Climate and Community: Solarize, Mosaic, and Economies of Scale

“Economies of scale are a good thing. If we didn’t have them, we’d still be living in tents and eating buffalo.”

-- Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, J.P. Morgan, 2010

This weekend, the Globe highlighted Solarize, a pilot program that encourages development of residential and business solar arrays by taking advantage of economies of scale to drive down cost.

Since Beverly High School installed solar panels in 1981 (see image), the North Shore has been at the cutting edge of renewable energy installation. It comes as no surprise, then, that Round 2 of Solarize includes the North Shore communities of Salem and Swampscott, which together have signed up so many people that they have reached “Tier 4” (of 5) status, meaning additional savings for participants in the program and an even greater snowball effect to encourage neighbors to join the movement. Other cities and towns across the Commonwealth are also taking part in the current round, from Andover to Egremont.

In 2011 and 2012, Solarize Mass led over 900 residents and business owners in 21 communities to install over 5.6 megawatts of solar electricity. The 10 cities and towns that participated in Round 1 of 2013—including my beloved Lee, Mass.—added another 3800 kilowatt hours of solar capacity.

This type of community-oriented green energy strategy has emerged with force in recent years. In particular, Mosaic, an investment platform that uses a crowd-funding model to finance solar farms across the country, has showcased the incredible potential of leveraging the pent-up demand for renewable power by bringing individuals together.

From the installation of 47 kWh of solar through Oakland, California’s Youth Employment Partnership (6.38 percent yield) to powering New Jersey’s Wildwood Convention Center (4.5 percent yield) and creating a solar roof on a school in Connecticut (5.5 percent yield), Mosaic has already provided a mechanism for thousands of Americans to directly invest millions of dollars in solar projects in their backyards and across the country.

The uptick in community-based economies of scale is not only spurring green energy (and in turn, reducing carbon emissions), it is also being used by Google to promote high-speed fiber Internet connectivity in cities across the country. Google Fiber expands to “fiberhoods” if/when communities secure enough signups to make the construction of the infrastructure economically viable.

Of course, this model has its pitfalls, particularly when it comes to ensuring access to new technologies across the income spectrum. As Newsweek noted last month, when Kansas City’s fiberhoods were unveiled in 2012, “the online map of fiber-hoods was largely divided by lines like Troost Avenue,” a street that for generations has separated affluent white families to the west and poor families of color to the east.

This outcome was not for lack of trying on Google’s part. As Newsweek stated, the company offered lower-speed broadband service on a monthly payment plan, partnered with community organizations on outreach, and hired people to canvass poor neighborhoods, sometimes with free ice cream. And yet, the divide remained.

This fact should not dissuade us from using community-based economies of scale to nudge neighborhoods toward taking up innovative technology. Rather, it simply highlights the fact that the State must do even more to subsidize the use of green tech in poor communities, many of whom stand to benefit disproportionately from its effects (such as reduced emissions).

In Massachusetts, this means expanding Solarize from the relatively wealthy communities that it has targeted thus far, to communities across the income spectrum—from Lawrence and Lynn to Springfield and Southbridge. It also means changing regulations to allow individual investors to pool resources through platforms like Mosaic.

While Congress dithers on climate policy (and tries to block the President’s historic regulatory efforts related to power plant emissions), communities across the country are hungry to support grassroots efforts to rid America of dirty energy and do their part to make the U.S. a leader in the green tech economy of the 21^st century.

Essex County Health: A Data-Driven Look

This week, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute released its annual county-by-county health rankings in all 50 states. Today, we’re going to take a deep dive into—you guessed it—Essex County, Massachusetts, to analyze for trends, identify problems, and find solutions.

Essex County is ranked the 6^th healthiest county (of 14) in Massachusetts. The good news is that Massachusetts is one of the healthiest states in the country on a wide variety of metrics, from having the lowest percentage of uninsured residents to one of the highest immunization rates in the U.S. (on the other hand, Massachusetts has one of the worst records on binge drinking and health disparity based on level of educational attainment).

