CommonWealth Unbound

No backing off the Green Line extension

2009-11-11T19:10:01-05:00

If state leaders have to back off any transit projects, the Green Line extension won’t be one of them.

Secretary of Transportation Jeffrey Mullan again reaffirmed support for the project Tuesday at a Joint Committee on Transportation oversight hearing.

Rep. Denise Provost, a Somerville Democrat, had asked Mullan to outline his opinions on suggestions that the Conservation Law Foundation should be approached to get the organization “to back off this commitment” by renegotiating it or pursuing some other, as yet unspecified, course of action.

The secretary said that he disagreed with a strategy that would see officials go back to the CLF to seek alternative solutions. Citing the commitment to the people of Somerville to extend the Green Line and to making federally mandated air quality improvements, Mullan told lawmakers that “going to something else would only confuse matters” on the current project.

After the hearing, the Somerville Democrat said her question was prompted in part by the D’Alessandro report, which recommended "slow expansion" in the MBTA system until maintenance and safety issues could be addressed. Provost, who supports the extension to Somerville and Medford, said that further delays could place the state, which is already out of compliance with certain federal air quality standards, at risk of further sanctions from Washington.

Central Artery Transit commitments like the Green Line extension come up frequently when the conversation turns to projects the MBTA and the state would be better off without. But there’s no going back to the drawing board for the Green Line. The state is legally obligated to build it by 2014.

The Conservation Law Foundation filed suit against the state to force compliance with transit commitments designed offset pollution from Big Dig-generated increases in traffic. The parties reached a settlement in 2007. The Green Line extension is just one of those commitments.

CLF staff attorney Rafael Mares says Massachusetts included those projects in the state’s implementation plan under the Clean Air Act. If the state doesn’t comply with those commitments, it risks losing federal highway money.

Moreover, Mares adds the D’Alessandro report doesn’t say anything about the Big Dig commitments. “The point is there is no rapid expansion going on,” he says. “The only expansion that is happening is under legal requirements like the Green Line expansion.”

There’s no way to slow the Green Line project down, he argues. “Because if you slow it down, then you would run into the legal problems that I was describing or it would cost the Commonwealth more money than it would possibly save.”

Campus hate speech

2009-11-11T13:05:12-05:00

Nearly everyone condemns the scheduled appearance tomorrow by convicted terror bomber Raymond Luc Levasseur at UMass-Amherst. But the efforts by Gov. Deval Patrick and UMass President Jack Wilson to stop the scheduled speech were misplaced and ill-considered. Now that they have both backed away from that stand, the ire being directed at the two leaders is equally misguided.

Wilson has made clear his condemnation of the speech by Levasseur, a member of the radical United Freedom Front, whose members were responsible for the 1981 killing of a New Jersey state trooper and the 1976 bombing of the Suffolk County Courthouse in Boston. His spokesman has made it clear that no university funds are being used to underwrite the event, but he pointed to the small matter of the Constitution's First Amendment in explaining why Wilson could not unilaterally prevent the speech from taking place.

The paroled bomber -- Levasseur spent 18 years in federal prison -- is not a major leader of anything. But his views and actions are likely as repugnant to many Americans as those of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose speech two years at Columbia University set off similar controversy. Rather than distance himself from the event, however, Columbia President Lee Bollinger instead delivered remarks just before Ahmadinejad. In what the New York Times described as "a 10-minute verbal assault" with the Iranian leader seated 10 feet away, Bollinger called Ahmadinejad a "petty and cruel dictator," and excoriated him for, among other things, his denial of the Holocaust and state sponsorship of terrorism.

There may be no better guard against the proliferation of ignorant and vile views than to thoroughly discredit and repudiate them using the power of facts and reason that are cornerstones of institutions of higher education.

Appeals court investigates term paper writer

2009-11-11T09:40:18-05:00

By Colman Herman

The Massachusetts Appeals Court is investigating a report by CommonWealth magazine that a senior staff attorney working for the court ran a side business writing term papers for students.

