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Boston 101 Fall 2004 - Spring 2005 Lecture Series
For most of the Commonwealth’s history, public employees were not unionized. Today, however, unions represent about 90 percent of all the people employed by the state and its localities. Do public sector unions assist in governance or do they create inherent conflicts of interest that distort the labor-management balance? Has a fourth branch of government been created? Or are public sector unions safeguards for public employees benefits? Secretary Eric Kriss, Executive Office for Administration and Finance discussed some of these questions at "The State of the Union? Defining the Proper Role for Public Sector Unions." Professor Richard B. Freeman, professor of economics at Harvard University and co-faculty director of the Harvard University Trade Program and Jack Donahue, lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government and Director of the Kennedy School's Weil Program in Collaborative Governance offered comments on Secretary Kriss's thoughts. Coverage of "The State of the Union? Defining the Proper Role for Public Sector Unions" in the Harvard Gazette
Building Blocks: Why Affordable Housing
is So Hard to Do? This event is available on video tape. Please contact Polly O'Brien at 617-495-5091 to discuss viewing options.
Can the state
foster economic
growth without
ruining the
character of
our landscape
or wasting money?
That was the
charge that
Governor Mitt
Romney gave
when he created
the Office of
Commonwealth
Development,
a state super-agency
that oversees
the state agencies
responsible
transportation,
housing, energy,
and environmental
protection.
To carry out
this ambitious
mandate, Romney
turned to the
influential
Conservation
Law Foundation — tapping
Doug Foy, its
longtime head
to head the
new state agency,
and Steve Burrington,
Foy’s
longtime deputy,
to serve the
same role in
the new agency.
Almost two years
later, Burrington
came to the
Kennedy School
to discuss what
they have—and
have not—been
able to accomplish
thus far as
well as what
lies ahead,
as agencies
and localities
begin to carry
out the policies
the new office
has put in place.
Kristina Egan,
executive director
of the newly
formed Massachusetts
Smart Growth
Alliance and
Jay Wickersham,
a lecturer at
the Harvard
Design School
and former head
of Massachusetts
Environmental
Policy Act office,
commented on
Burrington’s
remarks. Neighborhood
Poverty and
Social Capital
in Boston's
Villa Victoria
Housing Complex Professor Mario Luis Small, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University presented his research on the transformation of Villa Victoria’s social capital. Professor Mark Warren, associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Vanessa Calderon Rosado, acting executive director of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA – Puerto Rican Tenants in Action), commentted on Small’s remarks. Professor Robert Putnam of the Kennedy School of Government and founder of the Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, moderated the discussion. This event was cosponsored by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America; Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA – Puerto Rican Tenants in Action); the Kennedy School of Government’s African Americans, Latinos, Asian Pacific Americans, Native Americans & Allies (ALANA) Student Group and the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) PIC. This event is available on video tape. Please contact Polly O'Brien at 617-495-5091 to discuss viewing options.
On November
8, 2004 the Rappaport
Institute convened
a panel of experts
to
questions such as can the state budget continue to accommodate large increases in Medicaid and
other health-care costs? Put another way, when will Medicaid make the state go
broke? How can the state solve its Medicaid/health care costs problem without
alienating the teaching hospitals, growing biotechnology sector, and existing
high-tech companies and financial services firms that are currently driving our
local economy? This event is available on video tape. Please contact Polly O'Brien at 617-495-5091 to discuss viewing options. Spring 2005 Boston 101 Series Needed Corrections: Andrea J. Cabral, Suffolk County Sheriff At this event former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who chaired the commission, and Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral, who is responsible for the operation of the House of Correction and the jail that serve the city of Boston, shared their thoughts on how the state and its counties can do a better job of managing our prisons and jails. Anne Morrison Piehl, an associate professor at the Kennedy School of Government who served as the commission’s research director, moderated the discussion. The event was cosponsored by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the Kennedy School’s Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy, the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, and Northeastern University’s Ford Hall Forum. This event is available on video tape. Please contact Polly O'Brien at 617-495-5091 to discuss viewing options. Coverage of this event by local media Paradoxes of DNA-Testing Policy Is DNA the ultimate crime-fighting tool, or the ultimate threat to civil liberties? Should we aggressively and proactively expand the application of DNA analysis in the criminal justice system – such as through DNA dragnets, and by expanding law enforcement DNA databases? How we answer these questions depends on how much we trust the government to properly use this powerful technology. Professor Lazer discussed how DNA databases are being implemented in states across the nation. National policies have set the terms of debate, but many of the most important questions remain to be decided. Lazer addressed the broader implications of how government comes to utilize new technologies and how it should collect personal data that has the capacity to free the innocent, inculpate the guilty, but also to undermine individual freedom. Senator Barrios discussed the state of the debate in Massachusetts