Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Economic Status Of Blacks In Boston, James E. Blackwell

Trotter Review

In recent years, special attention has been given to problems of racism in Boston. Without question, highly publicized steps have been taken by civic, business, religious, and neighborhood groups to combat racism, bigotry and discrimination. Frequently, these initiatives have also been supported by municipal and state governments or administrations. Strategies for improving the racial climate in Boston, initiated by the Covenant for Racial Justice, the Boston Committee, the Coalition for a Better Boston, and now, the newly created PARTNERSHIP, as well as some pronouncements of Mayor Flynn and Governor Dukakis administrations must be applauded. However, despite such courses of actions, …

State Management Systems: The Case For Internal Controls, Joseph A. Mchugh

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article contends that recent managerial improvements in the federal government can and should be replicated by the states. Although effective internal controls in federal agencies and programs had been mandated in 1950, little progress was made until the late seventies and early eighties, when Congress enacted several laws to strengthen federal financial management and the executive branch initiated a modernization program. This happy confluence of events brought significant improvements to federal management as a whole. Now it's time for similar progress in state operations. State and even local administrators should adopt the best features of the federal model in …

Youth And Jobs: A Bibliography Of Publications, 1980-1986, With Selected Annotations, James E. Blackwell, William J. Stracqualursi

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

This working bibliography of publications on youth employment and unemployment covers the period between 1980 and mid-1986. It is designed to be of assistance to researchers seeking a reference tool that may facilitate their research and/or expedite efforts to review recent literature on the complex subject of youth employment, unemployment and outreach initiatives intended to address the problem.

The areas encompassed by this document attest to the magnitude and scope of the problem of moving young people into the labor market. Assuming a need to be able to work through the maze of studies on youth and work, a plan …

Mature Industrial Communities: The Realities Of Reindustrialization, Jeanne H. Armstrong, John R. Mullin

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article analyzes the reindustrialization problems facing mature-industry communities in Massachusetts. The findings are based upon our planning consulting work and research projects involving forty cities and towns. The range of these communities includes those which have recovered, are on their way to recovery, and are stable; those which are declining; and those whose status is indeterminate. A variety of factors are reviewed, including unionization; work-force characteristics; the relationship between small and large plants; the characteristics of local companies; location; financing; the availability of land; and the role of local planning. Finally, we present recommendations concerning local action and possible …

Trust, Self-Interest, And Representation In Economic Policymaking: Rhode Island Reconsidered, Thomas J. Anton, Darrell M. West

New England Journal of Public Policy

Industrial policy has become an increasingly central focus of political debate as American society struggles with new and troubling economic realities. Yet despite the importance of this subject, little is known about how the public gains or processes information on these matters, or about the evaluative standards used to judge industrial-policy proposals. A recent referendum in Rhode Island offered a unique opportunity to study these questions. Citizens participated directly in the debate over new industrial policy by soundly rejecting the Greenhouse Compact, a novel and comprehensive plan to "reindustrialize" Rhode Island. Here we report the results of a public opinion …

The Fund For New England: A New Environmental Philanthropy, Charles H. W. Foster

New England Journal of Public Policy

New England has a new, regional philanthropy, the Fund for New England, which is concerned with the advancement of natural resources and environment in the six-state region. The fund is one of a class of new regional environmental funds/trusts that are emerging across the country. The history of New England's own effort is described at the outset of the article, which also explores the experience and potential of the fund and its national counterparts with regard to advancing the novel concept of contributions in lieu of environmental fines. Finally, the process followed in establishing and operating the fund is examined …

Remembering Who We Were: Boston Books, 1986, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Shaun O'Connell's essay, "Remembering Who We Were," gives a Boston perspective to our search for self, identity, and possibility. For its writers, he concludes, "Boston remains a vibrant state of mind, an occasion for sustained verbal reflection, a site of personal and cultural conflict, a city still in the making." And while there may be anxieties "beneath its high-tech prosperity, its high-style glitz and its political clout ... over the separations between the people we once were and those we have become or those we might become" — that "might" will be immeasurably strengthened if policymakers adhere to policies that …

Originally From Dorchester: Arrivals And Departures In A Neighborhood, Kathleen Kilgore

New England Journal of Public Policy

In "Originally from Dorchester," her portrait of a neighborhood that wrestled — and continues to wrestle — with problems of race, ethnicity, cultural values, economic development, and mobility, Kathleen Kilgore captures the nuances of the small gesture, whether of defiance or gentility, that reveal the underside of social conflict more eloquently than databases or court findings. "The neighborhood," Kilgore writes, "weakened and aged, and forcibly resisted change." But it then began to adapt, the influx of the young and the upwardly mobile providing a lifeline that facilitated a process of renewal and accommodation, in which, in the best sense, diversity …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Less than ten years ago, the Sun Belt states were the focus of the kind of excessive attention we have come to associate with our propensity to assign cause, time, place, and date to account for little-understood social phenomena. The decline of the Northeast was virtually irreversible, according to the new wisdom, the rise of the West and Southwest obviously inevitable. Change had more to do with "the mysterious hand of Providence" or the caprice of oil sheiks than with policy — we prefer being comforted, it seems, to being informed.

Explanations of our condition that reinforce our perceived beliefs …

Residential Tax Exemption Policies: Trends, Impacts And Future Options For Boston, Joseph S. Slavet, Raymond G. Torto

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

This is an extensive report on residential tax exemption issues in the City of Boston with an evaluation of recently proposed revisions in current policies.