The bad news is that we still have a ways to go to root out preventable health dangers, provide all people have access to quality, affordable, preventive care, and arm Bay Staters with the skills and tools they need to keep their families strong.

The North Shore continues to suffer from high rates of impaired/drunk driving. Nearly 1 in 3 driving deaths involve alcohol, above the Massachusetts average of 28 percent and far higher than the national leaders at 14 percent.

           

Essex County also suffers from:

·      the third highest Chlamydia rate in the Commonwealth

·      a well-below average ratio of primary care physicians per capita

·      a high rate of single-parent households (nearly 1/3)

·      the most severe housing problems (overcrowding, high housing costs, or lack of kitchen or plumbing facilities) outside of Boston and the islands

·      long commutes (39 percent of commuters who drive themselves to work commute for longer than 30 minutes each way)

There are a number of steps policymakers should take to address these concerns. First, while only 3.1 percent of residents in the 6^th Congressional District (roughly continuous with Essex County) are uninsured, further outreach is needed to communities that remain underinsured.

In Lynn, over 11 percent of residents 18-64 are uninsured, the sixth highest rate in the state. In Salem, nearly 7 percent of 18-64 year-olds are uninsured. In Beverly, 4.6 percent of children are uninsured, the fourth highest rate in the Commonwealth. Furthermore, according to the Census Bureau, over one-third of all uninsured residents of Essex County are immigrants.

Getting these neighbors quality insurance is critical since Blue Cross has found that a significant percentage of the uninsured face a variety of unmet medical needs, from dentists and preventive care to prescription drugs.

Making the Bay State healthier goes beyond insurance, though. It also involves changing habits and encouraging beneficial behavior. Cities and towns in Northeast Mass. should canvass the country for pioneering public health initiatives. In New York City, calorie counts at restaurants have provided transparency to consumers about nutrition information. While evidence is mixed as to their effects, simply making people aware of the choices they are making is a step in the right direction.

In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has banned the sale of tobacco products marketed to children in school zones and has taken concrete steps to keep e-cigarettes out of the hands of kids. 

Closer to home, on the South Shore, the Southcoast Hospitals Group has invested in a health van that serves community organizations at sites throughout Greater Fall River, New Bedford and Wareham and surrounding communities, providing free education and screenings to the community. Hospitals in Essex County should work together with local governments to sponsor a similar program.

The Bay State already provides a wellness tax credit for businesses. But Beacon Hill should do more to nudge people toward better health outcomes.

In particular, our sales tax is a mess. For instance, while running sneakers are exempt, cleated sneakers are not. We should exempt cleats, along with condoms and approved weight loss aids to encourage healthy behavior.

Lastly, our schools should be on the cutting edge of nutrition—going beyond was is required by the Mass. School Nutrition Standards, to help reduce childhood obesity that can lead to diabetes. While come students have complained about the lack of cookies, the benefits of healthy lunch in school far outweigh the costs.

Massachusetts has been a leader in public health for generations, ever since the Supreme Court upheld the Commonwealth’s mandatory vaccination law in the landmark case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905). It is our responsibility to remain a model for others to follow and, in the process, ensure a better life for our citizens.

Part II: An America United: Valuing Diverse Means to Common Ends

Yesterday, we explored “The Big Sort” of the American electorate. Today, in Part II, we’ll examine ways to combat this trend.

“Look, men, let’s quit arguing and kidding ourselves. We’re all in the same boat. And we’re all gonna sink unless we stick together.”

-- John Wayne, Three Faces West, 1940

Maintaining unity in a nation as diverse as America can sometimes seem impossible. As President John Adams wrote in 1818:

The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different, there was so great a variety of religions, they were composed of so many different nations, their customs, manners, and habits had so little resemblance, and their intercourse had been so rare, and their knowledge of each other so imperfect, that to unite them in the same principles in theory and the same system of action, was certainly a very difficult enterprise.

