THE PIONEER BLOG

Steve Poftak

Musings on the Occupy Movement in Boston

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OccupyBoston has captured lots of media space with their occupation of the Greenway, but I’m still searching for the point. It has tapped into the collective unease over the state of employment in this country. Faced with flat or declining incomes over time (with compensation increases being consumed by healthcare) and the effects of the recession – high unemployment, widespread underemployment, and declining workforce participation – many are either unemployed or deeply insecure financially. The physical protest itself raises questions about the coherence and potential longevity of the movement. The protesters (from my highly unscientific inspection and reading of news coverage) appear to be mostly white 20-something males. (Side note: News photographers seem to have a knack for catching the […]

Jim Stergios

Is student achievement in Massachusetts falling flat?

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The short answer that will come in this and blog posts in the next days is, in important ways, yes. So why the image of a big churn? Let’s start with the immediate news of this past year’s MCAS data and what they tell us. The Globe’s Peter Schworm, in a piece entitled MCAS scores appear stuck in stubborn income gap, nailed it in three places: Educators have made only modest gains in narrowing the gulf in achievement between low-income students and those who are better off… The percentage of [low-income] 10th graders who were proficient at English, for instance, rose from 48 in 2007 to 69 this year. In math, the figure climbed from 47 percent to 56 percent… […]

Jim Stergios

Dumb and Dumber – Proposed Bill

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You can agree or disagree on most bills in the State House. The merits of casino gambling bill? Is it a third-world job creation strategy or an opportunity we are missing? The upcoming pension reform? Reasonable incremental improvements or a half-fix after lawmakers added billions in future pension costs this summer to free up $1 billion in immediate program money? But every so often you bump up against some really bad ideas—and unfortunately many of them happen to be in education. Whole language instruction, weakening academic standards, and weakening teacher tests are the usual sort of items you have to fight against. But even after the Wisconsin and Massachusetts collective bargaining changes, on Tuesday a hearing will be held on […]

Joshua Archambault

Obama Admin Rethinking Massachusetts Model? Part 2

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My now monthly blog post wondering if there will be agreement soon between the Obama Administration and the Patrick Administration on a multi-year extension of the Massachusetts health care waiver. As a review, the Massachusetts MassHealth 1115 waiver from the federal government allowed the 2006 health reform to become a reality. The waiver was last negotiated by the Patrick Administration in 2008, and was extended until June 30, 2011 at that tome. Quietly this summer, the new deadline was pushed back three times, and is set to expire again tomorrow. The Boston Globe’s Liz Kowalczyk and Chelsea Conaboy were kind enough to ask CMS Administrator Dr. Don Berwick about it in a recent interview: Berwick would not comment on negotiations with Massachusetts over […]

Steve Poftak

Pull Back the Curtains

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Local news over the past few years has had plenty of stories about state government — corruption scandals, employee benefit reforms, and spending battles. Wouldn’t it be useful to have a way to dig behind the headlines and get the facts about where the state spends its money, what it pays employees, and what are the actual pensions received by state retirees? Now you do — www.massopenbooks.org — provides detailed salary, pension and state disbursement data. The disbursement data has multiple layers to filter down to what really interests you, and plenty bubbles up. Did you know the state spent $6.5 million on office furniture in 2009 or $7 million in the same year for interns at UMASS? Salaries reveal […]

Steve Poftak

Learning From A Tragedy

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On the afternoon of January 9, 2009, the brakes on Ladder Company 26 failed and it ran down Parker Street in Mission Hill, cutting across Huntington Street, and crashing into a building, taking the life of Lt. Kevin Kelley and injuring the driver and several other passengers. Following the accident, the City commissioned an outside study of the Boston Fire Department’s fleet management practices that put forward some harsh findings about the BFD and provided a clear set of recommendations. The study found that the fleet’s management was largely haphazard, as evidenced by a vicious cycle of poorly qualified mechanics who either did questionable work or were unable to properly judge work done by outside vendors, so firefighters became reluctant […]

Jim Stergios

Over Confidential

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Being a litigious society, we have all received emails from lawyers that include signature sections with name, position, organization, street address, floor, suite, city/state/zip, email, fax, phone, favorite non-profit or case, favorite quote, serial number, favorite cereal, and so on. That’s lots of information to share, but below it is 15 miles of confidentiality verbiage as to why this is protected, privileged, blahblahblah communication. It makes you laugh in the private sector, but it’s not something you expect in the public sector. Let me share two items I noticed just this morning in various communications with our public servants (state and local): CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic transmission is for the intended recipient only and may contain information that is privileged, […]

