How do we create jobs? If you read media accounts, you’d think it was luring companies to relocate from other states. And politicians feed that beast, issuing press releases every time a company relocates (scroll through the press releases from the Mass Life Sciences Center to see multiple examples). A few weeks back, the Globe had an entertaining piece on the “thief” sent by the New Hampshire to talk Massachusetts employers into moving over the border. (And New Hampshire seemed pleased with the attention, particularly to their low cost business climate.) Guess what? It’s all relatively meaningless. Of course the loss or gain of any jobs is important, but in the big picture, firms relocating in and out of Massachusetts […]

Some familiar faces are once again calling for new revenues for our state transportation system(on SHNS, sub req’d.). Its been well-documented that the system is woefully underfunded and we’ll need new revenues sooner or later. But I can’t join in with the chorus right now. First, I don’t think the state is doing a good enough job telling us what they are doing with their money and if its making a difference (see previous post). Second, I’m highly skeptical that new revenues would be spent to remedy the massive maintenance backlog on our infrastructure before another dollar gets spent on expansion. Many of these same voices calling for new revenues and decrying the lack of maintenance were also the ones […]

Cutting through the bureaucratese of the assembled emails and memos from MASSDoT in this weekend’s Globe was a chilling phrase: according to the District 6 (i.e. metro Boston) highway director, We don’t write things down because they trigger a formal event. The article proceeds to detail a confusing he-said, he-said, he-said over what the Transportation Secretary, Acting Highway Administrator, and District 6 Engineer knew about the falling light in the Big Dig tunnel and what they did about it. I won’t unravel that tale here. But the macro-point is that the culture deep within MassDoT remains one of opacity and concealment. The irony is that no one (well, almost no one) blames the current administration for issues related to the […]

This space has written previously on the muni health portion of the budget, currently sitting on the Governor’s desk. I’ve heard from several folks that my assessment of the municipal review panel is too harsh and that their power is highly circumscribed in the budget. The key clause is this one (Line 786 of Conference Budget): (d) The municipal health insurance review panel shall approve the appropriate public authority’s immediate implementation of the proposed changes under section 22 or section 23; provided, however, that any increases to plan design features have been made in accordance with the provisions of section 22. If the panel does not approve implementation of changes made pursuant to section 22, the public authority may submit […]