Monthly Archives: August 2022

SCOOP: DEPARTURE LOUNGE Quentin Palfrey is planning to end his campaign for attorney general as soon as today, according to three people familiar with his thinking.

Chatter about Palfrey potentially exiting the Democratic primary and endorsing one of his competitors has grown in recent days as new polls showed the former assistant attorney struggling to keep pace with Andrea Campbell and Shannon Liss-Riordan, and with key endorsements breaking for his rivals. He also cut $140,000 of his $231,000 in pre-primary ad buys, according to ad tracker AdImpact. Palfrey did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Palfrey began telegraphing his attorney general campaign over a year ago, when the 2018 Democratic lieutenant governor nominee told the Boston Globe he would run for the states top law enforcement job if Attorney General Maura Healey ran for governor.

He racked up endorsements from Democratic Party activists and progressive groups after formally launching his campaign in February and went on to secure the state partys endorsement at its June convention.

But Palfrey has struggled to grow his campaign beyond party insiders. Hes been outpaced in fundraising by Campbell and trounced by Liss-Riordan, whos now poured at least $4.8 million of her own money into her campaign. And he's trailed in polling while Liss-Riordan is closing the gap with Campbell after blanketing the airwaves since early July.

The path to victory got even narrower this past weekend, when Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and former Boston Acting Mayor Kim Janey endorsed Liss-Riordan. Their late-breaking support effectively recast the primary as a two-woman race between the Brookline labor attorney and Campbell, the former Boston city councilor whos backed by Healey, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Sen. Ed Markey and other prominent politicians.

Palfrey may endorse one of his rivals to blunt the others rise. Most political watchers would assume Palfrey would endorse Liss-Riordan, who he often teamed up with earlier in the campaign to attack Campbell over super PAC spending and certain policy stances. But theres a chance Palfrey, off-put by the millions of dollars Liss-Riordan has given her campaign to fuel her more than $5 million in advertising, could set aside his differences with Campbell and back her instead.

GOOD TUESDAY MORNING, MASSACHUSETTS. Primary day is a week away! What races are you watching? What mailers are you getting? Share your thoughts: [emailprotected].

TODAY Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito attend the Greylock Glen ceremonial groundbreaking at 10 a.m. in Adams, announce Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant awards at noon in Williamsburg and visit Valley Venture Mentors at 2 p.m. in Springfield. The GOP governor/LG team of Geoff Diehl and Leah Cole Allen hold a media availability at 1 p.m. at UMass Lowell. LG hopeful and state Rep. Tami Gouveia casts her ballot at 6 p.m. at Acton Town Hall.

Many Dems will breeze through election amid shortage of GOP challengers, by Christian M. Wade, Eagle-Tribune: Dozens of democratic lawmakers are getting a free pass to another two-year term with the Republican Party fielding few challengers in the upcoming elections. Every seat in the 200-member state Legislature is up for grabs in the fall elections, but the majority of incumbents will cruise to another term with few contenders vying to unseat them. Among 18 House races in the North of Boston region, only two Republicans were nominated to run against incumbent Democratic lawmakers. In three wide-open races to fill House seats the newly created 4th Essex in the Merrimack Valley, and 7th and 8th Essex Districts on the North Shore Democrats dominate the field of candidates. There are no Republicans aiming for the seats.

ENDORSEMENT ALERT: State Rep. Chynah Tyler is endorsing Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden at 1:30 p.m. at the Malcolm X mural in Roxbury.

It sounds like I dont want to vote for either of them: Controversy defines Suffolk DAs race, by Danny McDonald and Tiana Woodard, Boston Globe: With little more than a week to go before primary day, voters find themselves contemplating two Suffolk district attorney candidates buffeted by controversy. Thats left many local residents changing their minds about the race; still others greeted the whole firestorm with indifference. Revelations that Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, a former public defender, was twice investigated though never charged for possible sexual assault as a teenager have rocked city politics. Meanwhile, District Attorney Kevin Hayden continues to face questions and criticism after a Boston Globe investigation exposed a coverup by Transit Police officers that raised questions about how prosecutors handled the case.

Chaos on Boston City Council: Flynn moves to strip Arroyos leadership assignments; Baker and Lara file dueling records requests, by Sean Philip Cotter, Boston Herald: The Boston City Council is tearing itself apart as President Ed Flynn moves to strip embattled councilor Ricardo Arroyos committee leadership assignments a move Arroyo slams as undemocratic and city councilors pursue each other with pointed records requests: Frank Baker against the DA candidate Arroyo and Kendra Lara in turn against Baker.

