OMG $9 MILLION DOLLARS!!!!

I couldn't believe my ears. There was discussion last night at the joint Select Board, School Committee and Finance Committee meeting about the Dartmouth Schools needing $9 million dollars to reach the average per pupil spending of the Commonwealth. To my chagrin, no one at the meeting seemed to be shocked at the suggestion that the town could conceivably fund the school department with an additional $9 million dollars. Folks, that is nearly more money than the combined budgets of the Police Department (6.5 million) and the DPW (3 million). What planet do these people live on? If you vote in town elections, you may want to ask the candidates running for Select Board and School Committee what they think about an increase like this. If they support it, you might want to consider where your next home will be. You won't want to live in Dartmouth. Even if you have children in such a well funded school, the streets won't be plowed or patrolled by police. Click here to read on!

MMA seeks local aid resolution. You can help

The Massachusetts Municipal Association has called on the leadership of the state legislature, the General Court, to issue a resolution detailing the amount of state aid that cities and towns are likely to receive in the upcoming budget.
LOCAL AID RESOLUTION NEEDED NOW!

Please Call Your Legislators Today and Ask for Action in March

Cities and towns are working hard to prepare their fiscal 2012 budgets, facing extremely difficult funding decisions and clear fiscal distress. With the state facing a $1.8 billion budget crisis of its own, the Governor and Legislature have already announced that their own spending plan will bring a fourth straight year of local aid cuts. Communities cannot make timely and informed decisions unless Legislators let local officials know as early as possible what the minimum level of local aid will be for fiscal 2012.

Last year, House and Senate leadership released a special “statement” on March 12 announcing minimum levels of municipal and school aid prior to any legislative budget debate. In 2009, both branches approved Local Aid Resolutions before the budget debate. This year, legislators have started to warn local officials not to count on the Governor’s local aid numbers released in January and to anticipate deeper cuts. The House and Senate budget committees wrapped up hearings on the Governor’s budget on March 4, and the House is expected to release a budget bill in mid-April. Cities and towns cannot afford to wait four weeks to learn what Beacon Hill is contemplating regarding local aid levels. It is time for both branches to tell cities and towns what to expect!

The Legislature faces a difficult task in balancing the state’s fiscal 2012 operating budget. Even though tax collections are forecast to grow by $741 million next year, the temporary federal revenues used over the past three years are nearly exhausted and state Medicaid cost trends are more than eclipsing all revenue growth. The Legislature has been evaluating the measures proposed by the Governor ...

...in January to balance the budget, including his aggressive savings initiatives in health programs, spending cuts and new revenues. None of them are easy or popular.

Please call your Representatives and Senators today and tell them that a Local Aid Resolution or statement is needed NOW to help prepare municipal budgets and to inform local decisions on spending. Remind them that you face your own set of difficult choices about program funding, staffing levels and raising revenues. Tell them about the choices your community is facing. Without a formal local aid notice that commits to a basic level of local aid, final numbers may be delayed until the Legislature votes a fiscal 2012 budget bill sometime in June. Please let your Legislators know that this is too late and that minimum municipal and school aid numbers are needed today!

If you value good government, call or email Representative Chris Markey and Senator Mark Montigny and ask them to pass a local aid resolution.
The continuing shortfall of revenue makes this a very challenging year. Dartmouth managers and decision makers need to know what they have to work with. You can help by clicking the links associated with our state legislators names above and ask for enactment of a local aid resolution Click here to read on!

Finance Committee adgenda for 3/24/11

Please post the following Finance Committee agenda for Thursday, March 24, 2011:
6:30 p.m. Pledge
6:31 p.m. Board of Health – Ms. Wendy Henderson
Animal Control

7:00 p.m. Natural Resources – Mr. Cressman/Mr. Barnes
Conservation
Town Buildings

7:30 p.m. Post Employment Charges and Possible Allocation to Enterprise Funds – Mr. Barnes, Mr. Walker

8:00 p.m. RFT – Additional Tax Title Funding (anticipated) – Mr. Barnes

8:05 p.m. Schedule A Revision – School Transportation – Mr. Barnes
Other Revisions/Updates to Schedule A since February 2010

8:15 p.m. Minutes – March 10 (final) & March 17 (draft) – Mr. Walker

8:25 p.m. Any additional items not known at least 48 hours in advance of meeting posting.

