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.
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.
The MBTA released two scenarios to deal with a projected FY13 budget deficit of $161 million. Scenario 1 fills the gap with close to 80% fare increases and 20% service cuts. Scenario 2 roughly splits the difference between service cuts and fare increases.
A quick review of the impact study tells me that Scenario 1 is the one that the MBTA wants. And that the ire of the public will quickly be focused on Scenario 2.
Scenario 2 proposes a radically trimming of bus operations, eliminating 23.6% of bus trips and reducing ridership by about the same amount. The T’s bus system could use some consolidation and a greater focus on increasing throughput, but that’s a pretty big pill to swallow in one shot.
Plus, the concentrated impact of Scenario 2 on bus service — reducing ridership by 24%, while subway service sees a modest reduction of 2% of ridership due to service cuts — will also attract attention. As bus riders are more concentrated in Boston (full disclosure: I’m one of those riders.), urban politicians are sure to react strongly to this plan.
Another problematic aspect of Scenario 2 is its reliance on headcount reduction for cost savings. It forecasts a reduction of 564 MBTA jobs. Given past history, such as the launch of automated fare collection, which resulted in no immediate reduction in headcount, and the strength of the Carmen’s Union, I’m skeptical that the will exists to implement this.
I encourage you to take a read through the study and draw your own conclusions. Despite my misgivings about portions of it, there’s a lot of good thinking here — raising fares (and considering them in the context of other urban systems), eliminating certain low ridership/high subsidy bus routes, increasing fees and decreasing or eliminating subsidies for other services.
What’s not in here, but needs to be discussed at some point, is a way forward. Is the MBTA in perpetual ‘$160 million yearly structural deficit” mode? If so, these short-term fire drills don’t address the long-term problem.
And am I the only person who sees the contradiction between spending on long-term expansion (Green Line extension, South Coast Rail) when we can’t fund the operations of the current system and cold (not inclement) weather seems to be an increasing challenge operationally?
No one, myself included, likes to pay more in fares. But I’d be willing to pay more if it meant an improvement in reliability and service quality. I’m hopeful someone makes that case in an accountable and public way.
Dave deBronkart gave an interesting talk at a TED conference site last year that highlights the potential of patients having access to their own health data.
Understanding the quality of the choices in the marketplace will have to be informed by more than giddy passion about the promise of virtual learning. A cursory look at the research done on virtual learning suggests that there has been to date more energy than light on the impact of VL on sustained student achievement. …
We are just at the start of the virtual learning movement, and there is so much promise in the short term regarding access to high-quality content, targeted instruction, peer tutoring and resulting stronger socialization around academics (rather than who’s cool and who’s not). …
The fault lines around how best to teach kids how to read, conceptual understanding, and what should be in the standards and curriculum are all important topics well into a virtual future.
And politics will come. It is unavoidable. The NY Times was to run an expose by Stephanie Saul, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has spent much of her career at the Times on the pharmaceutical industry and fertility treatments, on the well-known digital learning company K12. Many in the school choice movement see the article as a likely hatchet job…
All I can say to school reformers who support digital learning is: Such articles and such scrutiny are going to come. It is inevitable and ultimately it is good.
Ms. Saul’s piece on online learning – or really on one company involved in the online space, K12 Inc. – came out five days after my blog. The title of her piece was provocative — Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools – though not nearly as provocative as the url of the article (which may suggest that it was the original title): “Online Schools Score Better on Wall Street Than in Classrooms.”
It’s important simply because it’s an long investigative piece in the New York Times. And while I am going to stick with my take that criticism is a good thing because it helps you improve, the article has been roundly criticized with good reason.
to interview, for example, the student with disabilities who can work at his own pace or the student in a rural state who would never have had access to AP physics or Mandarin Chinese if it weren’t for online options. Instead, Saul dismisses the benefits that virtual education holds for so many students.