"We are concerned about the information contained in the article," said Chief Justice Phillip Rapoza. "We are investigating the matter, and appropriate action will be taken. The integrity of our courts is of paramount importance and all of those who work in the justice system must be held to the highest standards."

A Massachusetts law passed in 1972 outlaws the sale of term papers if those involved know or have reason to know that the material will be submitted for academic credit and represented as original work.

Damian Bonazzoli, the senior staff attorney at the appeals court, was one of dozens of people and businesses that responded to an email inquiry sent out by a CommonWealth reporter who posed as a student asking for a 20-page, double-spaced term paper about physician assisted suicide. (Read the whole story here.)

Bonazzoli promised a “quality grade” if he was hired to write the 20-page paper and sent along, unsolicitied, his resume. It indicated he worked at the appeals court, a job that pays him $94,000 a year. He wanted $300 to write the paper on physician-assisted suicide.

In an email exchange about the 20-page assignment, Bonazzolli said turning in a paper that he had written would not be illegal. In a followup telephone interview, Bonazzoli insisted that students should abide by the ethics codes of their schools and added that he was unaware of the Massachusetts law on term papers.

The query by CommonWealth was sent to 66 individuals and companies advertising on the Boston site of Craigslist. Sixty-two responses came back, quoting prices ranging from $90 to $1,200. The average price was $370, or $18.50 a page.

A handful of other businesses were contacted about writing admissions essays or a dissertation literature review. For example, Dr. Rivka Colen, a physician practicing at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, offered to write admissions essays for medical school. Her fee for four essays was $800.

"This is a clear breach of professional ethics," said Dr. Henry Sondheimer, senior director for student affairs and student programs at the Association of American Medical Colleges. "More and more we are seeing applicants to medical school paying someone else to write their admissions essays," he said. To combat the problem, Sondheimer said the medical school at Drexel University goes so far as to have applicants write their essays on the spot when they come in for interviews.

The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where Colen practices, declined comment, as did the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, which licenses and disciplines physicians.

Meanwhile, David Campbell, provost at Boston University, said he is having BU lawyers look into someone who advertises himself on Craigslist as a BU doctoral candidate who will write term papers for students. This writer-for-hire wanted to charge CommonWealth about $420 to write the 20-page paper on physician-assisted suicide. "I write in my sleep," he bragged.

Maryland's "carrot" approach to smart growth gets failing grade

2009-11-09T15:16:30-05:00

Right before Gov. Deval Patrick took office, Harvard University's David Luberoff gave him some advice about "smart growth" policies in the pages of CommonWealth.

Luberoff posed a simple question:

...should Massachusetts follow Oregon’s “big stick” approach of forcing localities to follow state guidelines when deciding where growth should and should not occur? Or should the Commonwealth follow former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening’s approach of using carrots, notably state capital spending, to encourage desired development patterns — while rarely, if ever, using the stick of forcing localities to comply with state mandates concerning growth?

Luberoff wrote that the Oregon approach was likely to achieve smart growth goals (for better or worse) but was too "politically controversial," while the Maryland focus on financial incentives to local governments (which continues to be the Bay State's general approach) seemed to have only "modest impacts."

Last week the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education seemed to validate Luberoff's concerns, releasing a report that said a decade of smart growth policies in Maryland have "fallen short of expectations," for reasons that may sound familiar to those following local politics in Massachusetts.

The researchers found that about 75 percent of the lots taken over by single-family homes during the past decade were outside of designated smart-growth areas, essentially duplicating the development patterns of the previous decade.

The Washington Post's Lisa Rein summarized the conclusions:

"There is no evidence after ten years that [smart-growth laws] have had any effect on development patterns," concludes the study, which appears in the current issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association.

