Transparency Team

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Each Sunshine Week, Pioneer shares highlights of its government transparency work completed over the year. Our objective is to have Massachusetts rank among the nation’s most transparent states. It’s a formidable goal because the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press currently ranks our state at or near rock bottom in the nation for government transparency. Fortunately, we are not alone in this. Transparency advocates across the state stand united in this vital effort. We will likely see improvements to public records laws in the near future. But we can’t let reform end there; transparency promotes an engaged citizenry, and an engaged citizenry is key to a healthy democracy. And there is still much work to be done. Here are some […]

Editorial Staff

Recent Ruling on MBTA Retirement Fund Major Victory for Transparency & Accountability

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The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald reported on an important new Massachusetts Superior Court ruling that, according to the Globe, “the records of the MBTA pension fund should be open to the public because the system receives tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer funding from the transit authority each year.” The decision should be applauded by MBTA customers, taxpayers, and advocates of open government and accountability. In a 2014 public hearing and in numerous reports and op-eds published since 2013 (including “Have the MBTA’s Retirement Plans Gone Off the Rails?,”) Pioneer Institute has raised concerns about the management and condition of the MBTA Retirement Fund and called for an end to the secrecy that has surrounded it. As Pioneer […]

MuckRock

Dropping Public Records Law Exemption is a Clear Win for Governor Baker

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Currently, there are only two states that exempt the office of the Executive from their public records laws. One is Michigan, where Governor Rick Snyder is embroiled in a scandal regarding how much he did or did not know about the lead-contaminated water in Flint. Outrage over the crisis has led to a national call to end the exemption and sparked a growing discussion about whether public sector accountability is possible without transparency. The other is Massachusetts. As we’ve written about before, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) opinion in Lambert provided the governor with a discretionary exemption to public records law. Although governors rarely deny public records requests, they – including Governor Charlie Baker – point out that they […]

Editorial Staff

Benchmarking Tools For Municipal Officials – Budget Season Edition

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Understanding how your community performs relative to its peers is critical in effectively scrutinizing municipal budgets. Pioneer Institute has developed a free online tool, MassAnalysis, with the most up-to-date information available from the Department of Revenue and FBI to help you do just that. With a couple of clicks, you can develop a dashboard for your community based on its revenues, expenditures, demographics, employment, crime, debt, education, financial strength, taxes and transportation. For example, this is a graph of the City of Worcester’s revenue:   On MassAnalysis, you can also generate a peer group using our peer finder, which considers up to ten measures in order to benchmark performance on revenues, expenditures, employment, demographics, crime, debt, education and taxes. In […]

Greg Sullivan

The Real Source of UMass R&D Spending

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UMass issued a report and a press release Tuesday citing a record level of research and development spending at UMass in fiscal year 2015. “Despite the tightening of the funding environment, the University of Massachusetts saw sponsored research increase by 4.3 percent during the past year, reaching a record $629 million, President Marty Meehan announced today.” What might not be immediately evident from the UMass announcement is that all of the 4.3 percent increase in UMass R&D spending in FY2015 was attributable to funding provided by the state and UMass itself, which amounted to an increase of $26.5 million, a 14 percent increase from 2014 to 2015.  Externally-funded research, from federal, business, nonprofit, other sources, actually declined by $670,000 from […]

Michael Weiner

What the Brian Joyce Saga Says about Government Transparency in Massachusetts

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One state senator’s dirty laundry may be catching up with him. Pioneer Institute previously covered the troubles facing former Senate Assistant Majority Leader Brian Joyce, after he faced scrutiny over allegedly using the status of his office to receive free dry cleaning services and designer sunglasses, among other possible ethical lapses. Last week, his Canton law office was raided by the FBI and IRS as part of a criminal investigation. Things are not looking good for the senator from the Norfolk, Bristol, & Plymouth district. Senator Joyce’s colleagues, led by Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, are rightfully going to let the investigation run its course before taking any action against Joyce. No charges have been filed against him. Criminal investigation aside, […]

MuckRock

How Responsive Are Massachusetts State Agencies?

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According to Massachusetts public records law, an agency has ten days to respond to a request. According to anybody who’s actually filed a Massachusetts public records request, the actual wait time varies greatly, with data complied from MuckRock requests putting the average response time at a whopping 79 days – just a little over two months. As an experiment, last October MuckRock and Pioneer asked ten Massachusetts state agencies for their FY15 internal operating budget, as well as the requested budget for FY16. This was specifically intended to be as straightforward as possible – a version of the information is available on Mass.gov, and we decided that we would treat an agency linking to that information as having fulfilled the […]

Scott Haller

MBTA commuter rail should release on-time data from every station every day

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As Pioneer has pointed out numerous times in the past, the MBTA has a habit of putting a positive public-relations spin on its shaky on-time performance record.  A Fox 25 investigative report takes the MBTA to task for massaging on-time data and keeping the public in the dark about its real record.  The report validates Pioneer’s ongoing concerns about the lack of transparency at the T, and furthers the call for increased accountability. After more than five years employing an easily-accessible, data-rich reporting scheme, albeit with summary rather than detailed data, the T has spent the last year crafting a new barebones successor. Although the T claimed in September that the new reports are still a ‘work in progress,’ there […]

