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Thu, 28 May 2009
Find the draft plan here.
Find the old standards here.
The official comment period for the BEP is now past, but you can see instructions for comment here, and contact information for the members of the board are here.
What's this about? See below.
17:23 - 28 May 2009 [/y9/my] link
But who will run the programs?
As the state continues to reel from both years of budget mismanagement and our economic woes, it escapes no one's notice that the cities and towns are reeling, too. North Providence is planning an unpaid payday for its employees, while Providence is banking on being able to tax college students.
The story is that not only is there the natural reluctance to raising taxes, but towns are wearing a shiny set of fiscal handcuffs these days in the form of a law limiting the increase in the amount of money they can collect in taxes each year. Applying this limit to the amount of money instead of the tax rate is an interesting idea. What it means is that even if the tax base increases -- if there is some new construction in town, or a new business moves in -- the increase in the town's property value can't be captured in property taxes.
This law was the brainchild of Teresa Paiva-Weed, Democrat of Newport. She is now the Senate President, so until she changes her mind about its wisdom, the towns will wear these handcuffs.
But all is not lost. Mayors and town councillors have been begging for the "tools" they need to reduce their budgets, and help is on the way from the state Board of Regents, in charge of elementary and secondary education.
The word, "tools," has a clean and abstract sound doesn't it? Imagine a razor-sharp auger or perhaps a scalpel deployed in service of delicate budget surgery. Well, maybe.
17:21 - 28 May 2009 [/y9/cols] link
Sat, 23 May 2009
About 20 years ago, when I was earning my keep as a rope-walker and fire-eater, I prevailed on Roger, an old-time circus performer who wintered in Fall River, to give me a lesson in rigging. Roger was a cool guy, and performed atop a 120-foot sway pole that wobbled back and forth while he did handstands and the like way up there. Circus performers all do their own rigging -- because who else would you trust? -- and he turned out to be as expert as any long-term survivor of a career like that.
I went over to his place one day, and Roger showed me the sequined capes and clogs he made his entrance with. I seem to remember a chimpanzee costume, too, though I can't remember how that fit in.
Over lunch, Roger showed me how to arrange stakes in the ground to hold weight, according to what kind of ground it is and how much the load. He had tons of other useful advice for a beginner, about minimizing props and the importance of acquiring a second act. (He also had a very funny plate-spinning act that involved breaking a lot of china.) The best advice he gave me, though, he saved for last. As we made ready to part, Roger looked straight in my eyes and said, "I've given you some help here, and here's how you can return it: Don't work cheap."
14:10 - 23 May 2009 [/y9/cols] link
Nerd stuff: Gini coefficients and the state economy
- Do redistributive state taxes reduce inequality?.
- Look at some data about tax increases and migration here
- Ohio migration study
10:41 - 23 May 2009 [/y9/my] link
Wed, 20 May 2009
10:09 - 20 May 2009 [/y9/my] link
Tue, 19 May 2009
Here is President Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame. It has one of the best arguments for courtesy in argument that I know of—humility, consideration, and the ability to see oneself in others.
And this doubt should not push us away our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. ...Remember that each of us, endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family, the same fulfillment of a life well lived. Remember that in the end, in some way we are all fishermen.
If you've ever composed a letter to the editor or a blog post or a paragraph of political invective, or if you intend to, read the whole thing.
01:08 - 19 May 2009 [/y9/my] link
Fri, 15 May 2009
Are averages what matter in school costs?
Does it matter what school you attended? Of course it does, you say. A study of Chicago schools says it might matter less than you thought, and this is relevant to today's debates about charter schools and the Mayoral Academy planned in Cumberland.
The Chicago school choice program allowed kids to enter a lottery for spots in magnet schools. A detailed look at the results of student achievement showed that the school kids got into had little or no discernible effect on student achievement. However the researchers also found that entering the lottery was a good predictor of academic success. In other words, kids who applied to go to a different school did better in school than their peers, regardless of the school they actually went to.
Why this is so is a little unclear. Maybe the kids who enter the lottery are better motivated, maybe their parents are better motivated, who knows, really? Whatever the cause, it does appear to be the case that the kids who entered the lottery were the better students. (A study followup can be found here.)