State planners have failed to prod local governments, which wield enormous control over land use, to approve dense projects in smart-growth areas, the study says. Maryland officials have authorized dozens of exceptions to the law, and many projects in the pipeline in 1998 were allowed to be built. And toll roads, including the Intercounty Connector underway outside the Capital Beltway, are exempt from smart-growth restrictions....

"What makes incentives so politically attractive is that governments and individuals can choose to ignore them if they wish," said Gerrit Knaap, the smart-growth center's executive director and the study's lead author. "Unfortunately, in Maryland over the last decade, that's exactly what many have been doing."

The report concludes that state governments wishing to use the "carrot" approach to getting localities to approve smart-growth projects must "ensure that funds are spent appropriately and that the level of state spending is large enough to make a difference." These days, however, the second part of that prescription (more spending) seems as politically untenable as taking away the power of local governments to stop bulldozers.

Ted Sizer

2009-11-09T06:00:00-05:00

Ted Sizer, the noted education thinker who died last month, was known nationally as founder of the Essential Schools movement, but made his biggest mark here in Massachusetts. His ideas helped give rise to he Boston pilot school movement, and with his wife, Nancy, he founded the Francis W. Parker Charter School in Devens -- all of this after Sizer had served stints as headmaster of Phillips Academy, chairman of the education department at Brown, and dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 2000, then-CommonWealth editor Bob Keough sat down with Ted and Nancy Sizer. Click here to read the Sizer views on all things school-related.

Grabauskas on the D’Alessandro Report: It goes beyond the news that “the T is still broke”

2009-11-06T16:10:18-05:00

By Daniel Grabauskas

Tasking business executive David D’Alessandro to determine if the MBTA’s financial situation is still dire is a lot like asking someone 25 years ago to confirm that the Boston Harbor was still polluted. At some point the answers became obvious and widely accepted as true. The harbor was still dirty; the T is still broke.

It took years to recognize that Boston Harbor had become a toxic mess, though we knew the root causes many years before. It seemed a near-impossible problem to tackle. But Boston Harbor was cleaned up, and a plan to keep it clean for generations to come was put in place. The harbor was recognized as a resource too important to fail, a resource that, if made right, would enhance the quality of life for Boston and for the entire Commonwealth. Otherwise, the dirty harbor would diminish the city and the region, both economically and environmentally. The fix required a concerted effort by many parties. It was expensive. It was worth it.

What about the MBTA? There is no guarantee that the MBTA will receive the same attention. Boston Harbor, after all, had a judge working on its behalf. But as the D’Alessandro report indicates, the truth is becoming obvious. The MBTA’s current financial situation, like the water in the harbor 25 years ago, is poor and getting worse. Indications are that it is finally approaching toxic levels.

I am optimistic the T will be shored up and saved, if for no other reason than because the MBTA, like Boston Harbor a generation before, is too important and “too big to fail,” as the D’Alessandro report opines.

I was part of the chorus of skeptics who wondered if another review of the MBTA
would yield anything new. In the most basic sense, the chorus was right. The D’Alessandro report reconfirms what most of us already knew. The MBTA is broke. There is a structural imbalance between revenue and expenses. The most significant cost drivers — fuel and utilities, commuter rail, federally mandated paratransit service (The Ride), and payroll and benefits — are beyond management control, and there is no choice but to pay those bills to operate the system. The system is old and in need of repair. There is not enough money to repair it. Any money used to tackle the backlog in repair projects has to be borrowed because there isn’t any cash, so the debt burden increases. The MBTA gets more broke. The structural imbalance between revenue and expenses gets worse. And so on. All confirmed. Again.

What’s new in the report

But the chorus wasn’t completely right. There is some important new stuff in the D’Alessandro report and, perhaps as importantly, some old stuff that we see in a new way. Why is that important? Because policy-makers have to understand that no matter who has sliced and diced the information, the same conclusion is reached by everyone that embarks on the quest to answer the question, “What’s happening at the T?” Basically, it has serious financial problems that affect its ability to assure the highest quality of service.

