Today’s Globe endorses Deval Patrick for Governor, an expected and surely welcome recommendation. My quibble is with the Globe’s overemphasis on clean energy. (Obligatory Throatclearing: Clean energy is undoubtedly important, for many reasons.) Why is clean energy mentioned 8 times in a roughly 1100 word endorsement? The clean tech industry in Massachusetts is, at best, 10,000 to 15,000 jobs (or here), with the prospect of adding 5,000 or so jobs in the next five years. And I suspect that those numbers include a lot of HVAC tech and energy/power automation companies that were around long before the ‘green energy’ wave became high profile. The growth in jobs is welcome and should be encouraged but in an economy with 3 milllion […]

I confess to being stumped by the contradictory information circulating today. From a survey of households, you get evidence that unemployment is dropping: From August to September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of unemployed dropped by 12,000 while the number of employed grew by 13,900, resulting in an 8.4% unemployment rate. From a survey of employers, you get evidence that jobs are being eliminated: From August to September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of jobs declined by 20,900. What gives here? Could it be that people are giving up and dropping out of the workforce? I don’t think so — the first link, the survey of households, actually shows the labor force expanding by 1,900 during […]

Today’s Globe has a piece on Gloucester’s issues with schools, which encompass fiscal pressures and the controversial launch of a new charter school. It intrigued me enough to dig into some of the data that is available. A few observations: • State Department of Revenue figures show Gloucester’s school spending going from $27.2m in 2000 to $31.3m in 2009, a relatively modest increase of 15%. Yet other town spending goes from $27.3m to $49.6m over the same period, an increase of 82%. Health insurance costs account for about $7m in increased costs, but what is the rest of it? Is it indicative of the town’s priorities? • From 2000 to 2009, Gloucester’s population has been stable, declining by only 30 […]

For young parents in Boston, anxiety is beginning to build around the Boston Public School lottery, the mechanism by which the district assigns students to various schools. I’ve discussed the subject in some depth previously. From hearing anecdotal reports and seeing the evidence on our local school listserv, I wanted to pass on two vital pieces of info. First, at every school you visit, every parent should be asking “How many kids in last year’s entering class were siblings?”. The BPS resists issuing this data, and to my knowledge, only released the data publicly in a single year (2005). They also released 2008-9 data for the West Zone to me after multiple requests. The reason it is important is that […]

A press release from the Milken Institute notes: Vallejo, Calif; Harrisburg, Penn; the entire state of Illinois; and, of course, California…they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Across the United States, we’ve got a full-blown state and muni budget mess on our hands. To find a way forward, the Milken Institute and the Kauffman Foundation brought together a diverse group of state and local officials, union representatives, experts from the capital markets, money managers, academics, public-sector attorneys and representatives from bond rating agencies. The report, Ensuring State and Municipal Solvency, lists a number of potential reforms, including the establishment of rainy-day funds, agency consolidations, and control boards for states and municipalities. Yup. We got those things. Have helped, but not […]