Posts filed under 'News'
Manufacturing has a bad image these days. For those of us inside Route 128 , it can feel like there’s nothing left. But the reality for the rest of the state is very different.
Manufacturing still employs approximately 260,000 people or 8% of the workforce. And these people are working in good jobs at good wages – in the areas where manufacturing is still going on, wages in the industry are above the area median.
If you’d like to know more about manufacturing in Massachusetss, I’d encourage you to look at work by the state’s Commonwealth Corporation and Northeastern’s Barry Bluestone.
With Obama’s State of the Union, there’s increased attention to the industry. (I’m happy to see the attention paid to the industry but I’m far from convinced that his proposed tax credits are the answer.)
More important than government tax credits, US manufacturing is poised to regain at least some of its competitive position. A Boston Consulting Group report comes up with a surprising finding – the always-high (relative and absolute) level of productivity in the US is combining with rising labor costs in China to make US manufacturing competitive once again.
For Massachusetts, this may be the moment to secure existing jobs and create new ones in manufacturing. One place to start is addressing our high electricity costs. And I’m hopeful that the new community college/workforce development initiative from the Governor bears fruit (although inaction on years worth of comparative data makes me skeptical).
Contrary to the views of some, manufacturing remains an important employer in Massachusetts. Can we take advantage of this moment to make it even more so?
Crossposted at Boston Daily.
February 3rd, 2012
Think you’ve had a tense few weeks at work? Consider potential targets of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s probe into wrongdoing at the state’s Probation Department.
The Globe Spotlight Team and the Ware Report detailed the madness, absurdity, and outright corruption of the Probation Department. It’s tough to do it justice in a few words — rigged hiring, pay-to-play promotions, alleged quid pro quo between department leaders and legislators, and on and on.
On January 17, the Globe reported that the US Attorney’s office had “essentially completed their investigation” and indictments were imminent. Given the number of legislators mentioned prominently in the Ware Report, this had to be cause for concern.
Tick, tick, tick. Still waiting.
Ten days later, the Lowell Sun ratcheted up the pressure, stating that “two sitting senators and two sitting representatives could face criminal charges. Plus, one former state legislator and 10 outsiders could also face charges.”
Beacon Hill is still waiting for the US Attorney to make her move.
Crossposted at Boston Daily.
January 31st, 2012
Like most places, Massachusetts uses elections to insure accountability in government. Don’t like how things are being run? Vote’em out.
So, it’s interesting to note that some of the most egregious breakdowns in public accountability over the past few years have occurred in that netherworld between bureaucrats and elected officials — the board of directors.
To be sure, the private sector has struggled with how to insure the accountability of boards of directors, but the public sector seems to be far behind in this area.
What are the key indicators of weak governance? Review the peformance of the Essex Country Regional Retirement Board, the Chelsea Housing Authority Board, and the Merrimack Special Education Collaborative Board.
In each case, a board appointed by elected officials has egregiously failed to protect the public interest — either through ‘capture’ by a powerful chief executive or an inability or unwillingness to understand what exactly they were approving.
Massachusetts’ public sector governance is marbled through with hundreds of appointed boards designed to protect the public interest. If we can’t solve the seeming intrinsic weakness of this level of oversight, we risk wasting more of the taxpayers’ money.
January 27th, 2012
How well did the Patriots do this weekend? That’s easy. Look at the scoreboard.
How well has the state spent your tax dollars since the enactment of transportation reform? Well, that’s harder. There’s some reports that highlight the changes in management structure and some of the cost savings.
But what about the things that really matter to the customer. Some of those measures are in a .pdf file on the MassDOT website, if you know where to look. (And the MBTA actually is a bit more forward with their data.)
Pioneer thinks something bolder, more public, and customer-focused is needed. Using simple desktop tools, we put together a transportation dashboard with public data. It’s far from perfect, but we hope its starts a conversation about what’s important to us in the transportation system and how the system is performing. If we expect to have an ‘adult conversation’ about new revenues, that conversation needs to start with a critical assessment of how we are spending our current resources and what impact it has had. Take a look at the dashboard on our website (where you can examine backing data) or take a look at the snapshot below. Let us know what you think.
January 24th, 2012
(What, you think we can only do policy?)
There’s been a proliferation of reality cooking shows — Top Chef, Kitchen Nightmares, Iron Chef, Chopped, and so on — as well as spinoffs and brand extensions. For those aspiring chefs seeking to success on these shows, some pointers:
1. Always cook something. Seems obvious, but every competition has some person who makes a crudo or carpacchio. It’s not a slicing-and-marinating competition, folks; you need to cook.