What I liked about the D’Alessandro report was that it answered the question on the minds of so many: If the T has been structurally broke for several years now, why hasn’t it gone bust? Every year the budget was balanced, and services were not cut. In fact, service was expanded. How could that be?

D’Alessandro’s simple explanation is that the T refinanced billions of dollars worth of old, higher interest rate debt very aggressively to take advantage of the historically low interest rates of the past seven years. The savings totals over $500 million in previously anticipated debt payments. The curative effects of these savings, in contrast to the uncontrollable, escalating costs during those years, was real and beneficial. These savings served to temporarily rescue the T. But there is no more mountain of high interest rate debt that can be refinanced for substantial savings. No more chlorine, if you will, to scoop into the harbor to shock the bacteria and buy another year of non-toxic, albeit dirty water.

The other D’Alessandro insight — made with the advantage of the most time passed and most complete data since implementation — is that the experiment with forward funding the T has failed. While I don’t agree with every conclusion in the report on this subject, the synopsis of the history of how and why it came about, the assumptions that were made, and the finance plan thus developed are quite good. It also lays out clearly why the report concludes that “the forward funding finance plan proved unrealistic in many of its assumptions and nine years later can be deemed a failure.”

Where forward funding was a success

I don’t know if he chose those words carefully and purposefully to call the “forward funding finance plan” a failure, and not forward funding as a whole. I hope so, because while the financial assumptions proved very, very wrong, the forward funding legislation can and should be seen as successful in several areas.

First, it reined in what had been unconstrained discretionary spending by management. These past practices had shaken the public’s confidence with excesses that riled people who believed their money was being wasted. And in many instances, it was. As the D’Alessendro report concludes, forward funding served a vital purpose:

Critics may argue that the MBTA did not “try hard enough” to embrace Forward Funding because it failed to control the growth of operating costs. These costs indeed grew by a cumulative half-billion dollars more than the Finance Plan had anticipated between FY01 and FY08, and their continuing growth defines the deepening structural deficits of the next five years.

The Finance Plan substantially underestimated the system’s cost drivers, both for costs within the MBTA’s control, such as wages, but especially for costs outside its control, such as energy, health insurance and contracted services like commuter rail and The Ride.

Contrary to not trying, we found evidence that the MBTA did make some hard expense choices. Across-the-board cuts were routinely made to departmental budgets. Periodic layoffs and hiring freezes restrained the headcount. Individual managers took pride in eliminating inefficiencies and redundancies, while embracing a new organizational ethic of customer service. Yet in the end, they could not pare staff below the number needed to move hundreds of thousands of riders across hundreds of routes each workday. Add the complexity and cost of sustaining the system’s aging infrastructure, and it became evident that the cost inflation and savings assumptions in the Finance Plan were never tested against the daily grind.

The MBTA would not have received such a positive management assessment in the 1980s, prior to forward funding. Public confidence that money is not being wasted at the T will be essential if more money is to be invested in public transportation. Governor Patrick made that point repeatedly at the press conference. The recent changes in T retirement benefits (including the elimination of the notorious “23 and out” provision) and significant changes in health care benefits mandated by the new transportation reform legislation were equally necessary to build public confidence that the T is not wasting money. These benefits outliers have now been eliminated. The case needs to be made convincingly that costs beyond the control of management have pushed the T to the brink — not waste, fraud, or mismanagement.

Generally, we did examine major market comparisons in wages, fare prices and cost per mile and determined that the MBTA was within reasonable ranges.

D’Alessandro’s report makes these and other positive comments about how the place is run that should aid in confidence-building.