The article does interview Ronald Packard, the CEO of K12 Inc., but the rest of the quotes are from opponents of the school. I get that you need to interview unions folks and superintendents for a full picture, but when the scholar you approach for a comment compares the company and digital learning to “what the banks did with home mortgages” and when Saul herself suggests that the company is acting like “military contractors [that] have capitalized on Pentagon spending,” well, it’s just not credible. Consider just how un-journalistic the tone is in these sentences:
With K12 estimating the market for its schools as high as $15 billion, the company’s manifest destiny is to expand across the United States. Its newest conquest is Tennessee, where the company got legislative approval last May… [my italics]
Other problems with the piece are:
1) The article draws conclusions from an investigation of one company and applies them broadly to digital learning. As Burke notes:
Rocketship Academy, a blended learning school that leverages online learning in combination with the traditional classroom. Out of 3,000 low-income schools in California, Rocketship is the fifth-highest-performing.
Rocketship’s performance is consistent with findings released in 2010 by the U.S. Department of Education. In a meta-analysis of more than 1,000 empirical studies on virtual learning, it found that “online learning has been modestly more effective, on average, than the traditional face-to-face instruction with which it has been compared.”
There are also public virtual schools, including the rightly much-applauded Florida’s Virtual School, which have demonstrated records of success and also provide lessons for the kind of accountability that states like Pennsylvania, which Saul’s focuses on, should insist upon.
2) Saul is clearly unfamiliar with the field she is writing about. After citing upcoming research from Western Michigan University and the National Education Policy Center to the effect that
only a third of K12’s schools achieved adequate yearly progress, the measurement mandated by federal No Child Left Behind legislation
Saul quotes a school official from Memphis Public Schools to support her point that children need academic and social skills. The problem is that
According to Superintendent Kriner Cash, only about 16% of Memphis City Schools made its ‘Adequate Yearly Progress,’ or AYP. He said about 50 schools made improvements but it wasn’t enough.
Then there is the section of the article where Saul seeks to taint K12 Inc., and the entire digital learning space, with the scarlet letter of lobbying. Taking the Pennsylvania state auditor’s criticism of K12’s use of funds on advertising and lobbying without questioning, Saul shows either naivete or a lack of curiosity surprising because of her profession when she writes that charter schools and digital learning entities
have formed a lobbying juggernaut in state capitals. In Pennsylvania, the company has spent $681,000 on lobbying since 2007.
Juggernaut? It’s not my intention to defend lobbyists, but can Saul really be unaware that taxpayer funds go to teachers’ union lobbying and also that of the superintendents—and that these funds flow through private organizations? If K12’s spending $170,000 a year on lobbying is offensive, then what about these numbers for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, which she quotes throughout her article:
The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), an affiliate of the NEA, siphoned over $55 million out of its 191,000 members’ and 5,600 agency-fee payers’ wallets in 2010, with help from school districts who deduct the payments.
A number of members and fee-payers would gladly keep their money, if given the choice. National Education Association (NEA) general counsel Robert Chanin acknowledged that fact: “It is well recognized that if you take away the mechanism of payroll deduction, you won’t collect a penny from these people.”
More than $2.5 million of that paid for political fundraising, a gubernatorial debate video, political calling, lobbying, and other political activity…
While dues cannot be used to directly fund candidates’ campaigns, unions also have PACs. Union war chests contributed more than $23 million to campaigns in 2009-2010 — much more than the often vilified natural gas industry. PACE, the PSEA’s political action committee, contributed $2.3 million to state election campaigns in 2009-2010, including $310,000 to Dan Onorato for Governor.
Another example of Saul’s lack of understanding of the field is her broad and unfortunately uninformed assumptions about the kinds of students that may benefit from digital opportunities—suggesting that they are simply those kids with “strong parental commitment and self-motivated students.”
Then there is her lack of understanding of homeschoolers. Citing critics who “argue that states are essentially subsidizing home schooling,” Saul is oblivious to the counter-argument made for decades by homeschoolers that they are the ones who have long subsidized public schools by paying for their kids’ education out of pocket even as they pay taxes for traditional public schools that their kids do not attend.