2. Never do a duo. The indecisive or overly ambitious chef will decide to take a main ingredient and go for multiple preparations on a single plate. The problem is that you are competing against yourself — one preparation is going to be better than the other, and judges will note that. Figure out which one is better, and just do that. And let’s not get started on trios, OK?
3. Never make a napoleon. They never work. Trust us.
4. Avoid pre-fab food. Again, it’s a cooking show. Baking a cake from a box or using tortillas from a bag is not going to win it for you.
5. Don’t cook the same dish over and over again. Every chef has a style and a point of view, but you can’t make a variation of the same thing the whole series. In the immortal words of Fabio from Top Chef: “This is Top Chef, not Top Scallop,” mocking a fellow contestant who made scallops every week. The prominent exception to this rule (and the guy who wrecked it for any one-dish Charlies who tried to follow) is Ilan from Top Chef season 2, who cooked variations of a handful of Spanish dishes for pretty much the entire series.
6. Learn to make dessert. Most of the folks on these shows are chefs, not pastry chefs, so any challenge involving a dessert becomes a greater challenge. Particularly problematic are team challenges where someone gets stuck cooking dessert while everyone else is cooking in their comfort zone.
7. Learn to use a pressure cooker. The homely pressure cooker is a key tool on these cooking shows. Most challenges have significant time constraints, and the pressure cooker offers the only option in many cases for braising certain cuts of meat. Yet, highly trained chefs seem to be utterly befuddled by the device, particularly the lid. Put away the molecular gastronomy chemistry set, buy one, and learn to use it.
8. Learn/remember how to cook on non-commercial ranges. Many of the cooking shows are sponsored by makers of cook-tops and ovens, so it’s always puzzling that so much footage of chefs complaining about their stoves and equipment makes the final cut. Professional chefs are used to cooking on commercial ranges — which throw off a lot more BTUs than your typical home stove. So any challenge that uses a residential range is going to be an adjustment.
9. Know your host and judges. Watch the show ahead of time. It still amazes me that people serve Tom Colicchio undersalted food. If you are going on Hell’s Kitchen, you should be able to cook Beef Wellington in your sleep. And don’t bother serving Scott Conant, the judge on Chopped, a dish that combines fish and cheese.
Equipped with these simple rules, you can now compete and, while you might not win, you won’t embarrass yourself. Bon appetit.
January 20th, 2012
I’m a bit perplexed at the latest round of expectation-setting from Beacon Hill regarding the FY2013 budget.
First, it turns out we still have a structural deficit. But, didn’t the Governor tell us that the FY12 budget “eliminates the structural deficit I inherited from my predecessors”. And MTF President Mike Widmer came close to concurring, noting the near elimination of the structural deficit. Now, we find out there’s a $550 million structural gap. (Plus the cost of pushing out the pension fund, but that’s a bit harder to understand.)
Working from MassBudget’s curiously well-informed preview of the FY13 Governor’s Budget, I next learn that the Consensus Revenue Estimate says we’ll have an additional $840 million in available funds for the budget. Great, flush times, right?
Yet the same document projects an additional $1.4 billion in costs, attributed “primarily to inflation”, leaving us with a deficit of over $1 billion before we start the budget process. That’s an increase of 4.6% based on last year’s budget of $30.6 billion. As a yardstick, inflation was 3% in the 2011 calendar year. Even in relevant sub-categories, like medical care, inflation was 3.5%. Compensation costs for government employees only grow by around 1.5% during this period.
So what’s going on here? Why is the cost of our state government outstripping all the relevant indexes? Let’s figure out why before we turn to…ahem…revenue enhancements.
Crossposted at Boston Daily.
January 20th, 2012
If you deal with budgets regularly, you know the pain of trying to get through those last final steps of balancing spending and revenue to the penny.
But our friends at the State House may have delivered a new innovation — the negative expenditure. What’s that? It’s a spending account with a negative number, which has the virtue of canceling out actual spending.
If you download the FY12 budget line items from the state’s website, you find an account — 1599-0015 Intergovernmental Secretariat Budget Team Savings Reserve — with an amount of -$25 million attached to it.
That account doesn’t exist in the budget the Legislature posted on-line nor does it exist on the initial detail page on the State Budget website. But the careful observer will note that the totals on the detail page don’t foot out to the line items listed on the same page.
Only on a lower sub-page with historical information does the account surface. And the narrative that accompanies the budget discusses in general terms the potential savings from the Budget Savings but doesn’t explain the $25 million number. Plus, if you expect savings at various departments, their budgets should be reduced by that amount or how do stop them from spending the savings on something else?
