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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]