All that said, there is no reason to go overboard criticizing Saul’s intentions or lack of detailed knowledge with the subject matter. That’s hardly rare in journalism these days, though it is equally clear that the Times‘ Sam Dillon is a far more experienced hand in the education space. Saul’s piece is helpful when it underscores an issue that states interested in expanding digital learning have to get their arms around: How payments and incentives are structured to online vendors is crucial to ensuring accountability for recruitment and retention, as well as student achievement.
For example, Saul writes that
The constant cycle of enrollment and withdrawal, called the churn rate, appears to be a problem at many schools. Records Agora filed with Pennsylvania reveal that 2,688 students withdrew during the 2009-10 school year. At the same time, K12 continued to sign up new students. Enrollment at the end of the year — 4,890 — was 170 students more than at the beginning, obscuring the high number of withdrawals.
A 50 percent “churn” rate is unacceptable, and that Pennsylvania is not insisting on answers suggests that they need to improve their public policy. And while Saul’s wrong on the kinds of students who may benefit from digital learning, we would be wise to listen to disgruntled K12 Inc. staff members when they
say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program[.]
As the Massachusetts legislature thinks through this issue, it has to pay special attention to the fee structure and timing. Here the public model in Florida may provide important lessons in as much as there is no payment made to the Florida Virtual School until the student completes the course with a satisfactory grade.
Such a payment system would alleviate the pressures of some teachers at K12 who
questioned why some students who did no class work were allowed to remain on school rosters, potentially allowing the company to continue receiving public money for them.
Which still leaves the issue of accountability for performance. Saul describes the experiences of two Tennessee families to underscore the observation that
[S]ome teachers said they were under pressure to pass students with marginal performance and attendance.
She also uses their experiences to ask if K12 Inc. is doing enough to ensure that the student is really doing the work.
Some teachers have complained that it can be difficult to determine whether students are actually doing the work, or getting help from their parents or others. “Virtual schools offer much greater opportunity for students to obtain credit for work they did not do themselves,” said a report in October from the National Education Policy Center, which receives financing from the National Education Association.
There are a number of options here, including more frequent online visual contact, periodic meetings, and requirements for testing to occur in public spaces with sign-ins. These are precisely the topics of discussion that Massachusetts has to take on seriously as it decides how to exploit technology in a way that advances access to AP courses, specialized courses, customized individual learning, and full schooling online.
The Salvation Army is struggling to raise money this year through its traditional red kettle/bell-ringing campaign, with donations down 22%. It might be due to a down economy. I know that my dependence on electronic transactions frequently leaves me without bills or coins to donate.
But new economic research suggests strategies to increase donations. A team of economists conducted a four day experiment at a Boston-area supermarket using two different approaches to the red kettle campaign.
The first approach was passive — just bell-ringing, no speaking, no eye contact. The second was active — bell-ringing plus a direct ask for a donation.
The result?
People avoid being asked verbally (as opposed to the implicit, passive ask that the presence of kettle suggests). About a third of the shoppers actively switched entrances to avoid the verbal ask.
Noted “for his work in accountability and assessment,” one could complain (and I have) that the Commissioner should not have waited 3 ½ years to come to that conclusion. Especially with the financial and political missteps made by the previous superintendent.
10 percent of [the students] drop out each year, and only 30 and 40 percent of [students] are proficient or advanced in math and reading, respectively.
Unfortunately, the fact is that the state’s plan to appoint a single person to drive the Lawrence receivership operation is a one-size-fits-all strategy that has almost not chance of success. That’s because there is little evidence that state-driven, command and control efforts yield to anything but marginal improvements. And that is certainly not enough for the kids or even for the state, which currently picks up 95 percent of the education tab in Lawrence.
(Fact is, the state has owned this mess for a long time.)
As noted in the Eagle Tribune, researchers have ample evidence to work from in evaluating the possibility of a successful state-driven turnaround:
Andrew Smarick, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of education, has conducted research and concluded that “turnaround efforts have for the most part resulted in only marginal improvements.” He further notes that “turnarounds are not a scalable strategy for fixing America’s troubled urban school systems.”