Jim Stergios

Proven Approaches to Dropout Prevention

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Tomorrow the state’s Joint Committee on Education will meet to discuss a raft of proposals to address Massachusetts’ inability to bring down its dropout rate. It’s about time. The problem is that few of the proposals actually do much more than beef up a cadre of coaches and support staff for at-risk kids. Perhaps that can help, but the data in reports like The Silent Epidemic are pretty clear in noting that kids drop out for two reasons: – Nearly half (47 percent) said a major reason for dropping out was that classes were not interesting. These young people reported being bored and disengaged from high school. Almost as many (42 percent) spent time with people who were not interested […]

Jim Stergios

If You Want to Run for Office…

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This is a good year to do so. The Gallup numbers are no surprise (been in this range for a while), but the dissatisfaction with incumbents is, if anything, deepening. As regards Congress and Washington’s ability to get things done, this and other polls do suggest that the view that states should have a larger role in decision-making is gaining steam on both sides of the aisle. The findings include – 82% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job. – 69% say they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government, an all-time high and up from 63% in 2010. – 57% have little or no confidence in the federal government to solve […]

Steve Poftak

Heroes of the MBTA

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It’s bloodsport in these parts to complain about the MBTA. But the latest MBTA scorecard makes one thing clear — their operations staff is doing a close to miraculous job keeping the system running in the face of massive deferred maintenance and dwindling equipment options. The Green Line is a prime example — in June 2011, their vehicles traveled an average of 3,663 miles between breakdowns, 33% below their goal. That’s just under 146 round-trips on the Riverside Line between failures. And the failures are having an impact, there was only a single extra vehicle above the required 150 available in June. The commuter rail has a similar issue, with just enough locomotives to provide service. Part of that is […]

Taylor Armerding

Pension reform is reform-lite

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More proof that those employed in Massachusetts’ public sector live in a parallel universe: The gentle – very gentle – reforms approved by the state Senate last week to head off a total collapse of the pension system are being portrayed as cruel and unusual punishment. Take a look at the specifics. The reforms, if adopted, would: – Raise the retirement age for most employees from 55 to 60. – Calculate pensions based on the top five earning years instead of the top three. – Raise the age for maximum retirement benefits from 65 to 67. And, to offset such draconian pain, the reform would cut contributions for some veteran employees and provide all pensioners with larger cost-of-living increases. Also, […]

Steve Poftak

Sidewalk Superintendent Series: Parking Spaces or Public Places?

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A unwelcome phenomena in Boston is the use of public space for parking of vehicles on seemingly ‘official’ business. In a city where I’ve seen homeowners struggle for years to get approval for modest curb cuts, I marvel at the ability of these parkers to convert sidewalks and plazas into personal spots. Exhibit 1 is the John Adams Courthouse. Recently refurbished at an expense of $150 million, the redone courthouse has injected some liveliness into the previous moribund plaza between it and Government Center Plaza. New restaurants and outdoor seating have also helped. So what was the next logical step? Turn the brick plaza in front of the courthouse into a parking lot. Now diners get to sit next to […]

Joshua Archambault

Is Cake Health the Answer to Our Health Care Cost Problem?

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I just stumbled upon a great app that is helping individuals become better consumers of health care AND understand the piles of health care related paper work sent to their homes. It is available at:  CakeHealth.com If we are to move in the direction of more consumer driven health care, we will need LOTS more where this came from. BCBS of MA has mentioned an app they are developing to help control costs by directing patients to nearby hospitals with lower rates. So lets hope other local insurers get on board and make this information available to their members in some form in the future.

Steve Poftak

Examining Pension Talking Points

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The state Senate approved a pension reform package yesterday. Reviewing the Senate’s debate, there are two oft-repeated claims from reform opponents that are worth parsing. Claim 1: State employees pay for their own pension. Reality: This will be true only for some new employees and only if a number of assumptions hold up over time. Those assumptions include existing rates of salary increase and service time duration. The assumption with the biggest potential downside risk is the continued achievement of the 8.25% expected rate of return for the state pension fund over the career of these new employees. There is a considerable school of thought, within academia and the investment community, that the return environment will be lower in the […]

Michael Morisy

In New England, Massachusetts leads job growth – for state employees

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I reached out about a month and a half ago to Governor Patrick’s office to see if they could help understand how, after bipartisan support for cutting state jobs through the recession, the state actually added to its payroll. As usual, despite numerous phone calls and e-mails, I was told someone would “be in touch” … and then nothing. While I still hold out hope that one day we’ll get an answer about how headcounts grew throughout round after round of supposed layoffs, it might be more practical in the meantime to compare the Commonwealth to its peers to better understand how other state governments have handled a reduction in income when it comes to their staffing levels. Massachusetts leads the […]