And yet, against all odds, “Thirteen clocks were made to strike together — a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before effected.”

In the ensuing two centuries, the U.S. has welcomed millions of immigrants from every corner of the globe. As we seek to stitch together the fraying threads of common experience and values that are central to the preservation of the Union, it is useful to look at what drew these immigrants to the Golden Door.

The American Dream is often cast in material terms, but its true nature is much deeper. As James Truslow Adams wrote in 1931:

[The American Dream] is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

Waves of immigrants came to America with different customs, languages, skills, beliefs, and histories. However, their united purpose—a new life in a new land, one that offered opportunity and liberty, was and is stronger than their differences.

That’s why the first step in maintaining a united America is to acknowledge and honor our common ends.

Of course, it gets harder from there; for while we understand that we share a common set of goals as Americans, it is inescapable that we view distinct means as pathways to those ends.  Sometimes these disagreements will be intractable. There is, after all, no daylight between those who believe that LGBT Americans deserve equal protection of the laws and those who believe that discrimination on account of sexual orientation should be legal.

More often than not, however, there is room for experimentation, for trial and error, for pragmatic (rater than ideological) efforts to change policy. Most Americans agree that a building block of society is that children receive a high quality education. And while you may hear otherwise from various interest groups, the truth is that nobody knows exactly how to achieve that and no group has a monopoly on good ideas.

Instead of bowing to vitriolic attacks on the very character of those who disagree with us about the means, we should remember the foundational commonality of purpose and seek to further different ideas simultaneously in an effort to get at scalable solutions to serious problems.

 

Workers at CCC Camp, Liberty Island, NY, 1935

This effort is made more difficult by our propensity to live, work, and socialize in relatively homogenous bubbles. In fact, technology—which in many ways has brought the world closer together than ever before—will continue to have the paradoxical effect of dividing us, unless we calibrate it to nudge people toward ideas/people different from themselves (see generally, Cass Sunstein's Republic.com 2.0).

We ought not assume, however, that technology can save us from ourselves. Rather, an understanding of and respect for one another must go far deeper than the “newsfeed” or promoted tweet of the day.

It starts early, by bringing together children of different backgrounds in furtherance of common goals. But it shouldn’t end there. My grandfather, Louis Airoldi, was one of over 3 million young American men to participate in the Civilian Conservation Corps—a program that not only built many of our cherished national treasures, but also brought together people of very different backgrounds in furtherance of a common goal.

As author Jonathan Alter told PBS’ American Experience, “The CCC Corps members…were thrust together, sent out from whatever neighborhood they came from, out into the countryside, put in these barracks. And they had to learn how to deal with each other. The only thing they had in common was that they were poor. And they needed a job.”

The anecdotal experience of team-building from the CCC camp has been reaffirmed by studies suggesting that tasking individuals with a common goal or purpose leads them to develop team-like relationships that otherwise may not have taken place.

While we lack the material urgency of the Depression, we are experiencing signs of a different kind of malaise—declining social institutions, a deep sense of “otherness”, and an inability to speak to, rather than beyond, one another. We may not need a second CCC to put people to work, but we could certainly use a second CCC (or equivalent public service program) to bring women and men together in furtherance of a common purpose greater than themselves.

But beyond any big program or new initiative, what is needed more than anything else is for leaders to set an example for the nation by employing a dialogue of understanding and respect; embracing a self-effacing modesty about the truth of one’s own values and beliefs and eschewing the politics of party for the politics of the possible.

In the West Wing episode Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, President Josiah Bartlet (a New Hampshire liberal) approaches Senator Max Lobell (a conservative Republican) about an issue of mural interest. The dialogue reads:

President Bartlet: We agree on nothing, Max.

Senator Lobell: Yes, sir.

President Bartlet: Education, guns, drugs, school prayer, gays, defense spending, taxes - you name it, we disagree.

Senator Lobell: You know why?