In the context of a $30 billion+ budget is a $25 million a huge discrepancy? No. But the use of accounting gimmicks (particularly ones that are not consistent across budget documents) is not a good practice. As we enter the next budget season, I’ll watch more carefully this time.
Crossposted on the Boston Daily website.
January 13th, 2012
Participate in the transportation conversation long enough and you hear a familiar refrain: Why can’t we be more like Europe? Europe being shorthand for an enlightened land of high-speed rail, pervasive bike use, and public transit everywhere. (There’s notable less interest in the widespread use of private concessionaires for roadways, but that’s another post.)
With the MBTA’s current financial struggles in mind, a recent study by two scholars — Ralph Buehler from VPI and John Pucher from Rutgers University — of the German public transit system yields some interesting results.
During a period where US transit systems expanded their coverage area faster than ridership, German systems reduced their coverage area while seeking to increase ridership on higher volume routes. They reduced costs by increasing the productivity of their workforce, cutting employee benefits and instituting a competitive system of outsourcing.
During a period where the MBTA needs all the help it can get, perhaps we need to be more European in our thinking.
January 11th, 2012
Lieut. Gov. Tim Murray has forfeited the benefit of the doubt.
Murray, in a recent letter to political supporters, complained that he has been subjected to “false rumors and wild speculation” in connection with the crash of a state-owned car last Nov. 2 on Interstate 190 in Sterling.
Perhaps he would have had a legitimate complaint if he had been completely transparent from the start. But his account of the crash is contradicted in almost every detail by what was more recently revealed from the vehicle’s black box. If anybody is causing problems by saying things that are false, it is Murray.
The lieutenant governor claimed he had been obeying the 65 mph speed limit. He wasn’t. The black box data showed that he been traveling in excess of 75 mph, and shortly before the crash his speed increase to 108 mph.
He claimed that he had slid on black ice. Not according to the black box, which showed he had never applied the brakes. He claimed he had been wearing his seatbelt. False again.
To call all of these contradictions “mistakes” is laughable. They call into question the rest of his account. Murray said he had gone for a drive to check out storm damage – at around 5 a.m. in the pitch dark. Now he says that he went out for a drive because he couldn’t sleep. And, he now says the reason for the accident is that he fell asleep the wheel.
So for Murray to complain about the press demanding his cell phone records is both unseemly and suspicious. He contends that he was not talking or texting on his phone any time during the drive. But, he does not want to release the phone records.
If Murray wants to end rumors and speculation, he will stop stonewalling. That is only feeding them. If his phone records back up what he has been saying, he has nothing to worry about. But he can’t complain that people don’t trust him. In this case he doesn’t deserve it.
January 10th, 2012
The Massachusetts state lottery has made news the past few weeks for two things — a $20 holiday raffle that lost money and a proposal to allow gamblers to use their debit cards to buy tickets.
The stories might seem only vaguely related but, at root, they highlight the Mass Lottery’s ongoing challenge — sustaining revenue levels and trying to grow in a stagnant market. And that market is going to get more crowded once casinos start operating, with expert opinions forecasting a 5 – 10% drop in lottery revenues initially.
As previous studies have shown, Massachusetts has one of the most successful lotteries in the country, particularly on a per capita basis. But it has been difficult work keeping the numbers growing.
At some base level, a business entity’s revenues are bound by a simple equation — revenues = (# of customers) x (price) x (quantity) x (purchase frequency).
The Lottery’s worked hard within these confines to make more money — offering sports-branded instant games to attract casual players, developing higher cost instant games to raise average spend, and continuing to cycle through a portfolio of instant games to keep players interested.
Trying to increase the purchase frequency is the area where the Lottery has done particularly interesting work. The proposal to allow debit card spending has the potential to increase that measure. The lottery has also worked to increase the number of outlets for ticket purchase, not just through the traditional convenience store outlets but with vending machines, automatic Keno ticket readers, and broader access to Keno machines.
For my money, the most fascinating change was the tweak to Keno game frequency by reducing it from a game every 5 minutes to every 4 minutes, thereby increasing the number of games played every hour from 12 to 15.
Even with all these tweaks, Lottery sales only rose .7% per year from 2000 to 2007. And casinos will eat into its sales. Massachusetts has a very successful lottery, but barring some wild scheme (keno on the MBTA?) it’s a mature product with minimal growth prospects.
Crossposted at Boston Daily.
January 6th, 2012
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