THE PIONEER BLOG

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. […]

Editorial Staff

Who Controls Health Care Costs? Experts Debate

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This week, Pioneer hosted its annual Hewitt Health Care Lecture, again bringing together influential leaders in medicine, business, and public policy to hear nationally recognized experts discuss our most pressing health care policy challenges. This year,  Harvard economist David Cutler and Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Avik Roy discussed issues relevant to both the ACA (ObamaCare) and the new Massachusetts law (Chapter 224) that attempts to control costs and implement payment reform. The speakers delivered presentations on the problem of rising healthcare costs, followed by a moderated discussion, and audience Q&A. Check out our Facebook photo album; watch the video: Featured Speakers: David Cutler is Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Economics at Harvard and holds secondary appointments at the […]

Jim Stergios

Why do district superintendents oppose charter schools?

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When you ask that question, the usual answer is something about the kids, equity, and the unfairness of all the flexibility that charters get. It’s hard to get a superintendent to go beyond the platitudes. Perhaps the superintendent will raise all the good work that’s going on in the district. There may in fact be lots of work going on, but without a judgment on whether it is good or not so good of work is really dependent on results. Otherwise, such statements are simply assertions of exertion. With the closing of ranks in Brockton by the Brockton school superintendent and the district’s school committee in opposition to a proposed high-quality charter application, I got to wondering: Why? Why such […]

Jim Stergios

Suicide and the stress from school

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We often hear that kids are stressed by school — and most times MCAS testing is considered the culprit. Let’s look at the broad picture first. Indiana University’s High School Survey of Student Engagement suggests the following about US District High School students: 82.7% spend no more than 5 hours a week on homework. 42.5% spend an hour or less each week on homework. In contrast, according to a 2009 Korean National Statistics Office: The average Korean high school senior spent 11 hours per day studying The all student average was 8 hours (with about 3 hours per day of studying occurring outside the classroom). Of course, that begs lots of questions — important questions about culture, familial expectations, and […]

Jim Stergios

Hope the governor had a nice vacation

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The governor’s Colombia trip is over and here is what your money paid for. The Memorandum of Understanding between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Colombia comes with a translation into Spanish. That’s the good news. The rest of the story kind of goes as follows: They probably didn’t spend much time on it given the obvious typo of the word Party (Partiy) in Article 9. The document is clear in stating that it does not provide any legally binding obligations. (So, remind me why the governor’s presence was required when the agreement includes no obligations…) The document is extremely artful in its use of indeterminate gobbledy-gook speak like “foster” and “encourage.” All this is a little bit like John Cage’s […]

Jim Stergios

An easy vote for the Board of Education

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Tomorrow’s Board of Education meeting expects a crowd. Applicants for five new charter schools and 11 expansions will be on hand, as will detractors. There will be those on hand who pursued and opposed new charters that were denied the commissioner’s recommendation and therefore will not be brought to a Board vote. Push into that mix the oddly timed, late Friday news release (to one news source) that the Renaissance charter school is likely to be placed on probation, and you have a pretty full agenda and set of possible items that could come up. So plenty of opportunity for eruptions, interruptions, and controversy. On the underlying five new charter and 11 expansion applications that will be at the center […]

Jim Stergios

Two new charter schools for City on a Hill

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For the past decade and a half, February has served as the month during which the state’s Board of Education votes on proposed charter schools. The process is a long one, involving during the previous year the submission of concepts, detailed applications, revised applications, interviews with proponents and evaluations by the Charter School Office, which is today located within the state’s Department of Education. This year, the state’s education commissioner Mitch Chester has recommended a handful of the original 22 charter applications move forward. At next Tuesday’s education board meeting, final votes will be taken on the 5 new charters and 11 charter expansions recommended by the department. If all of the charters recommended by the department move forward, there […]

Jim Stergios

Boston Kids Need Another Brooke Charter School

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The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s vote later this month on a new set of charter school proposals is an opportunity to give thousands of Massachusetts kids access to a great school. The list of proposed charters includes new proposals for Boston, such as City on a Hill Charter Public School, which is proposing to open a second 280-student high school in Boston to open in 2013. (City on a Hill has also applied for a separate, new high school in New Bedford to serve 280 students.) In addition, a number of Boston charters have looked at expanding their existing enrollment caps, including Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School, a 5-12 charter that would like to serve […]

Joshua Archambault

5 Takeaways from the Employer Healthcare Survey in Massachusetts

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CHIA, the healthcare data agency for the Commonwealth, finally released a very late version of the 2011 employer survey. (The two reports can be found here and here.) Recently I blogged on the data neglect I observed at the agency as they are  delivering numerous regular reports late, and questioned if they were ready for even greater responsibility under Chapter 224 (the so-called payment reform and cost control law). So what can we learn from the latest survey? I decided to pull a few graphs to illustrate some trends, and provide five takeaways. 1. Increasing Uninsured Rate — We have seen an uptick in the number of uninsured, 3.1% in 2011 when compared to 1.9% in 2010. Could this account for […]