President Bartlet: Because I'm a lily-livered, bleeding-heart, liberal, egghead communist.

Senator Lobell: Yes, sir. And I'm a gun-toting, redneck son-of-a-bitch.

President Bartlet: Yes, you are.

Senator Lobell: We agree on that.

President Bartlet: We also agree on campaign finance.

Senator Lobell: Yes, sir.

After President Bartlet secures Lobell’s promise to support his nominees to the Federal Election Commission, Lobell asks, “And what do I get in exchange?” Bartlet responds, “The thanks of a grateful President.”

We may live in a cynical age, where the no-holes-barred, backroom backstabbing of House of Cards reflects our current belief (or lack thereof) in the state of politics. But the truth is that the “better angels of our nature” are in line with the hope and aspiration of The West Wing—the type of hope that has long embodied the American Experience; the type of hope that will ensure that the Experience long endures.

Smart Gun Technology—Saving Lives and Affirming the 2nd Amendment

Between 1999-2010, over 364,000 people in the U.S. died from firearms. 4,698 of those victims were aged 0-14 and 30,940 were teenagers 15-19. 1,880 were unintentional deaths.

-- Centers for Disease Control

In the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 ruling District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Court held, by a 5-4 vote, that a prohibition on handguns in the home violated the Second Amendment (the Court later extended its ruling to the States in McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 3025 (2010)).

While this interpretation of the right to bear arms was hotly contested, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, stressed that the Second Amendment left room for reasonable gun safety regulation. “We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country…The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.”

To that end, in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, Massachusetts legislators commissioned a report on ways to improve the Bay State’s already tough gun laws. That report, from the Committee to Reduce Firearm Violence, was released last month. It includes 44 steps the Commonwealth can take to strengthen gun safety, including enrolling Massachusetts in a national mental health database for screening potential gun buyers, improving firearm training, and strengthening oversight of secondary market transactions.

However, with the exception of floating an idea to offer a tax credit for the purchase of gun safes (Massachusetts law requires safe storage of guns in the home), there is nary little mention of the role technology can play in common sense gun regulation.

In recent years, technology has made our cars, homes, drugs, and heavy equipment safer. And it is high time that we exploit technology to make our guns safer, too.

Truth is that safety technology has been part of the gun industry since the 19^th century, when Springfield, Mass.-based Smith & Wesson pioneered the grip safety—a lever that the user would depress in order to make the trigger operable. Think of it as the firearm version of the childproof pillbox. Indeed, as the company’s 1895 marketing manual put it, “One very important feature of this arrangement is the safety of the [fire]arm in the hands of children, as no ordinary child under eight years of age can possibly discharge it.”

Today, smart gun technology is more advanced than ever, with companies using radio frequency identification (RFID) and finger/palmprint technology to create “personalized guns” that can only be fired by authorized users. This innovation promises to save the lives of children who unintentionally get a hold of a poorly-stored weapon as well as law enforcement, who could no longer be harmed if an assailant stole the officer’s service weapon.

And yet, while it would seem that technology designed to reduce the hundreds of unintentional deaths by firearms annually (including many children) would engender consensus among gun control advocates and Second Amendment enthusiasts alike, that is no longer the case, as the National Rifle Association (NRA) has radicalized.

In the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings in April 1999, the NRA went apoplectic at the mere idea that Smith & Wesson would invest in smart gun technology—stating that the company had raised “the white flag of surrender.”

Just this month, when a California gun store became the first in the nation to market personalized weapons (technology that has been in use abroad for years), backlash from “gun rights” activists was so furious that the store dropped the product.

This fear of government overreach has played out even in deep-blue Massachusetts, where applications for Class A firearm permits (a “license to carry”) are rising in communities throughout Essex and Middlesex counties (including double-digit increases in Billerica, Burlington, Middleton and Rowley).

