Posts filed under 'Better Government'
After reading this article I thought to myself: “I am definitely in the wrong business”.
Serendipitously, I was reading this morning an article in this week’s
Economist* called “
Sharing the Pain” that talked about increasing budget deficits and our current inability to continue financing growth with debt. The article made the following point:
“[...] that leaves two other ways of closing the deficit. Spending must be cut or taxpayers must pay more. Many political battles of the next few years will be fought on these simple lines, with tax payers on one side and the beneficiaries of public spending on the other. One imminent battle will be between taxpayers and public sector workers.”
I can see how as a public employee I would want to fight for what I think I deserve. A former municipal employee myself, I know that the argument is that salaries in the private sector are always higher so you might as well enjoy the perks as a public servant.
But when I look on one hand at how much municipalities are paying its employees (i.e. a sick-leave buyback payment of $69,767 at retirement), and on the other witness pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs in the private sector, I cannot help but thinking “Aren’t we all in this together?”
To avoid the “imminent battle” between government employees and taxpayers, we must stop this “milking-the-fat-government-cow” mentality that public employees are displaying. How is this different from the greedy attitude in Wall Street that everyone is so offended by?
We are all -private and public sectors- going through tough times, and we all share the responsibility of getting out of this mess. Why aren’t our leaders putting an end to this “others got it, why can’t I?” attitude in government?
* The Economist March 6ht, 2010. Requires subscription
March 10th, 2010
I applaud the initiative of state officials and the city manager in Lowell to investigate the alleged lack of integrity and professionalism displayed by DPW and Parks and Recreation workers in Lowell.
In a time of scarcity and aid cuts, municipal government should really exercise a “zero-tolerance” policy for the misuse of funds. And this issue also points to a bigger problem in local government, one of nepotism and corruption.
However, I would invite both state and local officials, and particularly DPW and Parks and Recreation bosses T.J. McCarthy and Thomas Bellegarde, not to focus their efforts on finding scapegoats. Yes, people who abused their authority should be held accountable. But looking at a bigger picture and from a managerial standpoint: what processes and systems can be put in place in order to avoid these issues in the future?
Data analysis, combined with some basic performance management tools such as measuring workers’ daily productivity could solve this issue. I – government- measure what my employees are accomplishing, I benchmark their results with my productivity goals, and I look for solutions that make them more efficient as workers and get me the best bang for my buck. And if someone wants to take a city owned vehicle for their purposes, I know right away, and can take action immediately.
Isn’t government (even local) a multi-million dollar operation? Why aren’t we demanding from our government to keep track of the outcomes municipal employees are producing like stakeholders demand reports from companies? It is OUR tax money, isn’t it?
March 8th, 2010
State House News Service (subscription required) reports that the Commonwealth Connector, the state authority that oversees the health care exchange envisioned in the 2006 reform, is “launch[ing] a new health insurance product designed for businesses with 50 or fewer employees.”
That’s fast. Pioneer’s report, Drawing Lessons, which compared the Utah and Massachusetts “exchanges” found that, in author Amy Lischko’s words,
“Some decisions made while implementing the exchange model in Massachusetts, for example, have meant that the Connector has not met the needs of small employers in Massachusetts well.”
Small businesses wanting to know more, can go to www.MAhealthconnector.org, or call Connector customer service at 877-623-6765.
And, good on you, Dr. Kingsdale. We’re pleased to see it and will look over the new products!
February 23rd, 2010
Dear Patrick Administration PR Dream Team:
The tried-and-true Friday night information dump (alias PAFNDAS) has been tried and tried, and is now tired. Please note: it really pisses reporters off.
Sunday, January 31, Exhibit A. Somehow that jobs-related press release did not work out so well.
Saturday, February 2, Exhibit B.
Suggestion to the Guv’s talented staff, when people are really hurting, you need to use real numbers and show seriousness of purpose. Here are just a few problems with the stim numbers you’re using:
- The 14,000 number far overstates the impact by including lots of p-t work, and also by using the federal money to pay small portions of state salaries, and calling those jobs “retained.” That’s not, uh, serious.
- Public sector jobs ARE important, BUT focusing 70% of the stim money on government jobs does not have the ripple effects in the economy that private sector jobs do.
- Public sector jobs are important, but the state is setting us up for a financial cliff once the federal money dries up. That is especially so on the education side. Using so much federal stim money to fill a huge hole you drilled in state education funding in FY09 is setting up perhaps an unscalable cliff. This is not in the spirit of a 1993 SJC ruling, state law, and some would argue violates a constitutional duty.