Editorial Staff

Fordham’s PARCC v. MCAS Report Falls Short

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Guest post by Richard P. Phelps The Fordham Institute has long been at work on a study of the relative quality of tests produced by the two Common Core-aligned and federally funded consortia (PARCC and SBAC), ACT (Aspire), and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (MCAS).  What Fordham has produced is only in the most superficial way an actual analysis – in fact, it reads more like propaganda and lacks the basic elements of objective research. It takes only a little digging under the surface to reveal pervasive conflicts of interest, a one-sided sourcing of evidence, and a research design so slanted it cannot stand against any scrutiny. In developing their supposedly analytic comparisons of PARCC, SBAC, Aspire and MCAS, the authors […]

Scott Haller

MBTA Management Discussions: Where Did They Go?

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The government works for the people. As with any employee, the employer (citizens of Massachusetts) would prefer that the employee admit its errors or problems outright, instead of trying to cover up the tracks. Apparently, the MBTA needed this principle explained in greater detail. The T’s independent auditor, KPMG, recently said that the T has failed to include a critical part of its financial statements, the management discussion and analysis. This section is meant to cut through the numbers and accounting lingo to provide a layman’s understanding of the state of the agency’s financial situation. Starting in 2002, the T began including this section in its financial statements to comply with new standards set by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board […]

Editorial Staff

Presidents Day: The Innovative JQA

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Guest Post by Jordan Harris Although several Presidents have ascended to the Oval Office from the business world, very few have been innovators or entrepreneurs. Only one, Abraham Lincoln, has held a patent in his name. One of America’s most innovation-friendly Presidents was not a businessman at all, but was instead lifelong statesman, Massachusetts-born John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams, who became President in 1824, envisioned a federal government which spent more money on building canals, developing highways (130 years before Eisenhower’s Interstate System), and providing financial support for scientific expeditions. It was evident that the economy was rapidly changing; a transition to manufacturing was occurring, and science and technology were becoming increasingly important. According to historian Paul C. Nagel, […]

Michael Weiner

Thoughts on Transparency: Full Disclosure of Gasoline Taxes

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One of Pioneer Institute’s ongoing goals is to promote government transparency in the state. With the 2015 release of Agenda for Leadership, Pioneer’s James Stergios and Mary Connaughton put forth a comprehensive plan to increase the economic freedom and mobility of Massachusetts citizens.  To do so, transparency plays a crucial role.  After all, citizen engagement is the very heart of a healthy democracy. One of the ideas in Agenda for Leadership concerns the disclosure of motor vehicle fuel taxes. Information on state fuel taxes is available online (the Mass. DOR website publishes the information, and the American Petroleum Institute website has state-by-state information as well), but the vast majority of residents may not be aware of the extent of these […]

Scott Haller

MBTA Performance Transparency: A Whole New Meaning to Deferred Maintenance

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Governments need to adapt to the evolving needs of constituents, and in modern times, this increasingly becomes a matter of embracing technology. Examples of such progress include the ParkBoston App, eliminating the need for runs to feed the meter, and the cashless tolling system which is destined to relieve at least some of the Pike’s toll booth logjams. These uses of technology clearly improve basic government functions for the sake of consumers. Technology also eases government transparency efforts. Instead of manually copying hundreds of pages, an information request can be fulfilled by email. Technology has also increased the amount of data that governments have available. In this information age, thousands of data points are collected about healthcare, welfare, utilities, traffic, […]

Michael Weiner

Comparing Retirement Benefits for MBTA and other State Employees

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Pioneer’s latest report, A $49 Million Sweetheart Deal: How MBTA Employee Unused Sick Perk Enhances Pensions, illustrates how MBTA employees are taking advantage of a 1975 arbitrator’s decision to reap substantial retirement benefits through their unused sick days. The report further illuminates the incredible sums of money being spent at the MBTA on salaries and benefits compared with other state agencies and Massachusetts municipalities, bringing more attention to the fiscal mismanagement taking place at the MBTA. Additional data analysis done by Pioneer’s Greg Sullivan using data from the National Transit Database (NTD) shows just how much better pensions can be for MBTA employees.  Comparing retirement benefits for both MBTA and regular state employees given equal salaries and equal numbers of […]

Mary Connaughton

Our Government Transparency Resolutions for 2016

/1 Comment/in , , , , /by Mary Connaughton

While it’s possible that 2016 will see an historic surge in policies and laws that promote transparency in Massachusetts, the odds are we won’t see a quantum leap. But as we dig deeper into the draft of the public records reform bill released by the Senate yesterday, we are encouraged that, after decades of inaction, Beacon Hill is more tuned in to the public’s demand for transparency – but there is much more work to do. With Massachusetts ranking at or near rock bottom nationally in terms of open government, many are eager to shed the dark veils that mar our governmental processes so the state can assume its rightful place as a leader in good government. As we have traditionally […]