But common sense gun safety measures can save lives and protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans. Supporting promising personalization technology is one way to do just that. Indeed, just as the government and the auto industry invested billions of dollars to transform safety on our highways (see chart from Bloomberg)—from seat-belts and airbags to anti-lock brakes and improved lighting—so the private and public sectors must make similar investments in smart gun tools.

Specifically, government should subsidize business investment in smart gun technology (including through competitive grants/contests, as tech venture capitalist Ron Conway has recently done) as well as offer tax incentives for the consumer purchase of these new devices.

Tax Time, Part IV: Retirement Security for the 21st Century

“Properly integrated, they may be looked upon as a three-legged stool affording solid and well-rounded protection for the citizen.”

-- Reinhard A. Hohaus, actuary, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 1949

Last year, the National Institute for Retirement Savings released a report showing that the average working household has virtually no retirement savings. In fact, as shown in the chart below, NIRS found that the median retirement account balance is $3,000 for all working-age households and $12,000 for near-retirement households.

There are many reasons why this crisis has come to past, but one of them has been the steady erosion of the “third leg” of the American retirement stool: the defined-benefit pension. In 1975, there were 2.4 participants in defined benefit pension plans for every one participant in a defined contribution plan (Department of Labor, 2007). However, by 2011, Treasury Department data showed that out of $11.2 trillion of private pension assets, only 21 percent were maintained in defined benefit plans, with the remainder held in defined contribution plans (36 percent) and IRAs (43 percent).

However, the decline in DB pensions—while of great concern to many on the political Left—is not the only contributor to America’s retirement problem. A major reason for the lack of savings is the fact that many American families do not earn sufficient wages in the first place to set aside money for retirement, particularly with stagnant wage growth over the last 20 years.

Furthermore, our tax code also does working-class Americans few favors. Let’s take a closer look at the code and what can be done to boost security for working class Americans.

Last year, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that nearly 2/3 of the benefits of the retirement tax incentives went to the top 1/5 of U.S. income earners (see chart, left).

Despite noble and consistent efforts by federal, state, and local governments to boost financial literacy and encourage individuals to open retirement accounts, low-income Americans who have retirement accounts continue to be the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, as of 2010, only 1 in 9 Americans in the bottom 1/5 of income had a retirement account, while nearly 8 in 9 at the top 1/5 had such an account.

While far from a panacea for the retirement security crisis, universal savings plans offer an elegant solution. Legislators on both sides of the political spectrum have long embraced these plans.

In 2006, Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA), Jon Corzine (D-NJ), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Jim DeMint (R-SC) proposed the ASPIRE Act, which would have would have automatically opened a KIDS Account for every child assigned a Social Security number. The account would be funded with a one-time $500 contribution, and children in households earning below national median income would be eligible for up to an additional $500.

In a similar vein, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) proposed PLUS Accounts that would be automatically opened for citizens born after 12/31/07 and funded with a one-time $1,000 contribution. The PLUS program would have later expanded to all U.S. citizens under the age of 65 and included mandatory, pre-tax contributions of 1% of each worker’s income (the worker could choose to contribute up to 10%). Under the Session plan, employers would also be required to contribute at least 1% (and up to 10%) of earnings.

While the Tea Party has made such automatic savings/retirement accounts anathema to many in the GOP, these universal, automatic plans continue to be one of our best hopes for helping boost retirement savings for all Americans—particularly those at the bottom end of the income scale. Indeed, according to the Brookings Institution, these types of automatic savings systems “have proven remarkably effective in raising 401(k) participation rates,” particularly for populations that are traditionally vulnerable to retirement insecurity, including women, Hispanics, and low-income Americans (see chart, below).

In addition, Congress must make the “Saver’s Credit” refundable to encourage additional savings by lower-income families. The credit provides a tax credit of up to $1,000 (up to $2,000 if filing jointly) on eligible contributions to a qualified retirement plan, an eligible deferred compensation plan, or an IRA. However, because it is non-refundable, it provides no incentive for nearly 50 million households that have no income tax liability.

