THE PIONEER BLOG

Jim Stergios

Open the Boston taxicab “market” to competition

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The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team has done a great job uncovering the Kafka-esque maze of half-million-dollar medallions, bribes, and indentured servitude that we call the Boston taxicab “market.”  Oddly, little has been said in that paper’s pages on how to fix things, with the exception of a good letter, noting, INSTEAD OF tinkering with the medallion system of taxi regulation, Boston should junk it and create entirely new regulations that foster highly competitive, innovative, state-of-the-art taxi services and Jeff Jacoby’s wonderful piece that opened with SO THE mayor of Boston, channeling his inner Captain Renault, is shocked — shocked! — to find that Boston’s taxi industry is a rigged and pitiless racket. Yesterday’s Boston Herald included a smart piece by Con Chapman, which […]

Joshua Archambault

Untold Story of Small Biz Delay under ACA, Just Déjà Vu from Massachusetts

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The revelation that the Obama Administration will delay the roll out of the “choice option” for small business until 2015 came as a huge surprise to many, including Joe Klein at Time, however anyone familiar with the Massachusetts experiment will feel a strong sense of déjà vu. In a 2010 paper I authored for the Heritage Foundation, I documented the delayed and failed effort by the Massachusetts public exchange (Connector) to offer real choice and savings to small businesses. My report suggested the experience served as a warning to other states. I suppose I should have targeted  it toward the federal government instead. Small companies should be even more uncertain of the law now that the cost–saving mechanism they were […]

Joshua Archambault

Will Mass Unmerge Insurance Marketplace Because of ACA?

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I have written numerous times about the impact that the ACA will have on small businesses in Massachusetts, and the predicted “extreme premium increases.” According to a recent InsideHealthPolicy.com story, the state is discussing unmerging the individual and non-group markets to avoid this unintended consequence of the ACA. States had to let CMS’ Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight know by Friday (March 29) if they plan to merge their small group and individual insurance markets, with state sources and policy experts indicating that the vast majority of states will keep the markets separate, at least in the first year. Merging the two markets would create more complexities and potential market destabilization during an already difficult implementation process, sources suggest. A source in […]

Mary Connaughton

What would you do with a half-billion dollars?

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The next time you’re watching those dollars ring up at the pump, think about this: for every gallon you pump, the federal government gets 18.4 cents and the state government gets 21 cents for gasoline taxes. Did you know you’re also taxed another 2.5 cents per gallon to reimburse costs related to underground storage tank removal? Based on the state’s own estimate, that 2.5 cents translates to about $75 million per year.  With the 2.5 cent tax in place for the last 10 years, that’s about $750 million collected. The department of revenue claims that only about $209 million of the tax collected so far went towards clean-up. Is the difference a blank check for the State House? If so, […]

Jim Stergios

The state’s economic strategy is selling us short

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Megan Woolhouse’s piece entitled “Shut Out” in the Boston Globe told the story of several long-term unemployed Massachusetts residents.  It was powerful in part because of the writing and the reality of people who are doing their best to keep looking for work, but also because the story so often goes untold in the press. Even after many announcements about how well we are doing as a state, we have to keep in mind that Massachusetts is still 100,000 jobs short of even our 2001 employment levels.  If the Commonwealth had grown at the same pace as the rest of the US since 1990, we would have 450,000 more jobs in the state; we’re currently above 3 million total, so it’s a […]

Editorial Staff

150 Years of Lincoln’s New Birth of Freedom

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This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address, American historical texts whose significance far exceeds their immediate practical impact, fundamentally transforming the moral purpose of the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863 in the third year of the war (though it was announced shortly after the Battle of Antietam in September, 1862) states: “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” [message_box title=”Join Us on April […]

Joshua Archambault

As Federal Health Law Turns Three, We Should Leverage The Power of Federalism

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As the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka ObamaCare) turns three this week, states and employers are feeling the weight and complexity of the early stages of implementation. Pioneer reflects on how the nation can best move forward. 5 recommendations to move ahead on health reform: Respect the states.  The Obama administration should give states the flexibility they need to implement reforms that are uniquely tailored to their needs and should extend the timetable for implementing reform by several years. The imposition of an unknown, nationalized program on the entire country has led to broad popular opposition. The Obama administration’s misinterpretation of Massachusetts’ health law, crafted to address the unique needs of a small, high-income state constituting 2 percent of […]

Tom Nash

‘Calling out’ the Secretary of State

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Secretary of State Bill Galvin didn’t waste time when it came to holding for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts accountable for his assertion on the ethnic voting gap in Massachusetts. “I’m calling him out,” Galvin said of Roberts’ assertion, noting the actual numbers show the opposite.  But when it comes to holding his own management team accountable, we would have hoped the Secretary would exert the same vigilance.Our hope was dashed. At MuckRock, a public records request service, we’ve filed thousands of records requests to hundreds of agencies on behalf of our users — a mix of journalists, researchers, and everyday citizens – with the assurance that we had a place to turn if government agencies stymied us. […]

Jim Stergios

Is there an explosion in state government employment? Yup.

