THE PIONEER BLOG

MuckRock

Two States, Two Bills, Two Different Takes on Transparency

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This week, Florida State Representative Greg Steube and Senator Rene Garcia introduced bills that would amend existing Sunshine Laws, making the awarding of attorney’s fees discretionary in cases where agencies were found to be illegally denying access to public records. Currently requires legal fees to be awarded in such cases. Predictably, the bills were met with outrage from the state’s journalists and Open Government community, who saw them as a baldfaced attempt to impede accountability and a direct assault on a citizen’s guarantee of access to public records. Meanwhile, Massachusetts legislation that promises to bring long-overdue public records reform is pending in the Senate after easily passing the House in November. Like the new Florida bills, it leaves the decision […]

Michael Weiner

Report Ranks Boston No. 1 in Income Inequality: What Does It Mean?

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A report published last week by the Brookings Institution ranked Boston number one, but not in a good way. The report gave Boston the ignominious title of having the nation’s worst income inequality, according to its 95/20 ratio (the difference in income between households in the 95th percentile and those in the 20th). Boston placed just above New Orleans, Atlanta and Cincinnati.  New England counterparts New Haven and Providence were also included near the top of the inequality rankings. So inequality in Boston is high, but how much does this matter? Boston’s inequality ranking is troubling, but context is important here. For example, the Brookings report acknowledged that Boston’s ranking is at least in part due to its unusually large […]

Editorial Staff

Dr. King and American History

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Today, America celebrates the legacy of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose eloquence and courage mobilized this nation during the Civil Rights era. Over the last several years, Pioneer Institute has promoted U.S. History instruction in K-12 schools, to ensure that our children will learn about their national heritage, including the story of African Americans’ long struggle to gain the rights and freedoms that were promised at our country’s founding. In 2014, Pioneer held an event, “America in the Age of MLK: Teaching the Civil Rights Movement,” with Robert P. Moses, who directed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s Mississippi Project from 1961-64 and was a key voter registration leader. He is currently a visiting lecturer at the New York […]

Michael Weiner

Airing the State’s Dirty Laundry: New Findings Raise Questions Regarding Ethics and Transparency

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More dirty laundry is coming to the surface in the Massachusetts state legislature.  The Boston Globe reported earlier this week that former senate assistant majority leader Brian Joyce, already in hot water after buying designer sunglasses at a massive discount for all of his senate colleagues last January, spent over a decade taking advantage of free services at a dry cleaning shop in Randolph—potentially an ethics violation because state employees are barred from accepting any benefits worth more than $50 per year, according to the State Ethics Commission.  Governor Baker called for an investigation. These findings not only paint a dark picture of Senator Joyce, but also raise the question of how other dirty laundry at the legislature is managed. Dry cleaning costs […]

Jim Stergios

GE comes to Boston: Here’s why

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The Globe‘s Shirley Leung gets it right in her piece this afternoon on General Electric’s decision to relocate its headquarters to Boston: This is better than hosting the Olympics. No controversy over potential cost overruns, or whether taxpayers will be on the hook for billions of dollars. No worries about traffic on Southeast Expressway, or whether an aging T can handle throngs of visitors. No collective handwringing over whether the pain of throwing what amounts to a three-week party would be worth it all. General Electric moving its headquarters to Boston is all glory, giving us a chance to step onto a global stage on our own terms. The world can now mention Boston in the same sentence as Silicon […]

Jim Stergios

Rather than Cut The Ride’s Services, Change the Service Delivery Model

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by Jim Stergios and Lauren Corvese

On December 14th, the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board (FMCB) met to discuss how to rein in the agency’s spending and debated making changes to its paratransit system, The Ride. The FMCB faces a daunting task.  The MBTA is plagued with financial woes, including $5.5 billion in outstanding debt and $7 billion in deferred maintenance. That alone translates into $5,000 dollars per each of the commonwealth’s 2.5 million households. This is on top of the MBTA’s current budget shortfall of $170 million this year, annual operating losses, expensive collective bargaining agreements, and unexpected cost overruns with the Green Line Extension project.  The agency definitely needs to make some cuts. The FMCB has proposed a real innovation for MBTA paratransit: […]

Editorial Staff

Helping Those with Mental Illness Find Treatment, Not Incarceration

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Mental illness, the theme of our 2016 Better Government Competition, impacts all of us. In the second part of our ongoing blog series, below, we explore mental health and our criminal justice system. Prisons and jails have become our country’s de facto mental health institutions. Each year, there are two million arrests in the U.S. involving a person with a serious mental illness. In 2014, there were 550,000 Americans suffering from a serious mental illness in jails or prisons.  Ill-prepared to manage populations with a mental health disorder, our criminal justice system has become a revolving door for vulnerable people who need treatment but instead face imprisonment and conditions that exacerbate their afflictions. The common practice of incarcerating individuals with […]

Editorial Staff

JOIN US! Big Business & Big Labor – Teaching U.S. Economic History

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SAVE THE DATE: JANUARY 25, 2016. In this our second Gilded Age marked by international corporations and powerful labor unions, K-12 students need to understand the fundamentals of the economic history…

Editorial Staff

Happy Holidays!