FROM THE OPINION PAGES: A year after endorsing Andrea Campbell for Boston mayor, the Boston Globe editorial board has endorsed the former city councilor for state attorney general.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: The Boston Teachers Union, which represents about 10,000 educators, and the Greater Boston Labor Council, which represents about 100,000 workers, have endorsed state Sen. Diana DiZoglio for auditor, adding to her broad union support.

Teamsters Local 25 has endorsed Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll for lieutenant governor.

Sen. Ed Markey has endorsed Sydney Levin-Epstein for Hampden, Hampshire and Worcester state senator, saying in a statement that shell fight to make sure the region gets its fair share of resources and to create good jobs.

State Treasurer Deb Goldberg has endorsed Worcester Mayor Joe Petty for First Worcester state senator, saying in a statement that Petty is a consensus builder who will bring that same work ethic to the State House.

State Rep. Russell Holmes has been endorsed for reelection in the 6th Suffolk District by 1199 SEIU, SEIU Local 509, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Massachusetts & Northern New England Laborers' District Council.

A right-wing agitator who attended Jan. 6 riot is running for the Mass. House, testing state GOPs appetite for extremism, by Emma Platoff, Boston Globe: A little-watched legislative contest on the northeast coast of Massachusetts could be a bellwether for the bitterly divided state GOP, as party leaders consider throwing their support behind Samson Racioppi, a right-wing agitator who led a 2019 Straight Pride Parade in Boston and organized buses to Washington, D.C., for the protest that became the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Massachusetts district attorney races and the progressive prosecutor, by Deborah Becker, WBUR: San Francisco residents recalled progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin after he was blamed for a rash of brazen thefts across the city. Pennsylvania Republicans are trying to impeach the liberal DA in Philadelphia. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis removed a progressive prosecutor in his state this month. And Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins faced a bitter confirmation fight before she became U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts early this year. Now the conflict has shifted to Massachusetts, where the battle is playing out very differently from one county to the next.

Coppinger touts reforms as he seeks another term, by Christian M. Wade, Eagle-Tribune: When former Lynn Police Chief Kevin Coppinger took over as Essex County's sheriff nearly six years ago, he never expected to play the role of a reformer. But a few years after taking over the helm, the veteran law enforcement officer found himself at the center of a national debate over whether to allow medication assisted treatment in jails and correctional facilities to help blunt the impact of a wave of opioid addiction that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. In the Sept. 6 primary Coppinger faces a challenge from Virginia Leigh, a Lynn social worker who argues he hasn't done enough to improve access to substance-abuse treatment and mental health services for inmates.

More: Leigh vows close 'revolving door' at Middleton jail, by Christian M. Wade, Salem News: As a clinical social worker, Virginia Leigh has spent years working with individuals struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues whose lives often become tangled up in the state's complex criminal justice system. Her work has taken her into county jails and state prisons and convinced her that the best way to reduce crime and the number of people serving time is to deal with the root causes of incarceration.

Have a mail ballot sitting at home? Do not trust it to the mail at this point, top Mass. elections official says, by Samantha J. Gross, Boston Globe: Have a mail-in ballot sitting on your kitchen table or tacked up on your refrigerator? Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin advises that you fill it out and take it to a secure drop box, early voting site, or your local city or town hall before 8 p.m. on Sept. 6 if you want it to be counted for the state primary election.

Report finds regionalization may only be partial solution to challenges posed by low enrollment, less rural school aid, by Chris Larabee, Daily Hampshire Gazette: In Franklin and Hampshire counties, regional school districts including Pioneer, Mohawk Trail and Gateway already draw from a wide pool of towns across a large geographic range. If those schools were to join up with their neighbors, school officials and state Rep. Natalie Blais, D-Sunderland, who co-chaired the Special Commission on Rural School Districts, say serious consideration needs to be taken into whether the pros of regionalization outweigh the cons.

Grid operator, utilities call for energy reserve, by Bruce Mohl, CommonWealth Magazine: The operator of the New England power grid and six of the regions major utilities are calling on state and federal policymakers to develop an energy reserve that can be tapped when energy supply chains are disrupted.