Second, forward funding set a goal to foster greater equity between those riding the T and the state’s residents as a whole. In return for a share of the state’s sales tax, the T asked its riders to increase their contribution to the agency by paying half, instead of a quarter, of the cost per trip. In addition to equity, this cost sharing was meant to solidify a meaningful and predictable source of revenue for sustained operations. The analysis in D’Alessandro’s report and the comments upon its release missed this point. Yes, T riders are paying somewhat higher fares in absolute dollars than was expected under the forward funding finance plan, but with the explosion in the overall budget (well documented in the report) the conclusion that riders are paying more than expected or than is fair ignores one of the key metrics associated with forward funding, namely the cost per rider subsidy. Again, the goal set for management was a fare-recovery ratio that rose from one quarter of the cost per ride to one half of the cost. Periodic fare increases would, and have at this point, accomplished this goal.

Third, despite the head-scratching claims of a lack of transparency at the T at the press announcement of the report, just the opposite is true. In the years since forward funding was passed a robust and extremely transparent budgetary process has developed. It is a process that requires a near zero-based budget review by the MBTA Advisory Board, representing all the 175 cities and towns in the MBTA service area. A review by the MBTA Board’s own finance subcommittee continues on an ongoing basis. Public presentations and public input takes place in various venues, including the open public comment period that precedes each monthly board meeting with the Transportation Secretary, board members, and senior staff present, along with the media.

In the past 24 months there have been numerous Legislative oversight committee hearings and pre-and post-hearing staff-to-staff communications to understand and dissect the budget, before determining that an additional $160 million appropriation was necessary this year. The Executive Office of Transportation routinely reviews programs and projects and their costs. The Administration’s Executive Office for Administration and Finance is briefed prior to significant bond issuances. And on it goes. Jokingly, the Chief Financial Officer and I used to describe these ongoing reviews as a never-ending proctological examination — with similar levels of discomfort borne gladly because of a belief that the beneficial results gained from constant examination was worth it for the organization’s credibility.

These three goals were achieved. Those who may draft a new approach to funding the T on a long-term basis should work to retain these incentives for good management, oversight, accountability, and equity.

Time to break the crippling cycle

A final observation regarding what the report calls “Debt — The Faustian Bargain.” The report is highly critical of the decision by the MBTA Board over the past several years to refinance current debt into the future as a part of the solution to balance the annual budgets. It should be. That is not what the staff, the board, or the members of the advisory board would have recommended or approved but for the recognition that the alternative was to cut service. In addition, the continued issuance of debt to fund the capital program was understood to push costs into the future to maintain, and in some cases expand, the system. But the bulk of the money — some 95 percent of all capital spending — was and is spent simply to maintain what is already in operation. In the simplest terms, there was no choice not to fix. The only option was to borrow. Let’s hope that, whatever the long-term plan is for the T, this crippling cycle will be broken. It has to be. That has been clear in every report done in the past 10 years.

At the release of each new study or report on MBTA finances, I marvel that the “breaking news” in every “new” report is always the same old information. But that’s not a bad thing. Each report reinforces the last, and keeps the problem current. The D’Alessandro Report, therefore, is a good thing. Let’s hope it leads to action toward a sustainable solution.

Daniel Grabauskas is MassINC's first senior fellow for public policy. He formerly served as general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

Boston City Council race: 4 were elected, but 5 had strong bases

2009-11-06T12:13:16-05:00

Matt O'Malley has his typically smart rundown on the ward-by-ward results for the Boston City Council race on Tuesday. He notes that the candidates elected to the four at-large seats all had parts of the city where they topped the ticket:

John Connolly in Charlestown, East Boston, downtown, the Back Bay, and West Roxbury
Steve Murphy in South Boston, East Dorchester, Hyde Park, Allston, and Brighton
Felix Arroyo in the South End and Jamaica Plain
Ayanna Pressley in the Fenway and the Codman Square section of Dorchester

The fifth-place candidate also had bragging rights: Tito Jackson won three of the city's 22 wards, in Roxbury and in next-door sections of Dorchester. O'Malley suggests that Jackson might be a formidable opponent to Roxbury district councilor Chuck Turner in the future. His seventh- or eighth placing showing in Charlestown, South Boston, and the downtown area shows that he has some work to do if he wants to run again citywide.