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This holiday season, we thank you for your support over the years. Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year! – Your Friends at Pioneer

Lauren Corvese

Horsing Around at the Gaming Commission

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It’s time to quit horsing around at the Gaming Commission. Even given the dwindling popularity of the sport, Massachusetts would want to maximize the number of owners coming here to race their horses, right?  After all, with new casino gambling in the state, a portion of gaming proceeds are slated to help keep the tracks afloat. In fact, it is projected to contribute nearly $18 million a year to Massachusetts’ thoroughbred horse racing industry. Horse racing, though a more traditional gaming venue, helps keep a portion of Massachusetts workers employed, including vendors, owners, trainers, jockeys, and racetrack workers themselves, as well as the supporting community of veterinarians and feed suppliers. The industry provides entertainment and an opportunity for legal gambling. […]

Jim Stergios

West Virginia, Massachusetts and why the End Common Core ballot is going forward

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When it comes to the “confidence game” that has been played around the country to advance Common Core standards, there are few places where connivance was more on display than in West Virginia.  As noted in a post in March of 2012, you had there “noted national standards boosters” including “former Governor Bob Wise, now of the Alliance for “Excellent” Education,  and Steven Paine, former state superintendent of schools for West Virginia, and CCSSO’s former Board President.”  West Virginia was also “ground zero of the agenda of “softy” 21st century skills and the home of Dane Linn, head of education policy for the National Governors Association (NGA), another leader of the push for national standards.”   Last I looked, in […]

Editorial Staff

Helping Children Impacted by Mental Illness

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Mental illness, the theme of our 2016 Better Government Competition, impacts all of us. It takes a toll on our education, healthcare, and criminal justice systems, and affects our economy. We cannot end mental illness, but we can do much more to ensure that those who live with it receive better treatment. Preventive mental health care is an area of critical importance, and an unparalleled opportunity. Approximately half of all mental health issues begin before the age of 17, and 75 percent begin before the age of 24. Despite this, an estimated 80% of children with mental health issues ages 6-17 receive no help. This leads to an average delay of 9 years between the onset of symptoms and intervention. […]

Scott Haller

Document Request Reveals Which Commuter Rail Trains Are Frequently Delayed

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There is a unique relationship between the MBTA and its riders founded on a trust we give the authority in return for reliable transportation services. This is especially true for commuter rail passengers who pay more, expect more, and invest more in their commuting plans; whether it’s planning on dropping the kids off at school, bringing them to practice, or making it home in time to cook dinner, these riders have a lot more at stake if the trains are running slow. Lately this relationship has become strained, catalyzed most recently by last winter’s poor performance. From a 2009 peak of about 40 million riders, the commuter rail’s annual ridership dropped to approximately 35 million in 2013 despite adding service […]

Mary Connaughton

Massachusetts Needs Its Own CBO

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State Senator Jamie Eldridge is on to something.  The State House News Service recently reported that he filed a bill to bring greater transparency to the legislative process by establishing an agency similar to the Congressional Budget Office to put a concrete price tag on legislation before it is passed.  This is an idea Pioneer has long held to be of great merit – so much so that we included it in our recently published Agenda For Leadership. While the details of the bill differ somewhat from those in our proposal, we agree with Senator Eldridge – there needs to be an independent office to perform this vital function. Pioneer believes the office must be truly independent – not an […]

Jim Stergios

What is the Lawn on D Costing Us?

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Jon Chesto’s report in the Globe on Monday noted that the Lawn on D, an almost three-acre parcel immediately behind the South Boston Convention Center, is currently costing about $2.7 million to operate and generating about $424,000 in revenues, sponsorships, etc.  Both the operating costs and the revenues are up in 2015, from $2.1 million and $190,000, respectively, in 2014.  So the annual loss has also grown from 2014 to 2015, from about $1.9 million to around $2.3 million. There are many questions that should arise here.  Start with equity.  Should an authority be spending that much on programming at one park while other Boston’s neighborhoods compete for limited funds in a stressed City of Boston budget? Then there is […]