THE PIONEER BLOG

Greg Sullivan

What Was Omitted from the Special Advisory Commission Report on Public Officials’ Pay

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Data left out of the report of the Special Advisory Commission Regarding the Compensation of Public Officials [Click to download a Word version of this post.] On November 30, 2014, the Special Advisory Commission Regarding the Compensation of Public Officials published a study concerning the compensation of the state’s constitutional officers and members of the state legislature. In my view, the information presented in the report is insufficient to allow a meaningful comparison of legislative pay levels in Massachusetts with those of other states because it excludes from its analysis 39 states in total, including six states with populations greater than that of Massachusetts: Texas, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Washington, and Arizona.  The report also excludes eight of the ten states […]

Greg Sullivan

The MBTA’s $23 Million 11th-hour Sweetheart Deal with Gillette Stadium

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$23 million 11th-hour sweetheart deal by the MBTA will stick taxpayers with a jaw-dropping $10 per one-way ride subsidy on a new full-service Gillette Stadium commuter rail line As the curtain falls on Governor Patrick’s administration, officials at MassDOT have been rushing furiously behind the scenes to pull off one of the most egregious and secretive taxpayer abuses in state history: the execution of a binding $23 million contract to purchase a CSX freight line to provide full-service daily commuter rail service to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. If the new commuter rail service is provided, the financial benefit to the owners of Gillette Stadium and Patriot Place will be enormous. The MBTA has been offering additional train service for Patriots […]

Editorial Staff

Jeb Bush’s Rhetoric and Reality on Common Core

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Pioneer Institute respects Governor Jeb Bush’s education reform accomplishments in Florida and even honored him at a 2010 event.  Unfortunately, at today’s opening of the Foundation for Excellence in Education National Summit on Education Reform, held in Washington, D.C., Governor Bush continues to misrepresent the facts around Common Core national education standards. In his speech today, Governor Bush argued that the Common Core is a high standard and that “the rigor of the Common Core State Standards must be the new minimum in classrooms.”  With the Core aiming to instruct and test Algebra I in grades 9 and 10, and with a substantial reduction in the high-quality literature in the standards, the Core is hardly a set of standards that […]

MuckRock

In Massachusetts, Asking Agencies to Do Their Jobs Can Be Expensive

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Despite its name, the Freedom of Information Act can set you back quite a bit. To cut departmental costs and prevent abuse, every incarnation of public records law on both national and state levels includes some form of provision which allows for the agency to charge requesters a “nominal” fee for search, processing, and reproduction of responsive documents, to be paid prior to any work being done on the request. With a few exceptions, such as fee waivers for journalists/documents deemed to be in the public interest (more on that later) and some sort of hourly/page count minimum before fees are incurred, the more-or-less standardized formula for cost estimates goes like this: the hourly rate of the lowest-paid employee of […]

MuckRock

When it comes to Public Records, What’s a Fantasy in Massachusetts is a Reality in Florida

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Those who dabble in public records know there’s no such thing as a “painless” records request – only varying degrees of “relatively less painful.” Even the most straightforward process is still a process, one which involves tracking down the right contact, formulating the wording just so, and waiting to hear back a (potentially inconclusive) response. There’s a reason why we at MuckRock require users to commit to a minimum of at least five requests – it’s not uncommon for somebody’s first FOIA experience to be so frustrating that it ends up being their last. It goes without saying that the process could be much improved. What isn’t being said, but should be, especially in Massachusetts, is that there are people […]

Sandra Stotsky

How Colleges Are Dumbing Our Kids Down, Too, and What We Can Do About It

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It’s not just Common Core’s standards and the curriculum teachers are putting into place to address those standards that are dumbing our kids down.  Our colleges are contributing in their own way to the problem by the books they assign incoming freshmen to read in the summer for their first “common experience.” As Beach Books: 2013-2014 (www.NAS.org) notes, “most colleges seek to build community through their common reading programs.”  Lest anyone think this experience means a book requiring high school-level reading skill, never mind college-level reading skill, the reading level of the most frequently assigned books (those assigned 5 or more times) should dispel that myth. The average reading level for the 5 of the top 7 books assigned as […]

Editorial Staff

Possible Civil and Criminal Offenses During ACA Implementation?

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The transition to a new healthcare exchange in Massachusetts has gone poorly. In a forthcoming report, Pioneer Institute will examine what exactly went wrong during implementation, with the help of two whistle-blowers and internal audits on the project.   Yet during the research for that project, Pioneer uncovered multiple incidents of state officials misleading and possibly lying to federal officials in order to keep federal funds.   Given the appearance of both civil and criminal offenses, Pioneer Institute viewed it as necessary to send a letter to the director of the FBI, the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the HHS Inspector General, and the managing director for information technology at GAO detailing two of these incidents. […]

Editorial Staff

Massachusetts Gubernatorial Candidates on K-12 Education Policy

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K-12 education policy too often is the province of powerful special interests. It is important for candidates for public office to speak directly to citizens and parents about what they will do for the next generation of schoolchildren if elected. That’s why we invited all five Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates to respond to a questionnaire on K-12 education policy. Our purpose is to share their views on eight big education issues relevant to what children learn in the classroom, career and college preparation, and equitable choices for all families. All of the gubernatorial candidates responded to our questionnaire, with the exception of Martha Coakley. As soon as we receive her responses, we will share them with you as well. A few […]