Worcester to begin construction on micro-units for chronically homeless, by Sam Turken, GBH News: Amid a rise in homelessness across Worcester, the citys housing authority will start constructing what officials called the first-in-the-state building of micro-units to house people who have been chronically homeless.

New Hampshire governor denounces tweets by state Libertarian party as horribly insulting, by Emily Sweeney, Boston Globe: The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire has drawn outrage for mocking the Holocaust and the death of Senator John McCain on social media, with New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu calling the Twitter posts horribly insulting. In a recent interview on CNN, Sununu said that should pretty much be the end of the Libertarian Party in New Hampshire.'"

WEEKEND WEDDING Megan Corrigan, an Eric Lesser and Lydia Edwards campaign alum, and Kevin Lownds, deputy chief of the Medicaid Fraud Division at the attorney generals office, were married on Friday at the Gardens at Elm Bank in Wellesley. Garrett Casey, policy director and counsel for state Sen. Cynthia Creem, and Nelson Tamayo, a foreign service officer at the State Department, officiated. SPOTTED: Edwards, former state transportation secretary Fred Salvucci, John Sasso, Nick Mitropoulos, Dewey Square COO John Giesser, former U.S. Ambassador to Portugal Gerry McGowan; Will Poff Webster, Matt Shapanka, Elizabeth Keyes, former Rhode Island state Rep. Aaron Regunberg, Tim Flaherty and Mary-Jo Adams.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the Washington Posts Martine Powers, a Boston Globe/POLITICO alum, and Julia Hoffman.

Want to make an impact? POLITICO Massachusetts has a variety of solutions available for partners looking to reach and activate the most influential people in the Bay State. Have a petition you want signed? A cause youre promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness among this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: [emailprotected].

Originally posted here:
Palfrey eyes the exits- POLITICO - POLITICO

Colorado teachers earn 36% less than other college-educated workers, the worst gap in the country, claims the Colorado Sun. Colorado teachers have the largest pay disparity in the country, declares 9News. Colorado has highest pay gap for educators in the U.S., says Colorado Newsline.

These headlines are highly misleading. The claims are technically correct according to the peculiar measures of the study on which they are based, yet they obscure important facts.

My claim here is not that teachers in Colorado make great money; they do not. Ill talk about that in a bit. My starting remarks pertain only to the usefulness of the study in question and to the news medias presentation of the studys findings.

The first thing to notice is that the study comes from the Economic Policy Institute, an independent, nonprofit think tank that draws partly on funding from teachers unions and other unions, including the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. Obviously this organization is going to produce papers that support more tax funding for public schools and that play up how rough public school teachers have it.

This is not a strong criticism; Complete Colorado is a project of the Independence Institute, an independent, nonprofit think tank that draws on conservative and libertarian funding and that tends to produce materials supportive of conservative and libertarian policies. Yet we should approach the study at hand knowing what particular axe its author and publisher wish to grind.

The biggest problem with the study is that it compares the salaries of teachers to the salaries of relatively high-earning Coloradans often working in fields of science and technology. Wow, what a shocker that someone with a chemistry or engineering degree from the School of Mines who takes an industry job earns more than someone with a typical teaching degree. (Mines does offer a BS in Engineering with a STEM Teaching focus area.)

Notably, Colorado is near the top of median household income, coming in eleventh at $72,331, according to World Population Review. Maryland is first at $84,805, while Mississippi is last at $45,081.

As the EPI study measures things, a teacher with exactly the same standard of living is deemed worse off simply by virtue of living around higher earners. Thats ridiculous. If anything, teachers lives are better, not worse, by virtue of living around a bunch of relatively wealthier people. By EPIs absurd accounting, if everyone in Colorado besides teachers suddenly lost half their revenues, Colorado teachers would move higher in the rankings.

Chalkbeat handles the nuances well. The fourth paragraph of its article clarifies: But this [wage comparison] doesnt mean Colorado teachers are the lowest paid in the nation. Colorado teachers earn below the national average, according to annual data collected by the National Education Association, but theyre roughly in the middle of the pack. For obvious reasons, click-oriented and ideological publications shy away from such bland headlines as, Colorado teachers in the middle of pack in pay.

The document that Chalkbeat cites from the NEA (the same organization that helped fund the EPI report) shows that Colorado teachers rank 26th for 202021 at $58,183, compared to the U.S. average of $65,293. The highest is New York at $90,222, while the lowest is (again) Mississippi at $46,862. The big finding is that, starting in 2019, teachers salaries are not keeping up with inflation. Of course other people also are having trouble with inflation, but EPI says its worse for teachers.