8:30 p.m. Adjourn

there is no more Click here to read on!

Mass Budget look at Republican budget

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (Mass Budget) has published a fact sheet on the effects in Massachusetts of the proposal from US House Republicans that slashes federal spending. Here is the link.

Here's what Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has to say.
What do you think? Click here to read on!

Post retirement benefit obligations

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (Mass Budget) has published two reports, Workforce Characteristics and Wages in the Public and Private Sectors and Demystifying the State Pension System. Both are relatively brief and are very informative.
Accounting rules for government retiree pension contributions were changed by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB)in 1999. The Commonwealth required that municipalities meet the requirements, as they apply to pensions, within 20 years. Most municipalities had accounted for pension benefits on a pay as you go basis until that time. As a result, towns had to catch up with millions of dollars in actuarial based pension costs. That process is underway and towns have been making normal contributions as well as catch up payments to the pension funds. The General Court has extended the date for compliance on a couple of occasions when market shocks resulted in reductions in the value of assets held by pension funds. The target date to be in compliance is now 2026. Our town's plan, the Bristol County Retirement System (BCRS), is on track. The BCRS estimates the plan will meet the required funding by 2024.
Pension costs are not the only post retirement benefit costs for which towns are obligated. GASB issued new rules for those other post employment benefits (OPEB) in 2004. The new rule, commonly called GASB 45, once again required the benefit obligations to be calculated on an actuarial basis. Once again, most municipalities were accounting for these costs on a pay as you go basis.
However, unlike the situation with pensions, ...

... the actuarial calculation of health care obligations resulted in obligations so large that most towns could not reasonably be expected to fund. The exploding costs of health insurance is the primary driver of the high cost estimates. As was discussed at last Monday's Select Board meeting, the GASB 45 calculation of Dartmouth's OPEB was pegged at $53 million dollars. It will take a long time and a lot of effort for our town to meet ever that obligation.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Association (MTA) has published a report, Retiree Health Care: The Brick That Broke Municipalities’ Backs. The report posits that most communities cannot pay the obligations. It says,

There is a serious question whether many communities can afford to continue to provide any sort of retiree health care, particularly in combination with their pension obligations and the escalating costs of employee health care. At a minimum, the extraordinarily generous retiree benefits must be scaled back, and the sooner communities act the more likely they will be able to preserve some form of those benefits.
Unfortunately, communities have limited flexibility to address this problem since so many of the benefits are mandated by state law. Nevertheless, cities and towns have some opportunities to make changes on their own, which they should seize.

Our town has taken some of those limited steps the report mentions.
As I said at Monday's Select Board meeting, it is the cost of health care which is bankrupting our town, our states, our country, our businesses, and many families. I wrote a post about that here, Health Care Reform or Bust! If the Commonwealth and nation do not reform health care and reduce the increase in costs, towns will not be able to fund their OPEB obligations. Click here to read on!

Massachusetts public employee compensation

David at Blue Mass Group was this very informative and well documented post about the compensation level of public employees in the Commonwealth. The media has been extensively focused on public employees because of the issues raised by several Republican governors around the country. This issue of compensation, as you can see from David's post, is a red herring. There are no teachers or public employees becoming wealthy at the public trough. Public employees are doing their jobs and are being fairly compensated.
The brouhaha about what public employees get paid or what they get for their benefits is a distraction from the reality ...

...that the wealth of this nation goes almost exclusively a few people at the very top. These oligarchs largely control not only the wealth of the nation but also the media and our elected representatives. They don't want any attention focused on the ever widening gap between themselves and everyone else, so we are bombarded with news and opinions seeking to foment division and get the rest of us ripping each other apart over the scraps that we have left.
Wages and benefit levels (real levels, adjusted for inflation) for the vast majority of citizens have been stagnant or declining for the past thirty years. That is true for both public and private employees. Watch John Stewart of the Daily Show expose the double standard being peddled by our media. What more evidence do you need? Click here to read on!

Please, raise my taxes!