Lastly, we need to change our eligibility rules for public benefits so that low-income Americans should not be needlessly penalized for making smart decisions to plan for retirement. For instance, in New York, the asset cap for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) does not exclude retirement savings.

By creating new carrots to nudge low-income families to save when possible and eliminating needlessly cruel sticks that penalize these families for prudent financial planning, we can work to build new legs of a retirement stool for the 21^st century.

An Olympic Sized Problem: Sewer Overflow in NYC + A Path Forward

As the first great snow melt of winter hits NYC, let's look ahead to the big Spring Thaw and what comes with it: combined sewer overflows (CSO).  CSOs are one of the City's most pressing environmental problems. Every year, 27 billion gallons of untreated sewage (that’s 41,000 Olympic-size swimming pools for those watching Sochi) is diverted into New York City’s waterways—from Flushing Bay and Newtown Creek to the Hudson River and New York Harbor.

CSOs occur when the City’s sewer system is overwhelmed by rainwater/snow melt—which unfortunately, doesn’t take much. Indeed, as little as a tenth of an inch of rain can render most of the waterfront and its beaches unsafe for recreation.

Today, I want to look at what New York City is doing to address the problem, focusing on permeable pavement, and offer an additional policy initiative that should supplement the City’s plans.

Permeable pavement is an evolving technology that allows storm water to soak through the surface and be captured in underground reservoirs that feed back into the soil (see photo at left).

The New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation recently awarded a $1.2 million grant to NYC Department of Transportation for a pilot of permeable pavement in College Point, Queens. The project is set to be installed in April and will include three types of permeable pavement, which will be compared to standard asphalt for their relative benefits.

If the pilot proves successful, the City will move ahead with implementing 80 sites by 2020 and 400-800 by 2030, in accordance with PlaNYC, which also includes the installation of inflatable dams in Red Hook and Williamsburg, bioswales, and other “green” infrastructure.

New York is a clear leader among American cities in addressing CSO’s, but I think New York City needs go beyond what is currently planned as part of the PlaNYC effort to address the significant percentage of non-permeable surfaces that exist on private property. As shown in the chart at right, while one-third of the City’s impervious surface area are publicly-controlled streets and sidewalks, nearly half the area is buildings, most of which are privately owned.

To that end, I want to plug an idea developed by a colleague of mine at the NYC Comptroller’s office, Dr. Stephen Corson. Steve’s idea is for the City to develop a series of incentives to nudge private property owners to install new permeable surfaces on residential or commercial lots. This could have a transformational effect on the City’s CSOs, helping to divert billions of gallons of runoff from our waterways.

Sustainable Yards NYC, with assistance from the City of New York’s Institute for Sustainable Cities, found that NYC has 52,236 acres (304 sq miles) of residential yard space—more than a quarter of New York City’s total land area.  Many of these yard spaces are located between row houses, away from street views. 

Heretofore, there has been no effort undertaken to measure how much of this space (or other surface areas) is paved and how much is permeable. However, a study conducted by Sustainable Yards NYC and CUNY on one UWS residential block provides a preview of what such a survey might find. 

Only 35 percent of the residential yard space measured on the one block (containing 44 rowhouses, 5 apartment buildings and 7 flats) was found to be permeable.  Nevertheless, even that modest amount of permeable space was estimated to have diverted over 50,000 gallons of rainwater from the sewer system in 2009 (in addition to trapping 8822 pounds of carbon dioxide that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere).

Step one in this effort would be for the City to commission a study that will identify all privately owned non-permeable surfaces areas in the five boroughs. Following that study, the City should work with the State to develop tax-incentive programs to use carrots and sticks to nudge private property owners to do their part to reduce CSOs and make NYC a model for other cities to follow.

Cupid's Arrow: Consolidating Governments to Save Taxpayer Money

This Valentine’s Day, let’s train Cupid’s Arrow at local governments in New York and Massachusetts—a surefire way to streamline services and save taxpayer money.