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We’ve been at this one with the administration for a few years now, and every time we ask about a dataset that strongly suggests that there has been outsized growth in state employment, we get stammering replies about a one-month, one-quarter, or one-year fluctuation that goes in the other direction. Since that time, we have sought apples-to-apples information on employment to monitor changes in government employment. There are several ways to get at the question of changes in state government employment (see the three principal ones below). To give you clarity, I thought it would be useful to post up the three major data sets. On each of the measures, we observe an increase in state employment of between 10.9 […]

Mary Connaughton

Pioneer’s Transparency Update: “Sunshine Week” Edition

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With all the scandals that plague the Massachusetts State House, you would think the state legislature would scream reform after getting an “F” as its latest transparency grade from the Sunlight Foundation. Like the Sunlight Foundation, Pioneer Institute has long-promoted better public access to happenings under the Golden Dome, but a heap of work is still needed to disperse the fog that lingers. So this Sunshine Week, as we reflect on how the lack transparency fosters public mistrust, let’s look back at Pioneer’s transparency work since Sunshine Week 2012. What “ethics” reform?   Pioneer attempted to calculate the amount of contributions made to legislators by lobbyists who had a stake in the healthcare cost-containment legislation passed in 2012.  Conclusion: Sadly, the information on reports […]

Tom Nash

MassDOT won’t say who’s getting a free ride

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Our Commonwealth’s toll system doesn’t appear discriminating at first glance. If you drive on the turnpike, you’re paying to be there. Unless you’re among the public employees who have access to a transponder that lets you ride for free. There are many reasons why public employees would need unlimited access to perform their duties. But Pioneer Institute wants to let the public know which officials are being offered a free ride who don’t maintain the roads or keep them safe. As part of Pioneer’s partnership with Freedom of Information service MuckRock, we asked for any index or log or other file that tracks the non-revenue highway toll collection transponders. In a letter rejecting the request, MassDOT said such information fell […]

Joshua Archambault

Health Policy Commission Starts to Pick Winners and Losers

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In a feared (put predicted) outcome, the newly formed Health Policy Commission is off to a bad precedent of picking winners and losers in the healthcare marketplace. Yesterday they adopted final regulations that exclude certain Medicaid Managed Care Organizations from paying a one-time $225 million assessment that is part of Chapter 224. Putting aside the questions of whether taxing those in the medical field is a good policy to reduce medical spending, I think this move only foreshadows the increase in behind closed door lobbying that takes place when the legislature abdicates its role to a powerful public entity. Find me on twitter: @josharchambault  

Jim Stergios

The Pioneer Plan for Massachusetts’ Transportation Needs

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Expect more on the Pioneer Plan for Transportation in the coming days. Already in January, we issued a detailed Public Statement on the governor’s transportation plan. Expect in the next week or two a full report. In the interim, here is a further fleshing out of our view. The Governor has used the bully pulpit to focus the legislature, the media and the public on trasnportation. That’s the positive. The negative is that he has done a poor job of articulating the real benefits and real challenges our transit, highway and bridge systems face. The fact is that few of the reforms promised in 2009, with the passage of the2009 trasnprotation law, have been enacted. There’s been no $6.5 billion […]

Joshua Archambault

Revolving Door on Beacon Hill, Healthcare Edition

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It often goes unreported, but Beacon Hill does have a wide revolving door into lobbying firms and non-profit advocacy groups that are politically active. While the trend receives much more ink in D.C., it is important given the amount of money being spent on lobbying on laws like the massive healthcare “cost containment,” Chapter 224.   The latest example appeared in SHNS ($) for the chief of staff of the committee that wrote the House version of Ch 224. His new employer represents some of the biggest players in healthcare in the state.     Health Care Financing Committee Co-chair Rep. Steven Walsh’s chief of staff JOSH HARRELL is leaving the House of Representatives for a job at Nutter, McClennen & […]

Jim Stergios

Local committee ends Massachusetts’ first virtual school

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The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald are reporting that last week the Greenfield School Committee voted to shutter the state’s first and only public virtual school. Here’s the Globe piece by Evan Allen: The academy opened in 2010 and serves about 470 students in kindergarten through eighth grade from all across the Commonwealth. It will close on June 30, according to committee members. … One of the district’s major objections was that the School Committee would no longer have had direct oversight of the school. “It would be an autonomous school governed by a separate committee that would not be publicly elected,” said committee member Marcia Day, who voted in favor of not submitting the proposal to the state. […]