and how we might best navigate the trade-offs ahead. This free event was presented by the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. This event is available on video tape. Please contact Polly O'Brien at 617-495-5091 to discuss viewing options. Coverage of this event on the Kennedy School of Government's Webpage Education Reform in the Computer Age: Richard Murnane, Professor of Education and Society, Harvard Graduate School of Education Like many states, Massachusetts is using standards-based education reforms to increase the number of students who master the problem-solving and communications skills they will need to thrive in our increasingly computerized economy. This approach, which ties increased funding for schools to accountability for performance as measured by standardized tests, has produced dramatic results in many urban schools that serve low-income communities, such as Boston’s Richard J. Murphy Elementary School. Achieving such gains, however, is not easy to accomplish. At this event, Richard Murnane, Professor of Education and Society at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and Frank Levy, Professor of Urban Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discussed their research on how computers are changing the employment landscape and how the right kinds of education can ease the transition into this new job market. Ms. Mary Russo, Principal of the Richard J. Murphy Elementary School in Dorchester discussed what changes were made to improve the MCAS scores of their students and how implementing a fully integrated school improvement plan assisted their work. This event was co-sponsored by the Program on Education Policy and Governance. This event is available on video tape. Please contact Polly O'Brien at 617-495-5091 to discuss viewing options. Oceans: The Last Wild Frontier Ellen Roy Herzfelder, Secretary for Environmental Affairs, Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. Ellen Roy Herzfelder, the state’s secretary of environmental affairs, discussed proposed legislation to better guide the development of the state’s ocean waters at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government on Monday, March 21 at 5 pm. In her remarks, Herzfelder described ocean management legislation that Governor Mitt Romney filed on Friday, March 18. Daniel Schrag, a professor of professor of earth sciences at Harvard University, who also directs the Harvard University Center for the Environment and Harvard’s Laboratory for Geochemical Oceanography, commented on Herzfelder’s remarks. Passage of legislation to better govern the state’s ocean waters was a priority recommendation of the Massachusetts Ocean Management Task Force, which was appointed by Governor Romney and Secretary Herzfelder. The committee concluded the law is needed because of increasing conflict over the growing number of proposals to use the state’s coastal waters for everything from aquaculture to energy. While those proposals are subject to a patchwork of state laws and regulations, the proposed law would be the first to give the state had a unified management plan for its coastal waters. This free event was sponsored by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the Harvard University Center for the Environment and the Harvard Green Campus Initiative. This event is available on video tape. Please contact Polly O'Brien at 617-495-5091 to discuss viewing options. Coverage of this event in the Harvard Gazette Educational Adequacy in Massachusetts: Hancock v. Driscoll (2005) Tuesday, March 22 Robert Costrell discussed the recent Hancock v. Driscoll decision in which the state's Supreme Judicial Court rejected plaintiffs' claim that, despite a decade of increased state support for education in poor school districts, Massachusetts was still not meeting its constitutional duty to deliver adequate elementary and secondary education. Costrell, who played a key role in the state’s successful efforts to defeat the lawsuit, also offered his thoughts on promising ways to improve public education for minority and disadvantaged children. An article that he wrote on the court case for Commonwealth Magazine is available at: http://www.massinc.org/handler.cfm?type=1&target=2004-4/hancock_symposium.htm (free registration required). This luncheon was the first event in Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance Spring 2005 Colloquia Series, which was cosponsored by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the Center for American Politics, both of which are also Harvard affiliated. Can Rent Control Work? Richard Arnott, Professor of Urban Economics and Public Finance, Boston College. To add your name to our Boston 101 e-mailing list for a reminder about the next Boston 101 lecture or suggestions for the lecture series, please send an email to Polly O'Brien. | |||
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Good Neighbors: Harvard's Role in Developing
Allston
Affordable housing is
becoming an increasing
concern for residents
in Greater Boston. On
Wednesday, October 13,
a panel discussed the
work of the Commonwealth
Housing Task Force and
trying to circumvent
the obstacles to building
affordable housing in
Massachusetts. Panelists
included Professor Barry
Bluestone, executive
director of the Center
for Regional and Urban
Policy at Northeastern
University; Paul Grogan,
president of The Boston
Foundation; Representative
Kevin Honan, Massachusetts
House of Representatives
and chairman of the Joint
Committee on Housing
and Urban Development;
Jerome Rappaport, Jr.,
president of The New
Boston Fund and co-chair
of the Commonwealth Housing
Task Force; and Sarah
Young, deputy director
for policy development
at the Department of
Housing and Community
Development. The discussion
was moderated by Professor
Ed Glaeser, faculty director
of the Rappaport Institute
for Greater Boston and
Professor of Economics
at Harvard University.
This event was co-sponsored
by the Joint Center for
Housing and Community
Development and the Taubman
Center for State and
Local Government.
Growing Smart: The Future of Smart Growth
Bitter
Medicine: The Future of Medicaid