Public Policy Commons^™

The Sargent Governorship: Leader And Legacy, Richard A. Hogarty

New England Journal of Public Policy

Following in the long line of succession of his predecessors, Francis W. Sargent served as the sixty-third governor of Massachusetts. A lifelong Republican, he was a man of character and sterling Yankee blue-blood lineage with the stature of a political independent. Grappling with a series of hot political issues and braving the passions and divisions spawned by the war in Vietnam, he was one of the ablest and most intriguing men ever to be governor. He worked hard at knowing his constituents and their concerns, but he did not always provide them with easy answers. Several new ideas were transformed …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

When you receive this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy, we should be crossing the threshold from millennium mania to millennium madness. The former has concerned itself almost exclusively with the etiquette of millennium rites, where one ought to be on the occasion itself — embracing the starlit grandeur of the ancient pyramids, as if to remind ourselves that some things preceded the outgoing millennium and even exceeded the achievements of our own: in the silence of a Tibetan monastery to contemplate in serenity the philosophical implications of the momentous transition and reflect perhaps on the …

The Mechtech Program: An Education And Training Model For The Next Century, Robert Forrant

New England Journal of Public Policy

The small-firm metalworking industry is routinely characterized by cutthroat competition and fierce privacy. Yet, since the late 1980s, the members of the western Massachusetts chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association have participated in an education, training, and technology diffusion network characterized by a high degree of interfirm cooperation. Hundreds of workers and managers have take part in group training sessions and seminars. The reconstruction of the skill base is central to the MechTech apprenticeship program through which apprentices spend four years in participating firms, exiting the program as licensed machinists, tool and die makers, or moldmakers. In an …

Making Family Leave More Affordable In Massachusetts: The Temporary Disability Insurance Model, Jillian P. Dickert

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

The passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993 was a milestone in the development of America’s basic labor standards. But many realized that the Act—which guaranteed 12 weeks unpaid leave for employees of large businesses—was only a cautious first step. The US continues to lag far behind most other nations in providing paid time off for employees needing to care for family members or their own non-work-related illnesses.

States have begun to examine ways to expand both federal and state family and medical leave policies to make them accessible to more workers. State Temporary Disability Insurance …

Research To Practice: Working It Out: Workplace Experiences Of Individuals With Hiv And Individuals With Cancer, Sheila Fesko

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

This brief describes the experiences of individuals with these illnesses, underlines similarities and differences between the two groups, and provides strategies for disclosure, support, and personal advocacy in the workplace.

Policy Brief: Provisions In The Workforce Investment Act Describing The Interplay Between Workforce Investment Systems And Vocational Rehabilitation Programs, Robert Silverstein

Policy Briefs Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

This brief identifies the sections in Title I of the Workforce Investment Act that specifically reference the state VR program, individuals with disabilities, and organizations representing individuals with disabilities.

Housing For All: Addressing The Housing Needs Of Massachusetts' North Shore Residents, Theresa Mason, Elaine Werby, Caroline Coscia, Lisa Ward, Donna Friedman

Center for Social Policy Publications

The aim of this report is to support North Shore efforts to build a regional approach to housing.

The report explores the housing needs of people who are caught in the squeeze between low incomes and high housing costs. The report has two goals:

1. to provide information for understanding the need to expand below market rate housing;
2. to illustrate that need by providing detailed documentation on the situation in Gloucester, Peabody, and Salem.

The report is not intended to propose solutions, but to provide groundwork for solutions.

Institute Brief: Recreation In The Community, Maria Paiewonsky, Susan Tufts

The Institute Brief Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Recommendations from community recreation providers on how to include youth with disabilities in recreation programs.

Research To Practice: The Successes And Struggles Of Closing A Facility-Based Employment Service, John Butterworth, Sheila Fesko

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

A brief overview of findings from the Conversion to Integrated Employment monographs.

Institute Brief: Quality Employment Services: Will You Know It When You See It?, David Hoff

The Institute Brief Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Guidelines and steps for people with disabilities to evaluate agencies in order to receive services that best meet their individual needs.

Research To Practice: Barriers To Transition Planning For Parents Of Adolescents With Special Health Care Needs, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons, James P. Mcintyre Jr., Jean Whitney-Thomas, John Butterworth, Deborah Allen

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

An examination of the transition planning experiences and concerns of family members of young adults with special health care needs.

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

This is the next to last issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy before we usher in the new millennium. In the coming year the word itself will go through many uses, many permutations of meaning, be subject of so much tendentious punditry, idiotic speculation, inane commentary, and pompous prognostications that it will have been sucked dry of meaning, and we will be left with a plethora of "millennium specials" and "the top one hundred of the millennium" in everything from cat food to human diet fads, and of course your perennial millennium "special sales" and "personalities of …

Research To Practice: Employing People With Disabilities: Small Business Concerns And Recommendations, Oce Harrison

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Survey results from Massachusetts small businesses regarding hiring and employing people with disabilities.

Tools For Inclusion: Americans With Disabilities Act (Ada) Title 1: Employment, Joe Marrone

Tools for Inclusion Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Brief overview of the concepts and scope of the Americans with Disabilities Act, plus resource lists.

A Policy Brief: Massachusetts (T)Afdc Case Closings, October 1993-August 1997, Donna Friedman, Emily Douglas, Michelle Hayes, Mary Ann Allard

Center for Social Policy Publications

When a DTA (Department of Transitional Assistance) worker assesses whether a family's (T)AFDC (Temporary Aid to Families with Dependent Children) case will be closed, s/he decides which one of 67 different codes best describes the reason cash benefits for the household will be stopped. To carry out the analyses, we sorted all of the 67 codes into clusters of codes that logically grouped together: Cluster I, Increased Income; Cluster H, Sanctions; Cluster III, Eligible Persons Moved; Cluster IV, Fraud; Cluster V, Client Request; Cluster VI, No Longer Eligible; Cluster VII, Other or Multiple Meanings. The Appendix displays a description of …

Research To Practice: Grant Development And Decision-Making: Comparison Of Funding Agencies And Community-Based Minority Organizations, Institute For Community Inclusion, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

This report compares the perspectives of government funding agencies and community-based minority organizations on grant development and decision-making, and gives recommendations on how these groups can work together effectively to fund disability programs.