A few years ago, California targeted the lowest-performing 20 percent of its schools for intervention. Three years later, one of the 394 targeted high schools was categorized as having made “exemplary process.”
Rather than a receiver who will have “all the powers of the superintendent and school committee” to right Lawrence’s schools, what Lawrence families need is access to good options. Options with a proven track record of success.
Instead of the “Superman” strategy, which “has failed repeatedly across the country,” the best way forward is for state leaders (governor, his appointees in the ed bureaucracy, and state legislators from the Greater Lawrence area) need to sit down and craft a comprehensive plan that gives these four options to kids:
More charters, faster. Charters in Lawrence are doing a great job, and parents need more of them. Opening failed urban districts to many more charters has worked quite well in New Orleans and Washington, DC, where 70 and 30 percent of kids are now attending charter schools. The state should go out of its way to invite networks like KIPP, SABIS, and so many others to come in with bold expansion proposals.
Boston and Springfield have access to the METCO interdistrict choice program. Why not Lawrence?
While the Greater Lawrence Vocational Technical School has shown some improvement, it could do better. Regional voc-techs around the state have improved significantly over the past decade (much higher MCAS scores and super low drop out rates). A team of voc-tech peers should be brought in to advise GLVT on how to make even more progress.
Finally, give Lawrence families private options they can’t currently afford. Lawrence’s schools spend well beyond double the amount of tuition needed to attend good area private schools, many of which are Catholic. Archdiocesan schools are high-quality options academically, as well as in terms of teaching good social skills and safety.
Creating a tax credit for businesses that give to create scholarships for Lawrence’s kids would likely pass constitutional muster and it would show that our leaders are serious in trying everything possible to give these kids a chance. Now. Not in five or 10 years. They don’t have that luxury.
If the state sticks with the same old playbook of top-down reforms, somewhere approaching half the kids in the Lawrence public schools don’t have a prayer of a chance of making it into the middle class. It’s time to have the courage to try things that are politically hard but actually work.
In my last post, I took a look at how surprisingly credulous state executives were of Evergreen Solar’s business. Rarely, if ever, were concerns raised about whether Evergreen Solar was a good investment for the state to make, nor whether the solar industry in general was fundamentally sound. That green jobs had a bright future was, documents indicate, an article of faith.
It’s easy now, as much of the predicted “Green Boom” has gone bust, to second guess the decisions made. A question that should be answered, however, is why those decisions were made. The Patrick administration hasn’t been eager to answer that question. When quizzed about the bankruptcy, the governor insisted the company’s CEO was “out of the loop” while insisting the state would be able to clawback incentives paid out.
But while I once despaired of ever getting Evergreen Solar’s secrets, MassDevelopment has released almost a thousand pages that do shed light on why warning signs were ignored, and it looks like, Massachusetts fell victim of old-fashioned peer pressure.
The scene is all too familiar for anyone whose bought a car. Evergreen is a bargain, but you have to buy now because other suitors are calling and soon it will be going, going, gone. Or to quote directly from a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency:
Amid aggressive competition from Mexico and Oregon and other states, Evergreen has chosen to remain in Massachusetts and to build a new facility, which the Governor hopes will attract other renewable energy companies thereby forming a cluster in Massachusetts. One criterion Evergreen cited in its decision to remain in Massachusetts is the Commonwealth’s ability to “move quickly” with expedited permitting at Devens.
The specter of other states winning the bid is outlined again in a memo detailing MassDevelopment’s eventual grant to Evergreen Solar:
Because Massachusetts had already been in competition with the States of New York, Oregon, and New Mexico for the siting of this facility, the Massachusetts Office of Business Development (”MOBD”) quickly turned to Devens as a location that could meet Evergreen’s needs in the timeframe that they required.