This is relevant because last week there was a hearing on a bill to require the charter schools known as Mayoral Academies to select their students at random from the entire student bodies of their school districts. The idea is that we don't want only the good students to wind up at this wonderful new academy. But the Academy-in-waiting opposed it, as did the Charter School alliance and the Department of Education.
22:57 - 15 May 2009 [/y9/cols] link
Sat, 09 May 2009
A few weeks ago, I wrote that while the economy won't run without banks, we shouldn't let banks run the economy. Last Thursday, we saw evidence.
First, bank lobbyists successfully killed the "cramdown" provisions of the bankruptcy reform legislation in the Senate. Cramdown is an unmusical term for allowing a bankruptcy judge to modify the terms of a home mortgage. You may not be aware that a judge can modify the terms of a loan for a business or a vacation home or a yacht, but not a primary home. Foreclosures and bankruptcies litter our economic playing field, so it makes some sense to reduce these.
Not to the banks. Bank lobbyists (with the exception of Citigroup's) insisted that the "moral hazard" was too great, and that people would be going bankrupt willy-nilly if this passed, to get their mortgage terms changed. This, of course, is both inane and hypocritical, too. Inane because going into bankruptcy is hardly the kind of thing anyone does lightly. Hypocritical because the bank lobby's position on issues of their own moral hazard (i.e. unaccountable executive pay) is that it's simply not a problem, even though the evening news continues to scream otherwise.
But no matter. As Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il) said about his Senate colleagues, "Banks own this place." Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse voted right, but only 43 other Democrats did, and so the measure went down to defeat. So that wave of foreclosures will continue to wash over us.
22:44 - 09 May 2009 [/y9/cols] link
Choice and Chicago Public Schools
The original study of the school choice program in Chicago, Cullen, et al, was written up in Steven Levitt's book Freakonomics. A follow-up in more depth can be read here.
13:53 - 09 May 2009 [/y9/my] link
Thu, 07 May 2009
An excellent essay from Walter Pincus.
As a copyboy in 1954, fresh out of college, I delivered mail to Hanson Baldwin, then the Times's highly respected military correspondent. When Baldwin wrote a news story or a piece of analysis, it was read in the Pentagon and in Congress. They had to read him because his years of coverage and his insights made him as expert as top generals and civilian defense officials. I didn't know it then but those days had a maor influence on my approach to journalism.
I am a Democrat, and everyone knows it. No one is more aware of it than I am as I write stories for the Washington Post. I worked for Senator J. William Fulbright twice in the in the 1960s, when I was lucky to run two eighteen-month Foreign Relations Committee investigations for him. The first grew out of magazine articles I had written about lobbying in the U.S. by foreign governments. The second focused on military involvement in foreign policy, and grew out of discussions I had with Fulbright during my initial time with him. Those two sabbaticals were among the most important and enlightening years of my life, and influenced my view of reporting on government. They showed me how little I knew as a reporter about how government really worked.
12:57 - 07 May 2009 [/y9/my] link
Sat, 02 May 2009
Last week, a panel of worthies convened by the Governor submitted their findings about how to reform the state's Economic Development Corporation. I read their memo, and developed some minor whiplash as I went from the good parts to the, um, less good parts.
Here's one of my favorites, that illustrates both the good and the bad. Permitting is a perennial complaint of businesses. In order to protect public health and the environment, there are a series of approvals many businesses need to get from the state or local government in order to build or expand. These range from permission to fill a wetland or certificates of occupancy from the local building inspector. Of course, a fair amount of the complaints generated are because of permission denied. It is true, of course, that many businesses would be more profitable if allowed to break the rules.
But the problem is that even the responsible companies face long delays in permitting, both from the state and municipalities. This can hardly be much of a surprise. DEM, through whom many state permits must go, has been a legislative whipping boy for decades. Oddly enough, their permitting delays persist, despite the relevant division having 10% less staff than they did five years ago. How strange. You'd think that kind of punishment would teach them a lesson, wouldn't you?
The panel then, has accurately identified a very real problem faced by many RI companies. So how did the problem arise? The panel didn't ask. How can we make permit approval quicker? By passing a law requiring DEM to answer a permit application within 15 days. So, no new resources, no acknowledgment that some environmental tests are dependent on the weather or the season, just a deadline. I wonder, do you need to go to management school to learn that sort of crisp and commanding decision-making?
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