Your humble editors will have a chance to chat with Governor Patrick this afternoon. If there’s anything you’re just itching to ask him, drop it in the comments. I definitely intend to ask about plans to keep his grassroots organization energized this time around.
UPDATE: We have just concluded our interview. We were able to ask some, though not all, of the questions in the comments – apologies to those whose questions we couldn’t get to. I know that EaBo will be crushed.
We’ve been asked to hold off on publishing the interview until tomorrow afternoon, so check back then to see how it went!
Please share widely!
Sec. of St. Galvin isn’t exactly the poster boy for reform but he’s on to an important idea concerning a civic commission to take redistricting out of the legislature. Why has the Gov. been mum on this issue?
While Patrick could take a stand on this issue the probability of it getting through the legislature infinitesimally small. Galvin doesn’t need to work with the legislature on a daily basis, so he can afford to take a principled stand here. I would rather the Governor use his political capital on other things.
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p>Same day voter registration, on the other hand, is something I would like to see implemented that is more politically feasible. Hopefully there’s a push for this in the next legislative session.
With less federal support and a shrinking rainy day fund, what’s a state budget to do?
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p>And how can we help?
Five years ago I “checked back in” by helping to elect Deval and by running for Town Meeting.
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p>Can the Governor hold out any hope for us this year, in the form of revenue sharing, local-option taxing authority, health-care costs?
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p>Or will we be forced to choose again between cuts to vital services or increases in the regressive local property tax?
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p>Will the Governor join the Lieutenant Governor and representatives from the cities and towns this year at meetings of the Local Government Advisory Committee?
…for removing the tolls on the Mass Pike, while keeping the revenue stream. It goes like this:
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p>It should be a simple calculation to determine how much CO2 is released by cars idling as they wait to pay tolls on the Pike. Over the course of a year, it’s got to be a huge number. If the tolls were eliminated, that CO2 would no longer be entering the atmosphere – this could then be claimed as a carbon credit and sold through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, effectively replacing the income stream from the tolls. Could the governor have someone look into it to see of it’s viable?
Unfortunately, the credits would only pay for a small fraction of the lost revenue.
But I like the idea of asking the governor about creative revenue sources.
with ideas that make no sense.
Absent a measurement of the greenhouse gases emitted while idling at the toll booth, it’s impossible to tell how much money would be generated by the credits, isn’t it? That’s why I think it at least merits a look.
Idling for an hour may use something like a gallon of gas (varying greatly by vehicle and weather conditions of course) which results in about 20 lb of CO2. I believe that credits for a ton of CO2 goes for somewhere between 5-20 dollars. So given that average tolls are well over a dollar, the numbers don’t come close to adding up.
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p>Don’t forget that there will be slowdowns when merging on and off the highway in any case and that most commuters will be using the fast lane and won’t actually be stopping to pay tolls.
Has the governor’s opinion changed? Is he still going to push for his “resort style” casino plan.
I’d love to hear the Governor’s thoughts on how he and the party plan to keep organizers/activists engaged in the New Year. And what lessons they’ve collectively learned from 2006 and 2008.
We all had this idea that “Together We Can” meant that the grassroots would have a bigger, better, and more important role in state government. Didn’t seem to happen. At least not the way we thought or hoped.
Perhaps a comment or two from the governor on the wisdom of a $300 pay cut to our sorely underpaid legislative solons…
The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America–and Spawned a Global Crisis
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p>If so what are his thoughts?
I propose that you ask that one yourself, when Red Mass Group is able to get an interview with him. đŸ˜€
I would like hear his view on why the economy has not picked up as we had all hoped it would. Perhaps a little insight on how he would handle the crisis in America.
If Casinos are such a good idea for raising revenue, shouldn’t the State just run them directly so it will get 100% of the profits?
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p>Personally, I am not all that happy with MA entering the Casino arms race, but if we are going to do it, I would like to know that we are not just going to be enriching private corporations.
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p>I would be much happier seeing the State raise revenue in ventures that increase competitiveness and productivity, and I don’t see Casinos doing that; quite the opposite in fact. Why can’t the State get directly involved in the venture capital game and take a direct stake in local companies?
I would ask him to comment on what more the state can do to help Gateway Cities. I have seen article after article over the course of the past few of weeks in the Globe pointing out the problems facing Gateway cities. Here are links and the problems highlighted:
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p>State’s gateway cities need a new opportunity to flower. This points out that that Gateway cities serve as the repository (others would say “dumping ground”) for the state’s neediest citizens, and hints that revenues are very parochial, meaning that Gateway cities have higher expenses but fewer sources of revenue than other communities.
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p><a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2010/12/05/mobility_means_more_vigor_for_states_gateway_cities/"
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p>Housing plans for pricy Boston don’t fit gateway cities’ needs. This points out that the state’s affordable housing policy is geared toward Boston, and therefore doesn’t work well in Gateway cities because it is designed to keep units affordable in an otherwise unaffordable city; its effect in Gateway cities is to simply concentrate the poverty there and keep it out of the suburbs.
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p>With carrots and sticks, state can improve cities’ governance. This describes ways to improve government in Gateway cities, though one thing that isn’t mentioned is that, quite frankly, the talent pool is pretty shallow in these cities. When 75% of your population isn’t skilled enough to earn over the poverty level, the odds of that group being skilled to effectively govern is almost zero.
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p>From old factories to new hope. This article implores cities to work together rather than against each other. I thought this was the weakest of the series, so I have no comments on it other than to note that our state abhors the concept of “regionalism” to its very core; the reliance on property taxes in many ways causes this, when a company moves from Springfield to expand in Chicopee, Springfield loses big and Chicopee wins big — which is why no one from Springfield is helping to sell Chicopee’s resources to its existing companies.
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p>Wages rise for all, but a gap widens. This points out that this state has an economy which is lopsided, favoring the Eastern part of the state, and favoring white collar workers. Meanwhile, the Western part of the state is seeing high unemployment and a concentration of workers who are not skilled (many who will never be skilled) to take high-end white collar jobs.
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p>If I was in charge of the series, I would have devoted some space to pointing out the inequity in local revenue — reliance on a single revenue source which causes winners and losers — rather than allowing communities to raise revenue based on their strengths.
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p>I would also point out that many wealthy communities spend more money to educate children from well-adjusted and stable families than Gateway cities spend on educating children from impoverished and dysfunctional backgrounds. I’d also point out that although the state education formula allocates 50% more state aid if a student is “poor”, in reality that’s like saying that a class of 17 poor students should be as easy to educate as a class of 25 wealthy students — which classroom would you pick if your fate rested on making all the students proficient?
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p>This state is wasting resources — large, densely populated communities which are completely underdeveloped economically. It is digging itself into a deeper hole as thousands of students make their way through Gateway city education systems, leaving without being prepared for any meaningful employment. A strategy that involves a poor central city with a ring of wealthy suburbs is a foolish one — because people and developers are trying to move to communities that are not equipped for development, wasting a lot of infrastructure that already exists. Plus, spreading people out makes us lose out on the business advantages of density — for example, 500,000 people scattered across 10 Hampden County communities isn’t an attractive demographic because they’re so spread out, but put just 100,000 of them into one central city and that becomes an attractive demographic to serve, a community that could support an IKEA, a minor league baseball team, and even a Trader Joe’s (none of those things exist in Hampden County, whose population is about 500,000).
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p>Don’t get me wrong — Governor Patrick has helped the Western part of MA and Gateway cities in general much more than his predecessors. But there is so much capacity still being wasted, and so little public attention being given to this topic.