MuckRock

When It Comes to Disclosing Public Official’s Financial Interests, Mass is in the Sad Minority

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Last week, we looked at some of the bureaucratic obstacles that transparency advocates in Massachusetts can find themselves faced with, eventually singling out the Ethics Commission’s Statements of Financial Interests (SFIs) as a particularly egregious example. Not only does the Commission require you to fill out a completely superfluous additional form and attach a copy of your driver’s license (both flagrant violations of state public records law) but they then share this information with the individual you’re requesting information on – something utterly without precedent in public records, and really, intimidation by any other name. This week, we’ll see how this policy compares to SFIs in other states, and how it touches upon the larger issue of Mass’ commitment to […]

Editorial Staff

State Internal Docs Contradict Gov. Patrick: Show $1B Price Tag for ACA Transition

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Governor Patrick has now called our Health Connector cost estimate report “politically motivated,” “spurious” and “inaccurate.” He’s gone back and accused Pioneer of “making stuff up out of thin air.” He can employ whatever words he likes, but he cannot deny the cruel mathematics of public finance. The Governor needs to ask his staff for more information, as their documents in federal filings show stunning and accumulating costs of the state’s effort to develop a Health Connector 2.0. On Saturday, the Boston Herald reported (“Internal documents suggest $1B Obamacare cost“) that confidential “internal working papers” confirmed by state officials project that putting hundreds of thousands of applicants on temporary Medicaid plans will cost $560.2 million in FY15. These plans were made available to […]

MuckRock

In Mass, records are available on a “Why-Do-You-Need-To-Know” basis

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Last week, MuckRock journalist Todd Feathers wrote about a recent change to Boston public records policy, introduced by the Walsh administration, which required that members of the media submit their requests through the City Hall PR office … even if those requests had nothing whatsoever to do with City Hall. It’s to assist in the processing, you see. If that seems a bit off, that’s only because it completely is – requiring requests to go through some sort of external vetting process that doesn’t even involve the agency you’re requesting records from is a clear violation of Massachusetts public records law: “Every person having custody of any public record, as defined in clause Twenty-sixth of section seven of chapter four, […]

Editorial Staff

An Open Letter to Governor Deval Patrick about Healthcare Cost Overruns

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This letter was sent via email to the Patrick Administration earlier today.  October 9, 2014 Governor Deval Patrick Massachusetts State House Office of the Governor Room 105 Boston, MA 02133 Dear Governor Patrick: On Monday the State House News Service reported your statements that the additional cost to fix the state’s healthcare exchange website will not surpass $26 million and that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in Massachusetts, along with the enrollment of more than 400,000 people, is within budget. Official representations from your administration directly contradict these assertions.  In an Official Statement dated July 31, 2013, your administration disclosed the existence of projected cost overruns: The fiscal 2014 budget assumes base caseload growth of 2.8% over fiscal […]

Sandra Stotsky

Those Mathematical Societies That Supposedly Endorsed Common Core’s Standards Didn’t

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Stanford University mathematics professor R. James Milgram included an informative e-mail in his packet of information for state legislators when he testified at a hearing on Common Core in Milledgeville, Georgia on September 24, 2014. The e-mail explains why presidents of many of the major mathematical organizations in the country endorsed Common Core’s standards in July 2013. The author of the e-mail seems to believe that the societies themselves would be unlikely to endorse Common Core’s standards, but that readers (i.e., the public) might be misled into thinking they had if they saw that the presidents had endorsed the standards. Consequently, the e-mail wants just the presidents’ signatures because they would “likely” be just as “effective.” The underlying assumption is […]

MuckRock

Why do Massachusetts police departments have tanks? And more importantly, why are they hiding them?

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Ever since media coverage of the Ferguson protests brought us images of local law enforcement armed with weapons and gear that looked more at home in Fallujah than a suburb of St. Louis, the increased militarization of the police has been a topic of much controversy and debate. However, while the national scrutiny is new, the practice of state and local agencies stockpiling military-grade ordnance – and the Pentagon’s program that makes it possible – has been happening for over a decade. Originally started by the Department of Defense in the mid-to-late nineties, and now handled by the Defense Logistics Agency, the 1033 program, as it is known, makes excess and obsolete military equipment – everything from hand tools to […]

MuckRock

For transparency advocates, with friends like Galvin …

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A report in the Globe last week made public what those who deal with government transparency in Massachusetts knew all too well – the state’s terrible reputation for public records laws is well-deserved, and only made worse by the lack of help, and not direct hindrance, of the Secretary of State, William Galvin. Galvin oversees the Supervisor of Public Records Office, which in theory serves in the public interest as an open records watchdog, ensuring state and local agencies properly fulfill requests in a timely manner and don’t redact more than the law-mandated minimum. As we wrote back in 2012, in practice, the SPR has served as yet another obstacle between the requester and their documents. Though there were a […]