I saw today (boston.com) that the Senate voted to eliminate Evacuation Day and Bunker Hill Day holidays. I’ve lived here for more than 20 years and have been stumped why they still exist. We all know one is just an excuse for St Patrick’s Day partying by Boston people. If you chopped out Patriots Day …
Government Reform
children and families, election laws, ethics rules, insider jobs, pensions & benefits, structure and operations, transparency
Budget amendments on transparency issues
The House agreed last week to make important improvements in budget and tax credit transparency.
Update: Early Retirement Incentive For Teachers
In response to a proposal initially made by the Arlington teachers’ union, and after considerable consultation with many affected parties and experts, the members of the Arlington legislative delegation (Senator Donnelly, Reps. Garballey and Kauffman and myself) have developed and committed to support the amendment appearing below to the municipal relief bill. It will be …
Continue reading “Update: Early Retirement Incentive For Teachers”
re: National Popular Vote
Grant, I have argued with Will about NPV before, but I’ll add a few more thoughts. First, the bill did pass both houses of the Massachusetts legislature in the last session, but failed to reach the governor’s desk only because the session came to a close before a final procedural vote could be taken. I’m …
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 …
National Popular Vote
After the electoral mess of 2000, which came close to being repeated in 2004, many of us believed that the time had come for electoral college reform at the national level. While a constitutional amendment seemed out of reach, one proposal, the National Popular Vote compact, seems to be a workable solution. Under the National …