THE PIONEER BLOG

Michael Morisy

After Dozens of Rounds of Layoffs, More State Employees Than Before

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Even after dozens of rounds of layoffs and promises of cutbacks state employment continued to be a growth industry in Massachusetts through the recession, according to analysis of data from the Comptroller of the Commonwealth and from the Human Resources Division. Several state departments, after a dozen or more layoffs, actually ended up with an increased headcount. Under the threat of massive budget shortfalls in 2008, Governor Deval Patrick promised a slashed budget and “painful” reductions in state staffing numbers. In total, he said 1,000 jobs would be eliminated, spanning a variety of services and departments. While the governor admitted the cost would have tangible impacts on everything from RMV wait times to services for the disabled and deaf, the […]

Joshua Archambault

Doc Gives Grim Diagnosis to “HCR II” in MA

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WBUR’s CommonHealth blog posted an interview with Dr. Wayne Glazier on payment reform that hits so many of the important issues on this complex topic. I have written on the Governor’s proposal a few times before and testified in front of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing outlining some of my concerns. However, Dr. Glazier provides a front line perspective that many on Beacon Hill try to simplify in an effort to pass health care reform “phase II” quickly. 1) Global payments don’t get the patient involved in containing costs. The consumer needs to get involved. The current situation puts us in a very bad spot. My patient says ‘I want to go to UMass for my surgery,’ and […]

Steve Poftak

Stepping Back in Time on the T

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One of the joys of living in an ‘old’ city like Boston is when it reveals a hidden, seemingly unknown piece of itself. Having traveled enough to fear the growing homogenization of the American streetscape by chain stores, but having lived in and around Boston for most of my life, I was suprised and thrilled to discover the Mattapan Line. Its a small spur off the terminal point of southbound Ashmont Red Line that runs only three miles, stops at 8 stations, and carries about 4,500 passengers on a given weekday. As careful readers will note, I’ve got a thing for transit and its the railcars on the Mattapan Line that are the real treat. Take a look at the […]

Steve Poftak

Convention Center Chronicles – Wrap-Up

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Expanding the Convention Center and adding a Headquarters hotel are going to be heavy financial lifts for this area. We are talking about an initial cost of $212 million to $361 million (all estimates from here), even before new construction can begin. The Convention Center Authority believes it can ‘self-fund’ this, meaning their existing income streams (hotel taxes, sales taxes, Duck boat and trolley tour surcharges, Boston-based car rental/Zipcar surcharges) have enough excess* to support bond funding of this amount. Then, some public entity will need to come up with a minimum package of $200m to support construction of a 1000 room hotel that will need $310 – $500 million in private funds (much of it debt, to be sure) […]

Taylor Armerding

Senate mischief prove collusion with unions

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Two thoughts to add to Jim Stergios’s excellent post below on the state Senate’s cloaked attempt to gut a good-faith effort by the House to give municipalities the tools they need to control employee health care costs. The House plan would let cities and towns save as much as $100 million a year – money that could be put toward sustaining public services. Amendments to the Senate budget would take it all away. First, the Senate’s mischief is a classic example of the collusion between elected officials and the unions, when the parties are supposed to be on opposite sides of the table. The reason cities and towns are in the trouble they are in now is because at contract […]

Steve Poftak

Convention Center Chronicles — Marginal Impact and Demand

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What do we get? And who will come? Those are the questions that have not been properly answered despite reams of powerpoints and consultants reports. In its presentation “Case for Expansion“, The Convention Center Authority makes the case that we “lost” out on a number of conventions because of our small size, availability or cost. (Note that expansion only addresses the first cause.) It is not clearly stated anywhere whether we ‘lost’ these shows (as in the contract would absolutely, positively been signed) or whether we were unable to compete for these shows against other cities. The Authority then extrapolates from these losses a large amount of forgone economic impact, making the case for expanding the BCEC. The problem with […]

Jim Stergios

Tide turning on municipal health savings

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The Globe‘s editorial page came out with a very clear view on the House and Senate proposals on the issue of how to contain municipal health care costs. LAST-MINUTE provisions inserted in the Senate budget undermine much of the effort on Beacon Hill to give cities and towns the tools they need to control the rising health care costs of municipal workers. It’s a setback to the stellar work of the House, which earlier passed a plan to save an estimated $100 million annually by allowing municipalities to place their workers in the state’s less-costly Group Insurance Commission or a similar plan… Unions and special interests battered the House, seeking to weaken the municipal health reform effort. The House stood […]