New York State has over 10,000 local governments—cities, towns, villages, counties, special water districts, sewer districts, fire districts, etc. These overlapping jurisdictions impose significant and unnecessary administrative and operating costs on the public, leading the Empire State to have the highest property taxes in the nation.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has taken concrete steps to nudge municipalities to consolidate services—or, perhaps more directly, to provide an incentive for citizens to push for consolidation forcefully at the ballot box.

The Governor announced his latest consolidation initiative in his State of the State address last month. The plan creates a two-year freeze on property taxes for upstate municipalities that have agreed to abide by a 2 percent property tax cap. In year one, homeowners earning under $500,000 would receive a 2 percent tax rebate simply for living in a community that respected the tax cap. In the second year, homeowners would only qualify for the credit if their municipality submits a plan to consolidate or share services with their neighbors that saves 1 percent of the levy a year for three years.

While the push for consolidation has been opposed by unions representing municipal workers—who understandably fear the loss of jobs that comes with greater efficiency—the long term effects on the economy of upstate New York should be positive. Instead of having individuals duplicate efforts town by town, those people will gravitate toward more productive employment. Phasing in consolidation via attrition may be one way to achieve a compromise with unions, while securing long-term savings.

In addition to nudging local governments toward consolidation, the State should take steps to eliminate red tape that prevents counties from exploring joint procurement of health insurance and other goods/services. As Stephen Acquario, the executive director of the New York State Association of Counties, told City and State, “There is no reason why a county should not be authorized to reach out to towns, villages, cities, school districts and centralize procurement of health insurance for all of the local governments within its jurisdiction.”

New York is perhaps the most egregious example of the proliferation of government. However, Bay State is not immune from this waste. While Massachusetts eliminated most county government between 1997-2000 (sheriffs and county courts remain vestiges of the old guard), additional progress can and should be made.

To that end, Governor Deval Patrick launched the Community Innovation Challenge (CIC) grant program in 2012, designed to encourage sharing of services. In two years, the program has invested $6.25 million in 49 projects in 197 municipalities across the Commonwealth.

Last week, Hamilton and Wenham—long partners in running the Hamilton-Wenham Regional School District—received a CIC grant of $90,000 to continue their efforts in forming the State’s first-ever combined Public Facilities and Infrastructure Department. This continues a trend of shared service delivery by the two towns, which included the opening of Massachusetts’ first joint library in 2001.

All too often, conservatives lead this type of streamlining. But the truth is that efficient government is even more important for liberals, who believe that government should play a central role in ensuring opportunity for all, investing in public infrastructure, and enacting policy to protect the environment and strengthen the middle class. After all, if we want the public to place its trust in government's ability to invest their hard-earned money, we must do everything we can to make every dollar count.

Part-Time Workers and the Affordable Care Act

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/opinion/fewer-benefits-for-targets-part-timers.html

The New York Times editorial board recently noted that Target (and many other retailers) are taking steps to eliminate health insurance for workers and move part-time employees to the health exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act.

While the Times is right to worry about whether the employees are receiving anything in return from Target for the drop in coverage (greater take-home pay, for instance), the fact that businesses are moving away from employer-sponsored coverage and toward greater use of the exchanges is precisely what was conceived when the ACA was drafted.

Indeed, Target’s decision to move part-time employees to the Exchange signals how the ACA is already nudging (hat tip: Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler) America away from an employer-based health insurance system that is both a product of historical accident and an outlier from the rest of the world.

This system—which emerged due to wage controls imposed during World War II—is inefficient and inflexible. It fails to take advantage the economies of scale enjoyed by Medicare and thwarts mobility by tying a family’s health coverage to a particular job.

In the end, while the unwinding of Byzantine systems invariably saddles some with increased costs, the ultimate goal—of an America where health care is a human right rather than a corporate privilege—is surely worth that cost. In the years to come, it is that transformational shift-- and not a poorly-rolled out website-- that will stand as the ACA’s greatest legacy.