Surprisingly, the only candidate not to finish last lower than fifth place in any ward was Arroyo, who was only third overall. (Connolly and Murphy each finished sixth in wards that included parts of Roxbury.) That may say something about Arroyo's broad geographic appeal, but it's also notable that there was a steep dropoff from second to third place in Charlestown, South Boston, West Roxbury, and Brighton, where incumbents Connolly and Murphy were far ahead of everyone else. Apparently, the field of newcomers didn't hold that much appeal in these traditionally conservative neighborhoods.

An inconvenient truth: Fixing the MBTA’s problems costs $$$

2009-11-05T15:06:38-05:00

So many problems, so little money. Few people understand, much less want to wrestle with, the MBTA’s financial morass. That’s why safety issues captured the headlines with this week’s release of David D’Alessandro’s MBTA review.

State officials [inserts gasps of horror here] are outraged yet again to discover that delayed maintenance causes major safety hazards, and that the delays can be traced to…the agency’s poor finances.

“For too long we have not dealt with service and financial problems that the T has faced,” said Gov. Deval Patrick at Wednesday’s press conference following the release of the D’Alessandro report. “The job now is to fix it. Today I have asked Secretary [of Transportation Jeffrey] Mullan to formulate a plan to improve service for riders and restore a culture of safety and transparency in the system. That includes a review of the backlog of capital projects to re-examine which to fund to keep riders and employees safe.”

But T riders, here’s the real news: Despite all the sturm und drang surrounding the MBTA review, there is nothing in the latest report that those in the know don’t already know.

Two years ago, after the release of the Transportation Finance Commission review, the Boston Globe reported:

“Governor Deval Patrick asked yesterday that his Cabinet secretaries, commission members, and legislative, transportation, and business leaders review the [Transportation Finance Commission] report and find solutions.”

What is also newsworthy is that there has never been any sustained outrage over the financial sleights-of-hand that keep the system operating — but also compromise the culture of safety and transparency that Patrick says is missing from the authority.

So what is the value of this latest tome?

First, D’Alessandro provides the clearest, most concise explanation to date of why, though the MBTA is technically broke, it has not gone bankrupt.

In the past, the authority’s huge debt, growing debt service payments, and the underperformance of the sales tax have all been fingered to varying degrees as culprits in the MBTA’s woes.

But as D’Alessandro, the former John Hancock CEO, points out, debt service payments between FY01 and FY08 were $515 million lower than projections.

What has brought the MBTA to its knees are faulty assumptions stemming from the finance plan that accompanied the move to "forward funding" in 2000, under which 20 percent of sales tax revenue goes to the MBTA.

As the D'Alessandro report said:

Through depleting cash reserves, restructuring debt, and delaying planned debt payments, the MBTA has managed to meet its requirement to balance its annual budget.

Unfortunately, the repeated restructuring of hundreds of millions of dollars in debt payments achieved the exact opposite intent of the legislation that sought to transform the MBTA and postponed the day of reckoning for repaying deferred interest and principal.

State officials further compromised the authority’s finances by not taking into account cost increases in energy, employee health insurance, and services like The Ride, a federally mandated system for people with disabilities. The MBTA is no better shape than a penniless homeowner with a subprime mortgage, the report concluded.

The second take-away from Wednesday’s events is the mystifying insistence of the Patrick administration that promoting a culture of safety and transparency and restoring consumer confidence can be done cost-free.

So T riders, to sum up: If the MBTA can’t raise fares, can’t add more debt, and can’t get debt relief or more revenue from Beacon Hill, just how is the agency supposed get a handle on safety?

The maintenance prioritization report due in January will define the scope the problem. In addition to $80 million worth of repairs to Red Line leaks, the D'Alessandro report identifies other projects including:

$140 million to replace the cable that caused a fire on the Red Line in September

Replacement stairways at Newtonville Station

Backup power generator turbine replacements and system-wide tunnel lighting repairs

Could Washington come to rescue? Patrick would say only:

“I am going to see the [US] Secretary of Transportation in particular about some of our transportation needs in the Commonwealth generally, not limited to the MBTA. We will also be briefing the congressional delegation about this report because we are going need their help as well.”

