Hi Will … The bill passed recently preventing unions from collective bargaining on health plan design was sold by you and others on the basis that municipal managers needed the flexibility it offered in the face of rising health care costs, that benefits were unusually generous in some towns (e.g. $5 co-pays, very low premium […]
Author Archives: TomRawson
DOE Services for Educators
Hi Will … I am curious if you know much about the services provided to educators by the DOE. I am talking about licensure, MTEL, etc. The level of service for licensure particularly has steadily dropped over the years due to budget cuts. At the moment a teacher with questions about their license can only […]
Texting when stopped in traffic
Hi Will … Thanks for the email with links to the new cellphone / texting law. Do you have any idea why the ban on texting extends to vehicles stopped in traffic? Most of it seems fine but this part seems overreaching to me — unless we are also going to prohibit all of the […]
Municipal Health Insurance in Conference Committee
What is the status of the health insurance bill? I remain very concerned that this will be done in a way that allows municipalities to make unilateral changes in negotiated labor agreements — I gather that such a power is in fact a provision of the Senate bill, but NOT of the House bill.
Ethics Commission Required Training
I just completed this training which is now required for all state and municipal employees. The scenarios are reasonable and even sometimes interesting, but they are also confusing because a lot (over 2/3?) of the training is for state employees and does not seem to apply in the same way for municipal employees — or […]
Municipal Health Costs and Teachers’ Unions
I am responding to some comments I have seen here and also thinking about today’s Globe editorial on this topic. As a teacher and committed union member I think the recent spate of comments about teacher unions are WAY off as a generalization. I do not dispute that some unions are stubborn about health costs […]