We policy wonks like to believe that good ideas win in the end. That right makes might. That if we only got a chance to convince-oh, Barack Obama or John Boehner or Tom Richards or Maggie Brooks-then the right idea would win the day.
Think again. Truth to tell, ideas are powerful only when wielded effectively. It’s effective political action that shapes government, thus society. Read more »
For most of 2009, Rochester ranked in the Top 20 in the Brookings Institution’s regular reports on the impact of the recession. Indeed, for 2009, Rochester had the 15th best job report among the nation’s 100 largest metros. New York’s job creation record was the best of the 15 largest states.
By the end of last year, Rochester had slid to #41 and New York State to #11. What happened? Well, not much. In Rochester, at least. Our job performance over the last decade has been quite consistent from year to year: We lost jobs, but never more than 2% in a year. The Great Recession was triggered when the real estate bubble burst, the construction and real estate sectors suddenly cooled and millions found their jobs gone or at risk. Having missed the boom, Rochester also missed the bust and continued the trend of the early part of the century—slow shrinkage as the economy struggled to absorb cuts at Kodak and other large employers. Read more »
A story surfaced last week (in a rival publication) that brought local development corporations (LDCs) back into public view. CGR studied LDCs in 2008, and we were never able to find a “smoking gun” suggesting that an LDC had been used for evil deeds.
But we still wonder. As we recounted in our report (see http://goo.gl/IOKu), there is nothing inherently wrong with LDCs and they can be used for good. But they are expressly designed to circumnavigate the cumbersome rules we’ve established for public bodies, e.g. open meeting requirements, public bidding, etc. The simple fact that we were never able to compile a list of active LDCs should be enough to light a warning beacon.
School Board President Malik Evans and CGR are portrayed as being on different sides of this “mayoral control” discussion. Yet we agree that community opinion matters. The response of CGR was to conduct a poll with our partner, Metrix Matrix. At a forum televised by WXXI last Thursday, Mr. Evans suggested a referendum. But it amounts to the same thing—what the community thinks about this issue is important.
We’ve had two helpful forums on the topic. After the City Administration postponed several planned public meetings, the Rochester Business Journal’s forum was the first. School Board Commissioner Van White and Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski spoke against the proposal. In addition to remarks from Mayor Duffy, panelists Margaret Raymond from Stanford, Kenneth Wong from Brown, and Dennis Walcott, NYC’s Deputy Mayor for Education, spoke in support.
Reaction to CGR’s survey on mayoral control, conducted with partner Metrix Matrix Inc (MMI), has reinforced what the survey revealed: Our community cares deeply about this issue and the education of our city’s children. The only prior test of community sentiment was a relatively small telephone survey of parents. Yet parents-to-be, grandparents, resident property owners, renters, and resident business owners all have a stake in the effectiveness of the schools. And all can vote in Board of Education and mayoral elections.
My Chicago-area brother & I engage in a friendly competition over whose political culture is more entertaining. It is a contest I would like to lose, although my hopes have been dashed in recent months. Even with former governor Rod Blagojevich competing in the new season of The Apprentice (begins Sunday!), New York is winning handily. The best capsule summary goes to Baruch’s Doug Muzio who dubbed New York politics “Rod Serling meets Lewis Carroll.”
The financial problems of the nation and many large states—California, Illinois, New Jersey and certainly New York—present a problem that is challenging economically and hazardous politically. Since it’s impossible to separate the economics from the politics, it is truly a Gordian knot – rather than untying the knot, Alexander the Great sliced the Gordian knot in two with a single, bold stroke of his sword.
The Congressional Budget Office forecasts the federal deficit to decline from about $1.5 trillion in 2009 to $608 billion in 2014, then rise to nearly $800 billion in 2020. This is a hefty deficit, particularly when you consider that we had a surplus as recently as 2000. Then consider that the cumulative public debt, which currently stands at $7.5 trillion, is expected to nearly double by 2020 to $14 trillion.
Early this year I wrote about the high deductible health plan (HDHP) and health savings account (HSA) being offered to CGR by Excellus. A look-back seems timely.
Five of us at CGR signed up for the HDHP and HSA combination. With our experience as background, nearly the entire staff selected this option for the coming year. Why?
Congress is edging closer to passing legislation that restructures health insurance. The Senate and the House are debating compromise bills within their houses, after which a conference committee will seek to reconcile differences between them. With these details still under debate, we conclude our six part series on health reform with a few observations.
Public Option. If private insurance plans are part of the problem, then one solution may be to offer another option, a health insurance plan that is run by the government. At this writing, a “public option” seems likely to survive and become part of the final legislation. The debate over the public option has highlighted a fundamental social tension between those who fear too much government and those who fear too little (discussed in the first column in this series). Like Goldilocks, each of us wants the balance to be “just right.”
In this column, we address the challenge of expanding health insurance coverage. First, we explore why our employer-based system leaves gaps in coverage, even for people with jobs. Second, we discuss the challenge of relying on the individual insurance market, which has to fill these gaps.
Monthly blog by senior staff on public policy + updates.
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