Arlington Advocate

An overhaul of the way patients, government, insurers and hospitals pay for health care – one that would eventually lead to massive reordering of Massachusetts’s multi-billion-dollar per year health care system – will likely be ready for legislative debate by the spring of 2012, a top House ally of Speaker Robert DeLeo said Thursday.

House Majority Leader Ronald Mariano predicted a form of the proposal would emerge for consideration despite concerns that the complexities involved and the long-term nature of the savings could prove difficult for lawmakers – particularly 41 freshmen still learning the ropes – to digest.

The Boston Globe

An anonymous donor has given CommonWealth magazine $1 million, part of a celebration of the 15th anniversary of its publisher, the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, and nonpartisan reporting on politics and policy in Massachusetts. Announcement of the gift launched an 18-month fund-raising campaign.

Boston Herald

The cautious Beacon Hill lawmaker charged with redrawing the state’s voting districts — and axing one member of the Bay State’s congressional delegation in the process — vowed yesterday to maintain strong minority voting blocks, especially in U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano’s district, to comply with federal law and avoid being sued.

State Rep. Michael Moran’s promise comes after the disastrous redistricting process in 2000, which led to former Speaker Thomas Finneran’s indictment for lying to the federal court about his plan. Critics charged that his plan tried to dilute minority voting strength.

Boston Herald

Robert Cordy, a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court and a veteran of Gov. William Weld’s administration, said Thursday that placing the Probation Department under the control of the Executive Branch could leave the agency vulnerable to “the political mood.”

“The governor’s just fired the parole board,” he said, referring to Gov. Deval Patrick’s decision to accept the resignations of five of the seven Parole Board members after the shooting death of a Woburn policeman by a paroled convict.

Worcester Business Journal

Small businesses in Gateway Cities like Worcester could benefit from an initiative announced Wednesday by State Treasurer Steve Grossman.

Grossman’s “Move Money” program aims to shift state cash deposits under his control to local and community banks who agree to increase their small business lending.

Patriot Ledger

Just when we thought we had plumbed the depths of the MBTA’s $90 million rail tie debacle we learn that the problem may have begun long before the system’s 147,000 faulty concrete ties were even cast.

It originally seemed that the T’s worst decision regarding those defective ties was attempting to downplay the problem while knowing full well it would soon mushroom into a fiscal and operational nightmare.

Patriot Ledger

Gov. Deval Patrick addressed a gathering of mayors, educators and other officials Friday, Feb. 4 at the Gateway Cities Education Summit in Worcester, an event focusing on improving school services to the state’s mid-sized industrial cities, including Brockton.

Patrick said Massachusetts leads the nation in a variety of categories, including student achievement, health care coverage, clean energy initiatives and veterans services.

Worcester Telegram and Gazette
Education officials and experts gathered in Worcester on Friday for the first-ever Gateway Cities Education Summit on improving public schools in cities where “high concentrations of poverty pose significant challenges to educational attainment.”

Changing that reality will take more time, effort, and excellence in teaching and administration. It will also require two things more: the honesty to see the shortcomings of public education today, and a shift in thinking away from 19th century paradigms to ones responsive to the rapidly changing and diversifying 21st century.

Sentinel and Enterprise

Gov. Deval Patrick urged officials to “be bold” in coming up with creative ways to bridge the achievement gap in the state’s poorest school systems.

Speaking before representatives of the state’s 11 “gateway cities” on Friday, Patrick said these school districts should partner with local colleges and museums and form after-school programs with area businesses in order to improve the quality of education.

Sentinel and Enterprise

Gov. Deval Patrick urged officials to “be bold” in coming up with creative ways to bridge the achievement gap in the state’s poorest school systems.

Speaking before representatives of the state’s 11 “gateway cities” on Friday, Patrick said these school districts should partner with local colleges and museums and form after-school programs with area businesses in order to improve the quality of education.

Lawrence Eagle Tribune
Gov. Deval Patrick pledged yesterday to work directly with Lawrence, Haverhill, Methuen and other “gateway” cities to improve schools in those towns.

Patrick addressed a gathering of town and school leaders from the state’s so-called gateway cities — former mill and factory towns — at a MassINC-sponsored conference in Worcester.

New Bedford Standard Times
Gov. Deval Patrick on Friday challenged Gateway Cities educators and leaders to use the tools at their disposal — in creative, innovative, community-specific ways — to close the student achievement gap.

“We’ve been on this path of ed reform and educational improvement for 17 years, and for that whole time the achievement gap has persisted,” Patrick said. “To let it persist for 17 years is a moral question.”

Worcester Telegram and Gazette
Gov. Deval L. Patrick told representatives of the state’s “gateway cities” today that many of their poor and minority students are not doing well enough in school, and the time has come to get creative.