The opportunity to do something big and enduring — whether as regards infrastructure or inner city clean-ups — has been lost. That is truly a pity.
February 2nd, 2010
Tom Menino already has by ensuring that he will be mayor of Boston for 20 years. 20 years. Boston has been an American city for only two and a quarter centuries. 20 years is a long time. Things have gotten better over those two decades, and there is a promise that the Mayor has made to use his “political capital”, as he put it, to make major changes. To make history.
We are rooting for the mayor, and we hope that he can use the 15-part series that we did together with the Boston Municipal Research Bureau on the major issues facing our fair city as buoys as, in his final four years, he takes the ship of city government to a better landing place.
A Vision for Boston: Questions for the 2009 Mayoral Candidates focused on
Payments-in-Lieu-of-Taxes
City Personnel Spending
The Next Teachers’ Contract
School Dropouts
Charter Schools
Mass Transit
Health Insurance Costs
Performance Measurement
Mandatory Alcohol and Drug Testing
Public Safety
Transportation
Student Transportation
City Planning and Development
Casino Gambling
Jobs
The mayors’ answers as to how he would address each of these questions are at each of the links. He has thought generally about these issues, and shown progress on many. We are not there. The mayor can get us there, but these will be the hardest years he has spent as mayor if we are to reach our real destination of the stinkin’ best city in North America.
November 4th, 2009
The Governor is now talking about layoffs. I suppose Pioneer is responsible for starting the discussion about headcount growth a year ago, when we suggested that the data is telling us that state government grew from 2004 to then by about 7500 positions. We said it in October 2008, January 2009 and then again in June 2009.
Our view is that the addition of 1,100 safety net program positions during that period should be maintained but that an equivalent of the 6,400 new hires are not sustainable in the face of thousands of local layoffs and over a billion-dollar-plus structural deficit. That’s been the mantra over and over.
Over the past five months or so we’ve been asking the state’s Human resource Division for updated data on layoffs, to see if cuts were occurring, and if so cuts to what. We cut them a check with a Freedom of Information Act request. We still waited. It finally came out a week or so ago, and only because the Governor Patrick directly instructed an aide to provide the data to the Associated Press (which had a similar request in). Note to Guv: Thank you. Not to Guv’s staff: A little more transparency is welcome.
Layoffs are always hard. But they are needed in this crisis. And the unfortunate news seems to be that the opposite of our recommendation has occurred. That is, the administration made most of its 912 job cuts in safety net programs (SNP). (We will look to confirm or correct the numbers we have with additional state reports in the coming months, just to make sure).
Between January 2007 and September 30, 2009, almost 75% of cuts have been made to SNPs, where I am defining Mental Health, Social Services, Public Safety, Developmental Services, the Blind, Transitional Assistance, Health and Human Services, Soldiers’ Home (Massachusetts and Holyoke), Elder Affairs, Disabled Persons Protection, Youth Services, Disability, and Developmental Disabilities as core SNP programs. You can access a spreadsheet for the 2007-2009 cuts here with department-level data on where they occurred.
Impact of 2007-September 2009 cuts on Safety net Programs (SNP)
Now 2005 and 2006 were not dislocating in the way the current crisis is. That said, Romney seems to have done a pretty good job at not impacting SNPs inordinately. In fact, Mental Health, Public Health and Mental Retardation are the only “safety net programs” (SNPs) affected by Romney cuts in the last two years of his term. The impact is a reverse mirror image of what has happened in the last few years. Again, you can link here for a spreadsheet of 2005-2006 cuts.
Impact of 2005-2006 cuts on Safety net Programs (SNP)
Just. Not. Smart.
November 2nd, 2009
The Alliance for Excellent Education has released a report, Straight A’s, that is scathing about the misuse of stimulus money in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. It cites a report from the US DOE’s Inspector General criticizing the three states for using the stimulus funds in a way that was not intended in the stimulus legislation. (See the OIG’s memo and the Federal OESE’s response here.)
The Patrick administration has not done anything illegal but the feds don’t like it. Basically, what happened is that the ARRA had a loophole and it has led to unintended consequences – reductions in state funding for education commensurate with what the three states thought they could use the federal money for. The feds clearly don’t like it, but are now struggling with how to deal with it as they limited remedy.
In what follows you will see the term “MOE.” It refers to Maintenance of Effort, and implies that the states were supposed to hold the districts harmless. MOE will be considered as the state seeks to move its RTTT funding application forward but the OIG notes there is no hard penalty attached to ensure compliance.