Chalkbeat helpfully paraphrases the author of the study, Sylvia Allegretto, as saying that more highly paid workers in other fields contribute to Colorados gap. Chalkbeat also paraphrases another economist, Phyllis Resnick, as pointing out that the variation in the jobs mix in each state serves as a major driver of the gap.

The next problem with the presentation of the EPI study is that it leads with raw numbers for a pay gapand this is what most of the headlines picked upbut then clarifies that benefits account for around 40% of the gap. The paper explains, The benefits advantage for teachers has not been enough to offset the growing wage penalty. The teacher total [national] compensation penalty was 14.2% in 2021 (a 23.5% wage penalty offset by a 9.3% benefits advantage).

You might be wondering, dont teachers on average work fewer hours relative to people in other, higher-paid professions, what with summers and more holidays off or on reduced workload? Allegretto claims in a footnote, We provide evidence that teachers work weekly hours similar to those of other professionals. But if you look at the cited 2019 paper that Allegretto coauthors, youll find that she offers weak evidence for the point. She barely addresses the issue, saying she wants to avoid an unproductive debate about the number of hours teachers work compared with other professionals.

She offers one piece of relevant evidence, a 2012 Gates Foundation article claiming that teachers work an average of 10 hours and 40 minutes a day, but that doesnt account for number of days per year worked. (The 2012 paper relies on survey responses. A person might suspect that these self-reported numbers might be a little like reports from Lake Wobegon.) Another oldish study (2014) suggests that teachers work an average of 34.5 hours per week on an annual basis (38.0 hours per week during the school year and 21.5 hours per week during the summer months). Education Week says teachers work more, especially during the pandemic. Anyway, Im not sure what hours for Colorado teachers look like compared to hours for higher-paying jobs, but the issue seems relevant. Were talking about averages; some teachers put in a lot more hours than others.

Regarding the salary comparisons, Chalkbeat continues, For Allegretto, thats a strength of her approach. Fewer people are going into teacher preparation programs, with one reason being that young people see they can earn more in other professions. Comparing teachers with other workers in their state, who face similar cost of living, rather than with teachers in other states, gives a better sense of what people are giving up to go into education.

There is something to this point, of course. If we had anything resembling a market in education, schools would, if they needed to, increase how much they pay teachers in order to attract more talent, and pass on the costs via higher tuition (or more fundraising or whatever). I think that, in a real market, teachers probably would make more on average, and salaries would range more widely depending on skill.

Given that most teachers work for the governments monopoly system of education, it would seem that the only way to increase teacher pay is to direct more tax dollars to teachers. Thats what EPI and its water-carriers in the media would have you believe. But not so fast. Maybe we could direct more of existing funds to teachers. The Colorado Department of Education says that the average per-pupil funding is $9,014 for 202122 and that the pupil-to-teacher ratio is 17.1 (to one).

That means that around $154,000 is available per classroom, but teachers make only around $58,000 (talking averages). Obviously teachers need things like school buildings and supplies, but are the relevant government agencies really spending our educational dollars as effectively as they could? Thats a little hard for me to believe at first glance, but Id like to see a detailed accounting.

We could always consider more-radical approaches to transition the system of government-monopoly schools to something resembling a free market. Then teachers would be more likely to be paid what their work is worth. Maybe the government-monopoly schools offer many teachers a level of security. But, as perhaps more teachers are coming to realize, such security comes at a price, and one measured not only in dollars.

Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.

Our unofficial motto at Complete Colorado is Always free, never fake, but annoyingly enough, our reporters, columnists and staff all want to be paid in actual US dollars rather than our preferred currency of pats on the back and a muttered kind word. Fact is that theres an entire staff working every day to bring you the most timely and relevant political news (updated twice daily) from around the state on Completes main page aggregator, as well as top-notch original reporting and commentary on Page Two.

CLICK HERE TO LADLE A LITTLE GRAVY ON THE CREW AT COMPLETE COLORADO. Youll be giving to the Independence Institute, the not-for-profit publisher of Complete Colorado, which makes your donation tax deductible. But rest assured that your giving will go specifically to the Complete Colorado news operation. Thanks for being a Complete Colorado reader, keep coming back.

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Armstrong: Behind those misleading headlines on Colorado teacher pay - Complete Colorado