The 11 mid-size gateway cities, which include Worcester and Fitchburg, receive the bulk of the state’s education aid but not the creative focus of grant-makers, he said.

Patriot Ledger

Drawing new legislative district lines isn’t easy, especially when, as in our case, you have to reduce by one the state’s delegation to Congress. Districts must be contiguous, meet numeric guidelines, and may not disenfranchise minority voters.

But it’s not that hard. Computer programs make the number-crunching easier. And it’s not difficult to group communities of interest together – if the map-makers don’t get caught up in other traditional redistricting priorities: Protecting incumbents, hurting Republicans and punishing Democrats who have bucked the party’s leadership.

The Salem News
Calling it “another form of taxation,” House Speaker Robert DeLeo on Sunday snuffed a budget proposal embraced by Gov. Deval Patrick to encourage recycling and raise $20 million a year to defray water and sewer costs.

In an interview on WBZ-TV, DeLeo rejected the proposal known as the “bottle bill,” which would add a five-cent deposit to the cost of water, tea and juice bottles.

Dedham Transcript

Calling it “another form of taxation,” House Speaker Robert DeLeo on Sunday snuffed a budget proposal embraced by Gov. Deval Patrick to encourage recycling and raise $20 million a year to defray water and sewer costs.

In an interview on WBZ-TV, DeLeo rejected the proposal known as the “bottle bill,” which would add a five-cent deposit to the cost of water, tea and juice bottles.

The Springfield Republican

A survey of registered voters in struggling mill cities shows nearly half give their city schools a grade of B or above, despite high dropout rates and low test scores.

The Boston think-tank MassINC, surveyed 400 registered voters spread among the 11 cities to learn their perception of local schools. Gateway cities, which include Springfield and Holyoke, are former manufacturing centers with high poverty rates.

Boston Globe

Union-News and Sunday Republican
A survey of registered voters in struggling mill cities shows nearly half give their city schools a grade of B or above, despite high dropout rates and low test scores.

The Boston think-tank MassINC, surveyed 400 registered voters spread among the 11 cities to learn their perception of local schools. Gateway cities, which include Springfield and Holyoke, are former manufacturing centers with high poverty rates.

Sentinel and Enterprise

A new study claims residents in 11 of the state’s mid size cities, including Fitchburg, Worcester and Lowell, give school systems good grades despite poor test scores and graduation rates.

About half the residents polled gave their community’s public schools a grade of A or B, while just 12 percent gave the schools a D or F, according to a MassINC poll released Tuesday.

Lowell Sun

Brockton Enterprise

About half of the voters polled in Massachusetts’ Gateway Cities give their community’s public schools a grade of A (12 percent) or B (37 percent); 83 percent give them a C or higher, according to a new poll conducted by the MassINC Polling Group. 

Just 12 percent gave the schools a D or F. These positive ratings contrast sharply with the overall poor performance of Gateway Cities schools on metrics like reading proficiency and graduation rates.

MetroWest Daily News

Politicians want to give us what we want, and what we want are jobs. But what jobs should they give us, and what should the taxpayers pay for them?

How about a nice job in high tech, in a new industry with unlimited potential? A job in green energy, building solar panels that can be sold around the world?

MetroWest Daily News

Drawing new legislative district lines isn’t easy, especially when, as in Massachusetts’ case, you have to reduce by one the state’s delegation to Congress. Districts must be contiguous, meet numeric guidelines, and may not disenfranchise minority voters. Community leaders and politicians have strong preferences for where they’d like to see the lines drawn.

But it’s not that hard. Computer programs make the number-crunching easier.

Boston Globe

Worcester Magazine

Brockton Enterprise

New Bedford Standard Times

Last spring, in the days before Portia Bonner resigned as New Bedford’s superintendent of schools, a small group of community leaders came together to examine not only the multiple mistakes that led to Bonner’s failure but also to do what they could to improve public education.

Its first report, issued last week, indicates the serious achievement problems of city schoolchildren as they progress through the grades. It shows that New Bedford children score fairly well as elementary schoolchildren on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests and then do worse and worse as they go through middle and high school.

A new act in foreclosure circus – Boston Globe

Last week’s Supreme Judicial Court decision, in which the court upended a pair of Springfield foreclosures and upbraided Wells Fargo and US Bank for maintaining sloppy records is great news for homeowners facing foreclosure.

Mortgage-servicing banks, which were in the habit of trading mortgages around like cheap baseball cards, will be forced to slow the pace of foreclosures even more, and carefully verify that they actually own the mortgages on the properties they want to foreclose on.

Boston Herald

Massachusetts legislators are terrific at giving lip service to public opinion – and then going off and doing exactly as they damn well please.

So we’d be surprised if the poll released yesterday by MassINC has any impact on the redistricting plans already being set in to motion on Beacon Hill. But it really, really should.