From the Alliance for Excellent Education report:
“In Massachusetts, the governor’s original budget proposal for FY 2009 included a $223.2 million increase to the state’s primary K-12 funding formula, Chapter 70 education aid. In October 2008, the governor announced reductions in the state’s budget to cover revenue shortfalls, but Chapter 70 was unaffected. In January 2009, the governor proposed further reductions, but again, Chapter 70 was unaffected. But in May 2009, after the enactment of ARRA, the governor announced a plan to reduce funding for Chapter 70 by $412 million and use $412 million of the state’s SFSF allocation to fill the hole.
In order to address these budget shell games, the inspector general makes two recommendations to the U.S. Department of Education. First, it suggests that the department implement a process to track state support for elementary and secondary education, as well as for public institutions of higher education, as defined in state SFSF applications, to determine the extent to which State funding on public education is being reduced. Second, it recommends that the department establish and implement a process to ensure that states have met the MOE requirements and assurances prior to awarding additional SFSF funding.
This strikes me as an important story, about which the Globe editorial board and this young fellow wrote in February and May 2009, respectively.
October 14th, 2009
A very interesting story comes out of the Census data compiled by the Education Intelligence Agency on trends for K-12 teachers. The district-by-district comparisons further demonstrate the loss in student enrollment in our larger urban districts since 2001-2:
- Boston shed 9.3% of its students (down to 56,388)
- Worcester 8.6%
- Lynn 10.7%
- New Bedford 11.4%
- Fall River 13.6%
- Haverhill 11.6%
- Cambridge 20.5%
- Somerville 14.1%
Ken Ardon noted this last year in a policy piece for us:
The primary cause of the decline is demographics – the population of Massachusetts is aging and the children of Baby-Boomers are rapidly moving through school.
The Census data suggests that Boston also shed a whopping 22% of its K-12 teachers, Worcester 24.5%, Quincy 19%, New Bedford 18%, Chelsea 22%, Salem 35%…
These are ugly numbers and hard to understand given that, for example, Boston’s per-pupil spending went up almost 50% during this period, Worcester’s 31%, or New Bedford by 33%.
This requires some digging to understand the causes – early retirement packages, retirement trends, etc. – and the impacts. Does this mean that class sizes have gone up that much? That compensation has gone up that much?
October 12th, 2009
Yesterday’s article in the Globe about the difficulty citizens are facing in accessing public records made me smile.
Isn’t it interesting that in this day and age, with all the research tools we have at the tip of our keyboards, it is still so hard to get the information that we need from government? This article just reminded me of the importance of having committed individuals holding their government accountable.
However, we have to give public officials a break too. I think too often public record related issues becomes an “us vs. them” conversation between government and citizens. I absolutely agree that people SHOULD know. And I also get – as a former goverment employee myself- that resources are tight and that people are more often than not trying to do the best with the resources they have.
You’ll be pleased to know that Pioneer Institute just put together an online resource that gives the public access to intersting public records. You can call it a happy middle if you wish.
It’s called MassOpenBooks.
On this webiste you have access to salaries, pension and disbursements data made by the state. This will hopefully help you- citizen- since you’ll have the information speedy quick, at the tip of your fingers (and for free!). And I am sure it’ll also spare the headache to the person dealing with public records requests on top of the hill…
September 25th, 2009
Today’s Globe has an article on a little-known provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the federal stimulus bill. The provision allows cities and towns to shift ownership of certain subsidized housing units to the federal government, as long as the units are in good condition.
Doing so would obviously help in the short run to take the strain off of state and municipal budgets and in the long run help funnel more capital investment to the upkeep of the units themselves, something, at least according to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, the feds have a greater fiscal capacity to achieve.
Now, I don’t know whether this is a good or bad idea. My complaint, and hence my blog, is not about that. It is about the contrasting reactions of officials in Boston and Worcester.
Worcester Housing Authority executive director Raymond Mariano’s reaction was:
There’s a huge incentive for housing authorities to do this. We need at least to consider it, especially for large authorities like Worcester’s.
BHA administrator Bill McGonagle’s reaction was:
I view this as nothing short of the Commonwealth abandoning its moral and legal responsibilities for the thousands of poor, elderly, and disabled folks living in state public housing.
Not, we’ll look at it. Not, we’ll consider it. Not, we’ll study it. No, a simple, reflexive, we’re not going to do that, the same reaction that seems to emanate from Boston’s City Hall any time a new idea is put on the table, from joining the GIC, to creating a 311 call system, to exploring ways to increase capital investment in the city’s subsidized housing stock.
Not every provision tucked into a federal bill or idea floated by a policy think tank like ours truly is a good one, but we can’t be so afraid of new ideas that we don’t at least explore the possibility that one or two of them just might be.
July 27th, 2009
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