But it is unlikely that Washington has $543 million to sink into the 51 "most critical" transit safety projects in metro Boston.

Although initially billed as a financial and management investigation, the D'Alessandro report is largely silent on managerial and operational matters. Here are a few issues that went unanswered by this “top to bottom” review:

Somewhere along the way the MBTA managers knew that the forward funding plan wasn’t adding up. What did exactly did they know, and when did they know it? Why didn’t the Legislature and a succession of governors act before now?

The review states that the agency pursued departmental budget cuts, layoffs, and hiring freezes, and that it eliminated inefficiencies and redundancies. Where is the data to back up this assertion?

Where are the potential cost savings in rail and bus operations?

Demoralized workers decrease productivity. What steps has the agency taken to address minority employees’ concerns about discriminatory hiring and promotion practices?

One of the report’s recommendations is more transparency in the agency’s expenses, “so there is better control and more oversight in their uses.” Which areas of MBTA operations require “better control and oversight," and what exactly are those problems?

Though the report provides "general recommendations," the authors said, “We were not asked for specific recommendations.” Why not?

The “general recommendations” did include slowing expansion (that means you, South Coast rail) developing secure new revenue sources, and improving safety and service before raising fares.

Good luck with that last one. As unwelcome as fare hikes are, they are one of the few revenue-raising tools the agency has at its disposal.

The bottom line: It is disingenuous for Gov. Patrick to suggest that the MBTA’s financial and safety concerns can be addressed without additional funding or a top-to-bottom reorganization of how the authority does business.

Will creativity gild the road to growth in Gateway City economies?

2009-11-05T12:24:15-05:00

At a recent roundtable with leaders from across the state, we learned how Massachusetts discovered the value in "creative economy" economic development well before Richard Florida popularized the concept with his 2002 book Rise of the Creative Class. Gateway Cities working to stage a comeback have benefited greatly from the state’s trailblazing work, and many are beginning to demonstrate how the creative economy offers a viable road to renewal. Unfortunately, the challenging economic times the state now faces jeopardizes creative economy investments critical to long-term growth and a robust recovery. The continued success of this strategy hinges on how we prioritize economic development spending given our increasingly limited resources.

Creative economy economic development is powerful because it can generate growth directly in our urban areas and indirectly throughout our regional economies. Cultural diversity and low-cost real estate give Gateway Cities advantages in the direct production of cultural goods and services, such as theaters and galleries. For these urban economies diversifying away from manufacturing, cultural industries provide an important new avenue for job growth.

In an innovation economy, growth is also generated by the mixing of people in urban spaces, where together they can come up with new concepts and ideas. Cultural venues often provide the backdrop against which people come together. This cultural vibrancy is also important in that it attracts people from diverse backgrounds to cities, and it makes them feel at ease sharing different ideas. Helping our Gateway Cities redevelop as creative places has the potential to foster new innovations that will drive job growth throughout our regions.

For more than a decade, the state’s creative economy efforts have recognized the connection between creative industries and creative places. Through the Massachusetts Cultural Council, we support nonprofit cultural organizations and artists, as well as efforts to revitalize our urban cores.

In many respects, the Commonwealth’s creative economy work is a model for economic development done right. From the beginning, our approach has been grounded in empirical analysis performed by the New England Council for the Arts, spending has been highly transparent, and our activities have been subject to independent evaluation by well-respected economic development consultants at Mt. Auburn Associates. Most importantly, the state’s efforts have been pursued in partnership with cities, and this has led to significant gains in local capacity.

The remarkable work catalyzed by creative economy economic development is already visible throughout many of our Gateway Cities. New Bedford offers one case study. Creative economy economic development was spurred by the city’s AHA night, which showcases New Bedford’s art, history, and architecture on the second Thursday of each month. The event brings people from all over the region into the city, which has been a boon to local businesses. Equally important, an enormous amount of community capital has been built as residents work together to plan activities.