News & Views - Vol. 05, No. 04 - November 10, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 05, No. 03 - October 14, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 05, No. 02 - September 15, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 05, No. 01 - September 2, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

Imagining Boston: The City As Image And Experience, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

I want to discuss community and imagery, social division and literary unity, Boston poetry and prose. In most issues of NEJPP I will focus upon those recent books that fire our imaginations and help us shape our sense of local and regional place. In this issue, however, I want to look back at the tradition of imagery that resonates in Boston's history. Old ideas of Boston are quickly being buried under layers of architectural and cultural renewal. While the suburbs become more urbanized and the commuter roads more clogged, downtown Boston is in the midst of the greatest building boom …

Managing Change: Reflections On Innovation In The Public Sector, Ira A. Jackson, Jane P. O'Hern

New England Journal of Public Policy

In January 1983, when Governor Michael S. Dukakis appointed Ira Jackson as commissioner of revenue, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was facing an estimated $300 million deficit. The state was also suffering from a severe loss of public confidence in the integrity of its tax administration. His first and most urgent priority being the restoration of that confidence, Commissioner Jackson implemented a three-part strategy to improve voluntary compliance with the tax laws: raising the stakes for evaders, treating honest taxpayers as customers rather than victims, and changing public attitudes about tax evasion. Productivity gains and innovative procedures at the Department of …

Demographic Trends In Boston: Some Implications For Municipal Services, Margaret O'Brien

New England Journal of Public Policy

The City of Boston is gaining in population during the 1980s, after several decades of loss. During the current decade and beyond, population trends will bring increases in the number of children, adults between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four, and those aged seventy-five and over, along with declines among the older teenagers and college-age population, the more mature adults, and the younger elderly. A recent analysis of the income distribution indicates that while there were more well-to-do residents in Boston in 1985 than there were in 1980, there were also more poor and near poor. Average family income has …

The Reclamation Of Boston Harbor: A Scientist's Perspective, Gordon T. Wallace Jr.

New England Journal of Public Policy

A major effort, costing in the neighborhood of $2 billion, is under way to restore the environmental quality of Boston Harbor. While Boston Harbor is unquestionably one of the most polluted urban estuaries in the world, it is also one of the least understood with respect to the basic physics, chemistry, and biology involved. This information is essential for the purpose of identifying processes that control the transport, effect, and fate of contaminants entering the estuary. Failure to obtain this information may lead to continued inappropriate and unnecessarily expensive solutions to a complex environmental problem. An effective solution will require …

The Next Threshold: Higher Skills And The New England Economy, John C. Hoy

New England Journal of Public Policy

The history of the New England regional economy — its attenuated post-World War II decline and subsequent aggressive renewal — reveals an intensifying relationship between economic resurgence, the supply and continuing demand for professional manpower, and the results of academic research and development. The New England region has "outproduced" the rest of the nation in supplying professionally trained men and women, a leading factor not fully appreciated by those describing the region's robust economic health in the decade since Neal Peirce wrote The New England States. New England's "oversupply" in professional fields has given the high-tech and sophisticated services …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

In recent years, New England has done itself proud. The chronic post-World War II decline in its manufacturing sector has been replaced by what for the present at least continues to be a record growth in services directly and indirectly related to high technology and a continuing competitiveness in high technology itself. As a result, the region leads the nation in growth in per capita income and enjoys the lowest level of unemployment in the country as well. Self-congratulation, however, is too often a prescription for complacency, and complacency inhibits the kind of searching inquiry which assumes that economic miracles …

Poverty Amid Renewed Affluence: The Poor Of New England At Mid-Decade, Andrew M. Sum, Paul E. Harrington, William B. Goedicke, Robert Vinson

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article examines the problem of poverty in New England during the current period of economic prosperity. Major trends in the size and composition of the poor population within the region are analyzed. Striking changes in the relative incidence of poverty have occurred among families in New England. As the economy has moved toward full employment, poverty rates among husband-wife families in the region have fallen sharply. In contrast, female-headed families in New England have not benefited substantially from recent rapid increases in employment opportunities. The result has been a persistent trend toward the feminization of poverty in New England. …

News & Views - Vol. 04, No. 15 - June 16, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 04, No. 14 - May 19, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 04, No. 13 - April 18, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 04, No. 12 - April 7, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action: Problems And Perspectives, Clarence M. Pendleton

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

If I sound a little bit incoherent it is because I have only been in California for ten hours in the last three weeks, and that was just to change clothes and change bags and hug my little six-year-old tight and spend some time with my wife. I got back in last Tuesday night from a trip to the East Coast by way of Salt Lake City and got up at 2:00 a.m. to be at a local television show to be able to be on the "CBS Morning News." My options were slim-either go to New York and do …

Seniority And Affirmative Action: The Shadow Of Stotts, Drew S. Days Iii

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

The purpose of this paper is to discuss why I think the Reagan administration's avowed commitment to helping only "actual victims" of racial discrimination retards rather than advances the cause of civil rights. I make reference in my title to "seniority" and "the shadow of Stotts" because the current administration is relying upon Supreme Court decisions having to do with seniority, particularly its 1984 opinion in Memphis Firefighters v. Stotts, to justify a wholesale attack upon race-conscious remedies, not only in employment but in education and public contracting as well.

News & Views - Vol. 04, No. 11 - March 24, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action: Problems And Prospects, James Farmer

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

Affirmative action has had an interesting history. I, with no attempted modesty, claim to have proposed the idea to Lyndon Johnson in either late 1962 or early 1963 when he was vice president. The only person I known who would disagree with me on that is the late Whitney Young, and he is not present to voice his disagreement now. When I reported to the Council on United Civil Rights Leadership, the group that was called the "Big Six" or the "Big Four" by the media, that I had had such a meeting with Vice President Lyndon Johnson and had …

News & Views - Vol. 04, No. 10 - February 24, 1986, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.