Evergreen Solar executives had no qualms about playing off Massachusetts’s fear of losing out to help drive up the asking price. An e-mail from Massachusetts Office of Business Development:
[After discussing pooling funding and financing sources:] This would bring our total loan package up to $20 million and make us very competitive with other states on the financing front. New York, which is being considered along with Oregon and New Mexico, is making a serious run at it with a large loan package that is forgiveable (i.e. converts to a grant) if certain job creation benchmarks are achieved. New York also has identified an old IBM semiconductor facility in East Fishkill, NY that has a building and infrastructure in place and would significantly reduce Evergreen’s startup costs and timetable. Rich emphasized that the Massachusetts proposal is now very competitive and that the policy discussions with Ian Bowles’ team have been positively received by the Board. He also re-iterated that they are committed to a two-way dialog with Massachusetts and will let us know in advance whether our proposal will be adequate or inadequate to close the deal and give an opportunity for Massachusetts to address any potential areas of the proposal which need to be bolstered to close the deal.
This is all the normal bartering of business, the natural give and take of negotiating. But why were the right questions not asked about Evergreen Solar’s viability? Why was the focus so squarely on catering to Evergreen’s specific needs and demands, and not on more general incentives? Documents indicate peer pressure played a part, with executives caught up in the chase of landing a big (doomed) catch.
But that competitive pressure was ignited by what e-mails indicate was an equally powerful draw: The promise of a new economic dynamo, all powered by socially responsible green energy. As I’ll explore in my next post, it was a combination too powerful for state decision makers to pass up.
Because Massachusetts had already been in competition with the States of New York, Oregon, and New Mexico for the siting of this facility, the Massachusetts Office of Business Development (”MOBD”) quickly turned to Devens as a location that could meet Evergreen’s
(What? I have to do policy wonk stuff all the time?)
Tim Tebow is all the rage right now, both for his spectacular late game comebacks and his very public professions of his faith. We’ll leave the latter alone and focus on his actions on the field.
His team, the Denver Broncos, turned to Tebow after a 1-4 start running a conventional offense under Kyle Orton. Over time, the Broncos have implemented a modified read-option offense that is built around the running and decision-making skills of Tebow.
For the uninitiated, the read-option is based around the counter-intuitive notion of not blocking at least one defender. That unblocked defender is then ‘read’ by the quarterback/ballcarrier, if the unblocked defender commits to tackling the QB, then the QB pitches the ball. If not, the QB runs it. That’s a vast simplification and Denver doesn’t run the read-option all the time, but it’s the basis for their offense.
An option offense has a few virtues – first, it leverages the skills of your best player (because that player touches the ball every play and can run, hand off, or, sometimes, pass). Next, the option offense is predicated on not blocking at least one opposing player at the point of attack, this allows your other blockers to either double-team other defenders or get advantageous blocking angles. These two reasons are why you still see the option offense run at smaller schools (that have fewer high skill players and undersized blockers). That’s why the service academies still run this offense.
So, what do the Pats need to do to neutralize Tebow?
First, stay disciplined and rotate players on defense. The option offense is frustrating to play against – its grueling to face a constant running attack and to stay disciplined enough to stick to assignments. Denver’s ability to pull off late game heroics is likely due, in part, to their ability wear out and frustrate opponents, causing mistakes. The Pats’ depth and system-oriented defense should serve them well in this game.
Second, use that high-powered offense. There are few things more painful than watching a run-first option team forced to try and play catch-up against the clock. Denver has an underrated defense that’s allowed them to keep games close while the offense wears down their opponents. If the Pats overcome that and pile up points early, this is going to be an ugly game for Denver’s offense. In addition, an out-of-sync option team can have a lot of 3-and-outs, putting further pressure on a defense which has little time to rest.
I wish Tebow nothing but the best (except for this game) and I love watching option football, but I’m skeptical this works out in the long-term for him or the Broncos. He may evolve into a more traditional QB or roleplayer, but there’s a reason you don’t see the option very often as a full-time offense in the NFL.
Achieving reading proficiency by 3rd Grade is a vital skill, closely correlated with important measures of academic achievement later. As one major study found:
- One in six children who are not reading proficiently in third grade do notgraduate from high school on time, a rate four times greater than that for proficient readers…
- For children who were poor for at least a year and were not reading proficiently in third grade, the proportion that don’t finish school rose to 26 percent. That’s more than six times the rate for all proficient readers…
- Graduation rates for Black and Hispanic students who were not proficient readers in third grade lagged far behind those for White students with the same reading skills.
