THE PIONEER BLOG

Jim Stergios

Big kudos and 2 questions about the Aquapocalypse

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Fred Laskey and his immediate staff did an incredible job in addressing the water main break in Weston. Full stop. Hosannahs all around. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, my questions: (1) Why did so many towns with deep budget woes feel that they had to give out water? (2) Is boiling water really so hard? (My kids enjoyed it…) (3) Was the water we had available for a few days really so undrinkable? Was it considered drinkable in the 1990s? Have regulations changed and therefore perceptions about safety? Or was the water even by 1990s standards undrinkable? (4) And will Fred’s freshly minted halo get him over the hump with my friends in the watershed associations […]

Jim Stergios

Congratulations to Paul Toner

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The Cambridge Day News reported over the weekend that Paul Toner was elected new president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, taking over for Anne Wass. In a statement, Toner pledged that “MTA will lead the fight for positive change in order to improve our schools and support our students. “Where there are issues to be addressed, such as significant achievement gaps between our student populations, we will not shy away from these challenges,” he continued. “Teachers and their unions are not the problem; we have the solutions.” We hope to work with Paul and the MTA.

Jim Stergios

Addressing Staff Complaints

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Stefan (to his Hungarian friends István) Poftak has not said a word. No, not a word. But, alas, I know those furtive side glances and the all-too-confident smirk all too well. He has nailed down three consecutive blog entries and is feeling quite good about himself. But I have been working, comrade, I have been working! Read here.

Steve Poftak

Mr. Speaker, Why Stop With The CJAM?

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UPDATE: Eagle-eyed reader notes that the amendment was filed by Representative (and State Senate candidate) Mike Rush. This morning’s Globe reports on an effort by Speaker DeLeo to move the Chief Justice for Administration and Management from their rented office space to free space in the City Square Courthouse. DeLeo spokesman Seth Gitell cites multi-million dollar cost savings for the move. But the more cynical among us note the LEG’s seemingly eternal desire to micromanage the courts and trample the notion of separation of powers. So, if you aren’t just picking on the CJAM, you’ve got another potential $185 million in savings to work on. This spreadsheet has all the 2009 disbursements for rent payments by state agencies, captured from […]

Steve Poftak

Why Did the Old Woman Swallow the Fly?

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So, in order to make the convention center (which taxpayers subsidized to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars) a real success, we need to subsidize a massive expansion of the facility plus some portion of an estimated $700m hotel? Then we’ll be done? Promise?

Steve Poftak

Questioning the AGs Means, Not Motive

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This morning’s Globe has a story on the Attorney General’s office handing out a grant to provide summer jobs in Boston. Now, that’s a fine thing to support in principle but why is the AG’s office in the business of grant-making to worthy causes? My read of the office’s enabling act — Chap. 12 of the MGLs — provides little insight. It turns out that the AG has been giving out grants to a variety of groups under the rubric of “Project Yes” which is spending out funds from a settlement with pharmaceutical companies on projects that “promote health”. Again, each of these group appears worthy of support. But why is the AG’s office making grants in the name of […]

Jim Stergios

It's a beautiful day out

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Keep looking up folks. The sky is still blue this morning. And keep looking up if for no other reason than that looking down is getting pretty scary. Cue the Greek national anthem. Hope you like it, because you’ll have to get used to it.

Steve Poftak

Still Curious About State Workforce Numbers

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Brian Mooney penned a piece for the Globe last week discussing how state workforce numbers has declined. Its a topic we raised 17 months ago, so its great to see Mr. Mooney’s interest. ANF Sec’y Gonzalez provides data to Mooney that demonstrates that the executive branch has reduced its budget funded workforce by roughly 1,600 jobs since Governor Patrick took office. They’ve also explained it in the Governor’s budget as well. For my own analysis, I rely on the CAFR put out by the Comptrollers’ office, given ANF’s notoriously tight-fisted hold on giving information about headcount to the public. Unfortunately, that data only goes up to FY09 and its shows an overall increase in state workforce and (as near as […]

