On Social Security Investment, Or, What About Chile?
“Of what avail are any laws, where money rules alone, Where Poverty can never win its cases? Detractors of the times, who bear the Cynic’s scrip, are known To often sell the truth, and...
View ArticleCredibility on the cost of DDS care — an update
The administration’s cost analysis in shutting the Monson, Templeton, and Glavin developmental centers was submitted in July to the House and Senate Ways and Means Committees and to the Joint Committee...
View ArticleThe value of our public employees
Obama, Cooper says, is a talented politician and leader who came to office with major policy ideas and a plan to improve government performance by using technology, in particular. All of these things...
View ArticleWhere is our money going?
Why might this be a problem? Because the state Operational Services Division (OSD) depends on the information in the UFRs to determine how much in state funds to apply to that compensation. By...
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Seeking a chance to speak truth to power
(Cross-posted from the COFAR blog) No doubt, State Rep. Brian Dempsey, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has never talked with Joan Douty, the mother of a resident of the Glavin Regional...
View ArticleAdministration admits to discrepancies in vendor salary info
(Cross-posted from the COFAR blog) Patrick administration officials appear to be admitting we may be on to something when we pointed out the state may be getting different information than the federal...
View ArticleIdentifying the missing costs
(Cross-posted from the COFAR blog) The Patrick administration claims that the average per-person cost of Department of Developmental Services vendor-run group homes is less than the average per-person...
View ArticleOnce again, we’re waiting for the administration’s cost records
(Cross-posted from the COFAR blog) It has been more than a month since we asked Secretary of Health and Human Services JudyAnn Bigby for public records detailing the costs of specified services in a...
View ArticleUpdate on our requests for cost records
(Cross-posted from the COFAR blog) After a month and a half, it’s troubling that the Patrick administration is apparently still unable to locate cost records we requested pertaining to a single...
View ArticleWhere’s the beef in Community First?
(Cross-posted from the COFAR blog) We’ve long maintained that the Patrick administration’s agenda of phasing down and closing state developmental centers would ultimately fail to free up additional...
View ArticleCoalition Urges Massachusetts Education Officials to Reconsider Controversial...
Yesterday, the Mass. PTA, the American Civil Liberties Union of Mass., the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Citizens for Public Schools wrote to education officials and Governor Patrick...
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State-funded provider execs paid more than $80m a year
(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog) More than 550 executives working for some 250 state-funded corporate providers of services to people with developmental disabilities in Massachusetts received a total...
View ArticleDoes the administration have a double standard in the care of the disabled?
[Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog] As The Boston Globe reported last week, Governor Patrick has “unveiled an ambitious and potentially costly plan” to reform the way the state’s criminal justice system...
View ArticleWhy the Fernald land deal should include a plan for the developmentally disabled
(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog) The history of what is now known as the Fernald Developmental Center hasn’t been free of some serious blemishes or controversy. But from 1889 to the present time,...
View ArticleNational Charter School group supporting Neil Kinnon for State Rep
Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Malden includes the choice between two candidates to replace Chris Fallon as our MA state-house rep: Steve Ultrino, a true democrat/Democrat; and Neil Kinnon, a...
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Compensation of provider executives in MA reaches $100 million
(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog) More than 600 executives employed by corporate human service providers in Massachusetts received some $100 million per year in salaries and other compensation,...
View ArticleThe federal government’s cruel pursuit of deinstitutionalization
(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog) When is the federal government — particularly the Department of Justice — going to recognize or admit that deinstitutionalization of the developmentally disabled...
View ArticleThe Pioneer Institute does acrobatic logical twists re the Pacheco Law
(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog) In what has been widely viewed as a setback for state employee unions in Massachusetts, state legislators last week approved a state budget for Fiscal Year 2016 that...
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MBTA commuter rail contracts rose by a greater percentage than in-house bus...
(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog) While proponents of privatizing the MBTA point to the rising cost of in-house operations there, the cost to the agency of contracting out appears to have risen even...
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