Goals are important, but current performance is way behind what we want. Buried deep in a Globe article, that focused on the assets of various schools, was a troubling revelation:
Only Perkins and three other schools met or exceeded Johnson’s goal of having 72 percent of [3rd grade] students score proficient in reading on the MCAS.
- 56 of the 80 schools (that had 2011 Grade 3 ELA data available) had fewer than 50% of students scoring proficient in reading.
- 24 of the 80 schools had fewer than 25%.
- Across the entire system, 63% of students in Grade 3 scored at a Needs Improvement or Warning/Failing (i.e. not proficient) level.
Given the implications of a lack of proficiency in 3rd grade reading, those are sobering statistics. Setting goals is good step, let’s hope BPS can raise proficiency levels and fast.
In reviewing hundreds of pages of documents related to Massachusetts’ incentives for Evergreen Solar, decision makers made clear the risks of not investing: Passing on the proposal would lead to, officials stated, a loss of potential manufacturing jobs to other states or other countries while giving up a competitive position in an emerging manufacturing market that could set the Commonwealth back for years to come.
What is much less clear, however, is what concerns about Evergreen Solar’s viability were considered. For example, there is almost no mention made of rival Chinese solar manufacturers despite the fact that less than four years later the downward pressure these manufacturers placed on solar pricing would ultimately help push Evergreen Solar towards bankruptcy.
Reading through Evergreen Solar documents released by MassDevelopment in response to a public records request, the priority seemed to be focused instead on how well the publicly-traded company fit in with a loftier mission. From a special Massachusetts Development Finance Agency Board of Directors Meeting on August 22, 2007:
[The Secretary of EOHED] explained that the Governor has directed his Administration to enhance the renewable energy industry in the Commonwealth, for economic development purposes, as well as to further the expansion of clean energy use globally. Historically, Massachusetts has not had much presence in the clean, renewable energy industry and, as a result, has been unable to compete with other states. [...] He reminded everyone that clean, renewable energy is a top priority of the Administration and that, if the vote is successful today, a groundbreaking will be scheduled for September 12.
When questions were raised about the particulars of Evergreen Solar’s financial strength, they were brushed aside. From the same meeting:
The Vice Chair wanted to know if the Executive Office of Housing & Economic Development was comfortable with Evergreen’s financials, and whether this seemed to be a logical expansion for the company, and [the Secretary of EOHED] answered affirmatively. His office has researched the technology and is not worried.
In fact, nowhere in the 923 pages released by MassDevelopment could I find much concern about the actual health of the company at all nor the solar industry in general. A keyword search for China, for example, revealed just 3 mentions: Once as part of part of boilerplate legalese, once in a caption and finally in a section that illustrates China’s growing need for electrical power – highlighting it as a market opportunity for solar.
But it would be just four years later that Chinese competition would take a bulk of the blame for Evergreen Solar’s demise. Was this threat unforeseeable in 2007? Not quite: Even then, China’s solar energy boom was widely reported, with glowing features in the New York Times and Reuters. But even then, the cracks were starting to show: A Barron’s piece slammed the industry, even then, as a “red-hot bubble”.
It’s easy to say hindsight is 20/20, but why was the foresight willfully blind? Why was, after researching the technology and hopefully the industry, the Executive Office of Housing & Economic Development “not worried”? It’s impossible to say for certain, but another response to a public records request might provide some insight.
When we queried the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center for “documents, including resumes, for employees employed at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative at any point during 2007, that demonstrate previous direct or indirect work experience related to the solar energy industry,” the response was short and sweet:
MassCEC does not possess the records you have requested.
Going through the rest of the records I did receive, however, officials did have at least overriding concern regarding Evergreen Solar: Losing the bid to another state, a specter which urged the decision makers to move “quickly” on the deal even as they felt pressured to ensure public funding was used to ensure a competitive proposal. More on that in a follow up post.