Jim Stergios

National scholarship on education

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NCLB had its day and advanced some useful trends at the state and local level. But it has foundered on a couple of major shoals, including the downward pressure it applied on the quality of state assessment systems and its inability to advance school options for students in chronically failing schools. With the limbo that NCLB has been in, a number of scholars have looked at the national landscape on education policy, including Diane Ravitch (The Death and Life of the Great American School System — buy it at Amazon for $16 rather than $26 at Borders!) and Paul Peterson (Saving Schools — buy it at Amazon for $17 rather than $27 at Borders!). Both give broad historical reads on […]

damittell

Collecting Taxes, Outlaw Style

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Most of us know what will happen if we don’t pay taxes lawfully assessed us: Penalties, interest, liens, attachments and by and by under certain circumstances, criminal complaints betide. We can complain all we like, but the tax-collector will win, because the law is on his side. But what if government tried to collect taxes not authorized by law — and used its coercive powers to extract payment? Preposterous? It is happening today — as communities, mainly Boston, try to get universities, hospitals and other non-profits to make much larger payments “in lieu of taxes” — payments never authorized by the legislature. In most cases these payments are not voluntary. They are vigorish (vygrash, a good Ukrainian & Yiddish word […]

Jim Stergios

A novel way to present your resume

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Jon Kingsdale, former executive director of the Commonwealth Connector, has a piece in tomorrow’s (it’s 11:05 pm Sunday) Globe, which is worthy of the Obama teleprompter. The basic point he wants to make is that “Americans are confused” about the federal law, and that MA’s health reform experience has been a rousing success. Uh, no. It’s neither been a flat-out success nor a failure. It’s a mixed bag, and some of the threads at the bottom of the bag are getting bare. Pioneer’s never come out for or against the MA reform. We first believe in state experimentation, and second that empirical data can sometimes surprise you. Given the mandates, credible coverage requirements, the uncompensated care pool, and the fact […]

Jim Stergios

And now VT takes a pass on Race to the Top

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So now we are at VA, MN, CA and TX all taking a pass on RttT. So is Indiana. Oh, gosh, golly, darn it, so is Kansas. An AP report had the following news (from the Globe) on VT: “When we look at it realistically with limited resources we have to make sure we put our energies and our efforts into places that we know we can be successful in and that fit what the direction of Vermont education is moving in,” Vilaseca [ed note: Commissioner of Education in VT] said. “Vermont has a highly successful educational system, when you look at our NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) results when you look at how our students do across the […]

damittell

Eliminating the Competition?

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State regulations promulgated in December are going to close down church-based shelters for the homeless. The regulations’ given rationale is the state’s legitimate interest in safe and sanitary conditions in overnight shelters. But as written, the regulations would require churches to spend impossible sums to achieve compliance; and, perhaps tellingly, they would delimit a homeless person’s stays to 35 overnights per year, and would ban them altogether from June 15 to September 15. Such restrictions apparently will not apply to state-supported shelters — only to those run by churches and private organizations such as Salvation Army. One wonders if the hidden agenda isn’t to “eliminate the competition” provided by faith-based voluntary organizations in order to clear a path for much […]

Jim Stergios

Globe down 23%! Is it the price hike?

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Jon Chesto says it is in a WickedLocal report. I wonder, though. After all, if you look at the numbers in a USA Today report, you’d see that a comparable newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is suffering the same kind of drubbing. The San Francisco Chronicle’s weekday circulation fell 23% to 241,330 The Washington Post’s average weekday circulation dropped 13.1%, 478,482. USA Today, which has the second largest circulation, declined 13.6% to 1.83 million. The New York Times’ weekday circulation dropped 8.5% to 951,063. Anybody see the Herald numbers?

Jim Stergios

2 reasons why the Connector can't meet small biz insurance needs

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Two thoughts on why the Massachusetts Connector has done such a horrible job meeting the demands of small business for affordable health insurance choices: (1) Some say that it is all Governor Patrick’s doing. Certainly, elections matter, and the Governor has paid no attention to the issue until recently, and in a really ham-handed way (price controls! yup, that’s a great idea…). But it’s more complicated than that. The fact is that the Connector was created in a very topdown manner that is not helping to meet the needs of a dynamic set of customers. A Boston Globe report on August 4, 2006, three months before the 2006 election, noted the following: The four Medicaid plans that will be offered […]