State resources were a critical factor in New Bedford’s success with AHA. The John and Abigail Adams Fund, which serves as a national model for the support of nonprofit organizations focused on job creation and community revitalization through cultural development, was one important catalyst. Newer state supports such as the Cultural Facilities Fund, which recently allowed the Zeiterion Theater to undertake a feasibility study to determine the potential for expansion, are also helping the city build on the success of AHA.

What’s perhaps most compelling is how the city has been able to step up as a more-than-able partner. City officials developed a comprehensive Creative Economy strategy and recently created a full-time staff position to help implement the plan. The state’s efforts have also leveraged significant local investment. The city has contributed matching funds, private foundations and corporations have come to the table with real resources, and, above all, residents have shown enormous energy and commitment.

With numerous new galleries, shops, and restaurants, the economic effects in downtown New Bedford are clear. But these efforts are also fueling social innovation that will contribute to long-term growth. Artists and entrepreneurs are engaging the city’s youth. Their work is also bridging cultural divides, fostering relationships, and building civic confidence that will be invaluable in helping move the city along a steady path toward a more prosperous future.

Unfortunately, just as these programs have begun to demonstrate their full potential, the present fiscal crisis may undermine their momentum by threatening the future of key programs like the Adams grants and the Cultural Facilities Fund. How we respond now offers an important test of our ability to make strategic decisions on critical economic development spending.

Last year, Gov. Patrick signed legislation establishing an advisory council charged with developing a creative economy strategy, along with the metrics to measure and market the state’s success. This council is well positioned to consider whether the state can and should provide direct subsidies for film, video games, and other creative industries. Based on past evaluations of these tax credits, a rigorous review would likely find that the Commonwealth would be much better served by keeping up with the small investments it’s been making to create vibrant and creative places for innovators to thrive, versus attempting to choose the industries that will generate job growth in the future with tax credits.

For Gateway Cities, the state’s creative economy economic development efforts are one of the few bright spots amid heavy job loss, soaring unemployment, and bare-bones local budgets. Before we make the decision to cut off these funds, we must carefully weigh our choices.

Ben Forman is a senior research associate at MassINC.

Flaherty as change agent a shaky idea from the start

2009-11-04T17:05:56-05:00

If there was a path to upset victory in yesterday's Boston mayoral race, it was never going to run through Michael Flaherty's "Good/Better" campaign, which always seemed to suggest that he'd simply be a better version of what voters had come to like about Tom Menino. If a 16-year incumbent is vulnerable, it is because voters are hungry for real change, and Flaherty was not credible from the outset as an authentic agent of change.

It was a poorly kept secret that the Menino campaign was more worried about the prospect of facing Sam Yoon in the final election. In internal Menino campaign polls, the wonky second-term city councilor scored high with voters when they were asked which candidate was most likely to bring real change. Yoon, who finished out of the money in the preliminary election but went on to endorse Flaherty and play deputy-mayor-in-waiting on the unofficial "Floon" ticket, had the right profile to tap voter hunger for change and innovation in city government. We'll never know whether Yoon, who often seemed better as a concept than candidate, would actually have caught fire.

But it was never really in the cards for Flaherty to pick up the sort of momentum that would have been needed to topple a hugely popular incumbent. Flaherty and Menino registered much lower than Yoon as agents of big change in the mayor's campaign poll. Remarkably, however, the 66-year-old four-term incumbent was seen as slightly more likely to bring change than 40-year-old South Boston city councilor charging at his heels.

Armed with that sort of insight, once Flaherty — lugging all that baggage from his alliance with the reform-reviling firefighters' union — edged out Yoon for the right to face Menino in yesterday's election, the Urban Mechanic mayor knew that, barring any major gaffes or controversies, he could put away his tools and practically set his campaign bus on cruise control.