Citizens groups in a coalition called Raise Revenue and Stop the Cuts have endorsed a bill, "An Act to Invest in Our Communities" sponsored by Rep. James O'Day and Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz [House Docket 02261 & Senate Docket 1012]

The act proposes an increase in the income tax rate from 5.3% to 5.95%, including an increase in personal exemptions from $4,400 (single)/$8,800 (married) to $7,900 (single)/$15,800 (married). It also proposes an increase of the dividends and interests rate from 5.3% to 8.95%, with an exemption for low and middle income seniors and disabled persons.
The proposal would yield up to 1.2 billion dollars in new revenue, necessary to taking a more balanced approach to the current budget gap and continuing to support our public structures.

I fully support this initiative. My tax rate will increase by .65%. Will I pay an additional tax of less than 1% of my income? Do I really want to pay more? Absolutely, YES, I do. Over the last few weeks, I have heard that there are over 900 homeless families in our Commonwealth. A teacher told me she knew a boy who kept his clothes in a middle school locker because his family lived in their car. Our public school systems will not receive promised state aid. Teachers, firefighters and police across the Commonwealth are facing layoffs. Needed health insurance for my fellow citizens is being cut. It may take decades to get a rail line from Boston to Fall River and New Bedford. Our community colleges and state universities have raised tuitions and cut teaching staff.
So Governor Patrick, state Representatives and state Senators, please, raise my taxes and give housing to those families.
I am willing to pay to fully fund our commitment to public education and public safety. Take a few more dollars a week to keep classroom sizes down and to maintain adequate first response staffing.
Don't let anyone in our Commonwealth go without treatment for lack of health insurance, I can afford .65% more for them.
If adding this small amount will get rail in our area ...

... to increase economic development and expand employment opportunities, I'll pay it.
My children and I have attended community colleges and public universities. We owe our middle class incomes to the affordable educations we got through these universities. If it takes more revenue to continue investing in the people of the Commonwealth through publicly supported higher education, I owe that debt and I would happy to pay it forward.
Let's not be penny wise and pound foolish. Raise revenue through a modest increase in the income and investment taxes and stop the cuts. As this bill's name says, it's an investment in our communities! Click here to read on!

Governor Patrick on 'This Week'

Friends:

I want to let you all know that Governor Patrick will appear on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour. He will take part in a panel discussion with other governors from across the United States, talking about the current state and future of our country. Topics will include the economic recovery and health care reform.

Like other states, Massachusetts continues to face difficult challenges. It is because the Governor ...

... chooses to confront the tough decisions and take necessary action that we are now a leader nationally in student achievement, job growth, and health care coverage.

This is a very important time for our nation, and while others seek to create deep divisions within our national discourse, we in the Commonwealth remain committed to our shared values and to turning to each other--not on each other--for solutions.

Please tune in this Sunday at 10:00 AM on ABC.

Sincerely,

David O'Brien
Click here to read on!

Providence sends layoff notice to all teachers

The City of Providence faces a severe budget crunch and has sent dismissal notices to all its teachers. This action has generated a lot of comments on other threads. I would note the notices were not necessarily sent to get rid of bad teachers, rather due to a budget crisis. This Providence Journal article says the seniority system is being bargained and a deal is expected.
Providence mayor Angel Taveras said,

"Spending reductions are inevitable. It is also inevitable that some portion of cuts will come from the school budget. This is why we faced the difficult decision of sending letters to all teachers: we do not yet know what actions will be required and believe it was only fair to let all teachers know about the severity of the situation."

Some comments to other posts have raised the question on ...

... how to get rid of teachers who do not get results. This is a problem in public schools under collective bargaining. I think the answer is first to provide training and guidance to those teachers who are not getting good results. Of course, the crux of the matter is how you measure teacher performance. I have not a clue. But this is not rocket science, there are schools who have consistently good instruction. Find out the how and why and implement that. If after a period of time, a teacher's results do not improve then it is appropriate to talk about termination.
Before anyone gets their undergarments in a wad, I am not trying to supplant or circumvent the School Committee here. I am just providing a forum to debate the issue which was already taking place in comments to other posts.
UPDATE: AFT leader suggests teacher evaluations Click here to read on!

Nice graphics, That's what I'm talking about, Willis

Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot have a graphic presentation on income distribution and growth in the US at this link to Mother Jones magazine.
Can you say, Plutocracy?

How can the US boost entrepreneurs and win the future. Matt Yglesias has this post about what one study found.
Click here to read on!