Joshua Archambault

Mass Takes a Pass on HSAs

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America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) released a report on the utilization of health savings accounts (HSAs) around the country. Massachusetts has lagged behind for years in the adoption of HSAs. One reason may be that only 43.1 percent of Massachusetts private-sector employers were enrolled in a plan with a deductible compared to 73.8 percent of employers nationally. Massachusetts residents enrolled in high deductible plans (often coupled with an HSA) account for only 2 percent of those with health insurance,  placing the Commonwealth with one of the lowest percentages of residents enrolled in these plans in the nation. The trade-off is two fold. One, these employees are receiving a pay cut as more money is spent on health insurance. Second, the […]

Jim Stergios

Uncommon and common goals

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The dual mission of Phoenix Charter Academy—giving second chances to troubled youth and a relentless focus on academics—may seem a mission impossible. It isn’t, but the work to address systemic truancy and high dropout rates in our urban school districts presents numerous individual challenges—as many challenges as there are students. In fact, you can summarize the challenge of reclaiming opportunity for at-risk students as exactly that: It can only be done for a single student, and yet the only way to have real impact is to create some sort of scale. So, you have to engage each student toward individual goals, but you also have to manage the unique needs of very different students in a way that they are […]

Steve Poftak

Convention Center Chronicles – Chasing Room Nights

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Room nights (nights spent at area hotels by convention attendees) are the key gauge of success for a convention center. How do I know this? The Convention Center Authority says so: Hotel room nights are the key gauge for convention business in Massachusetts So a discussion of room nights should be central to a discussion of any convention center expansion. Except when it’s inconvenient. Here’s Convention Center Authority head James Rooney earlier this year: We’ve gotten sucked in…. to measuring the success of this industry strictly on the notion of how many hotel-room nights are generated. That is narrow-minded thinking. The Authority’s on-again, off-again relationship with room nights is evident from their disclosure. One must work hard to figure out […]

Steve Poftak

Convention Center Chronicles

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The Boston Convention Center has long been a topic of interest for this space, dating back to its original construction. To be fair, its done ok, although far less successful than its original projections. Now, the Convention Center Authority has presented the citizens of Massachusetts with an intriguing chicken-and-egg proposition. It needs to expand its size and build a large hotel, as it can’t attract larger conventions without a ‘headquarters’ hotel but it also needs to be larger to attract the largest conventions (which it can’t do without a bigger hotel, got it?). So, what’s the public interest here? A public subsidy (taxes, fees and/or bond funding) will be needed to support the two projects, whose combined price tag may […]

Jim Stergios

Did the 2009 stimulus work?

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Economics21.org provides a graphical representation of the stimulus and reality. Certainly, this figure shows that the stimulus was not even close to successful according to the benchmarks set by the Administration. Back in January 2009, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein produced a report estimating future unemployment rates with and without a stimulus plan. Their estimates, which were widely circulated, projected that unemployment would approach 9% without a stimulus, but would never exceed 8% with the plan. The estimates, along with real unemployment rates, are posted below: In May 2011, using the latest figures available from the BLS, the unemployment rate reached 9.1%. In contrast, the Romer and Bernstein projections estimated that the unemployment rate would be around 8.1% for this […]

Joshua Archambault

Beacon Hill’s Magical Mystery Medicaid Savings

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As the Senate and House work to reconcile their respective versions of the 2012 budget, I wanted to take one last opportunity to highlight the unrealistic assumptions that are being used for the MassHealth (Medicaid) program. If the state is unable to achieve these “savings” and instead follows historic spending trends, it could be looking at a $900 million gap. See graph here. A recently released report from The National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers “The Fiscal Survey of States” contrasts Massachusetts’s projections to the 49 other states and Puerto Rico. Annual Percentage Medicaid Growth Rate (p52) The average percentage Medicaid growth rate is 18.6 across the nation, Massachusetts will be 0.5%? First introduced in […]

Joshua Archambault

MA Public Opinion of RomneyCare

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Kay Lazar had an interesting piece in The Boston Globe on a joint survey with Professor Bob Blendon of the Harvard School of Public Health on Massachusetts health care reform. I am sure it will be part of the narrative of the presidential race. Some general trends that they noted: Increasing support for repealing the mandate. Forty-four percent said they oppose the mandate in the Massachusetts law, compared with 35 percent who opposed it in a 2008 poll. Residents don’t see a connection between the law and increasing health care costs. Yet when asked about the law’s role in boosting health costs in Massachusetts, 72 percent said rising costs were mainly because of factors other than the law. Perhaps this […]

Jim Stergios

Passion and Fellowship

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Massachusetts charter schools have a strong record in serving urban and suburban minorities. What about children who are clearly at-risk or have special needs? Chelsea-based Phoenix Charter Academy (PCA) serves at-risk students from Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Revere, Winthrop, and Boston. The school’s mission is to give a caring but firm hand up with an eye toward not just keeping kids in school but also preparing them for rigorous academic work at college. PCA’s hybrid mission is the product of its founder, Beth Anderson, who comes to the school with long experience working with teen girls and at Boston’s standout MATCH School.