Montague Finance Committte member and Boston College professor Jeff Singleton has a rare combination of hands-on experience with school budgets and a historian's long view of governmental policy and budgets. I just today came across his two-part series "Ed Reform Creates a Wrecking Ball for Local Government" which ran in the Montague Reporter last ( Read more... )

On the way home from the New England News Forum conference in Lowell on Saturday, David Eisenthal and I were talking about Gov. Deval Patrick and the Corporate Tax Loopholes issue. Eisenthal makes a strong argument that Deval Patrick should push his chips on the table in a showdown with the Legislature on the Corporate Tax Loopholes. Eisenthal said ( Read more... )

My contribution to the Valley Advocate is an article called "Tax Cuts Won't Cut It." It's about the issue of taxes and the governor's race. My focus for the past few weeks at the paper has been the governor's race in Massachusetts, a race that we think is very important. It may surprise some people that Massachusetts has had a Republican governor ( Read more... )

This morning, there was a packet in my box of profiles of the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial candidates, focusing on their positions on environmental issues. It dovetailed nicely with my story in this week's Valley Advocate called "Not a Bad Time for Democrats". In my story, I observed that whoever won the Democratic primary on Sept. 19 was well- ( Read more... )

My contribution to this week's Valley Advocate is a story called "School-Tax Connection." It focuses on Rep. John Scibak (D-South Hadley), who is the lead sponsor of a bill that's being heavily promoted by the MTA, which would use the $500 million from not passing Gov. Mitt Romney's tax rollback and spending it on Chapter 70 School Aid instead. It' ( Read more... )

I took a photo montage in my mind's eye Saturday morning at the Clarion Hotel in Northampton. I'm thinking of calling it "Gasping for air in Grover Norquist's bathtub." Look at it and you'll see a cluster of images ( Read more... )

"I'm not an eductor, I'm a statistician," said Roger Hatch of the Department of Education. That, more than anything, jumped out at me. Here was a roomful of school committee members, mayors and superintendents from Western Massachusetts, people who have to stand up in front of town meetings and try to explain why the cost of education is going up ( Read more... )