Research To Practice: Disability Organizations' Perspectives On The Needs Of Youth With Disabilities Who Are Runaway Or Homeless, David Temelini, Sheila Fesko

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Findings from a national survey of state-level disability organizations on issues regarding runaway or homeless youth who have disabilities.

What Predicts Success In Jtpa?: Test Of A Three-Component Model, Carolyn Ball

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), an education and training program to assist the economically disadvantaged, is one of sixty or more programs Congress is considering consolidating. This program had great success in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but its value and support have been declining. This author examines whether JTPA should continue through a test of three employment theories: discrimination, signaling, and human investment using data from Maine's JTPA program. Findings indicate that while the program can reduce discriminatory barriers and negative signals such as welfare status, it does not consistently succeed as a training investment. Enrollment in …

Is Boston Becoming A Branch-Plant Town?, Lawrence Franko

New England Journal of Public Policy

A decade ago, Boston appeared to be emerging as a headquarters city for a large number of world-class enterprises. Notwithstanding the recovery from the early-1990s recession, and a thriving entrepreneurial economy of business acorns, Boston today seems on its way to becoming largely a branch-plant town. None of the 1980s Massachusetts Miracle saplings or the more recent acorns have grown into mighty corporate oaks headquartered here. This article discusses the risks of having our current prosperity increasingly based on branch plants acquired or established by firms centered elsewhere. Its concern is based on the proposition that having big-business corporate headquarters …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Readers of this journal will have noticed an increasing emphasis on the impacts of globalization in recent issues. Not only has it become the mantra of the last years of the dying millennium, it is being presented as an elixir of unbounded possibilities, a process that will, with the help of some undefined alchemy, make the twenty-first century fulfill the promises and potential that somehow got lost or marginalized in the tumultuous upheavals of the twentieth. Yet its implications are largely unknown, the pace and speed of change are laboratory equations, and the unintended consequences of our hubris in our …

Governing Massachusetts Public Schools: Assessing The 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act, John Portz

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 created a number of important changes in public education. In the area of local governance, the act was guided by a corporate model in which authority and responsibilities were reallocated among school committees, superintendents, principals, and newly created school councils. School committees in particular assumed a policymaking role, and superintendents became the chief executive officers of their school districts. This article, based on responses to a mail survey, is an early assessment of the act's governance changes. Superintendents are most satisfied with their role, especially their authority over principals and teachers. School committee …

Industrial Policy: Federal, State, And Local Response, Zenia Kotval

New England Journal of Public Policy

During the past twenty years, many economists and policymakers have strongly advocated that the United States formulate a national industrial policy to improve the competitiveness of American firms in the global marketplace. These proposals call for both direct and indirect assistance to specific industrial sectors. Some would contend that U.S. industrial policies are being challenged by newer growth theories that shift the focus from the nation as the basic unit of industrial geography to regions and municipalities. There is little argument about the need for industrial policies that tie national, state, and local initiatives together. However, confusion and disagreement exist …

The Professional Decline Of Physicians In The Era Of Managed Care, Aimee E. Marlow

New England Journal of Public Policy

Physicians have long enjoyed prestige, power, and autonomy, but the rise of managed care organizations has drastically changed their status. Many doctors are in thrall to the financial well-being of the corporations that employ them, their knowledge and expertise controlled and manipulated in the interest of profit maximization. This article investigates the professional decline of physicians, citing the use of gag clauses, incentives to withhold care, and the breakdown of their authority. In an effort to regain some measure of control, physicians have taken their concerns to the public, supporting state and federal legislation that attempts to curb questionable managed …

Institutional Design And Regulatory Performance: Rethinking State Certificate Of Need Programs, Robert Hackey, Peter Fuller

New England Journal of Public Policy

The success of state efforts to control rising health care costs depends on the incentives contained in the legislative design of regulatory policies and in the administrative capacity and autonomy of state agencies. States have regulated the construction and expansion of health care facilities and services for more than two decades through "certificate of need" (CON) programs designed to limit the diffusion of expensive new medical technologies and to avoid the duplication of health care facilities. Although the cost-control record of state certificate of need programs has been widely criticized, Rhode Island's experience with a reformed CON process from 1985 …

Citizen Participation And Strategic Planning For An Urban Enterprise Community, Michael Leo Owens

New England Journal of Public Policy

Public policies rarely have single objectives. For the federal Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities initiative, bettering the socioeconomic opportunity structure among a collection of the nation's low-income areas is only one of its goals. Another initiative objective is to foster the representation of common citizens, especially residents, in the planning and implementation of strategies and programs designed to redevelop these low-income areas. Strategic community planning was the method chosen by the initiative's designers to achieve both objectives. This article, which makes use of the case study approach, addresses strategic community planning as an instrument of advancing citizen representation in urban …

Research To Practice: The Most Important Member: Facilitating The Focus Person's Participation In Person Centered Planning, Jean Whitney-Thomas, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

This brief summarizes research that explored the participation of young people in person centered planning, and gives specific recommendations to assist facilitators in maximizing student participation.

Research To Practice: Building Authentic Visions: How To Support The Focus Person In Person Centered Planning, Jean Whitney-Thomas, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

This brief summarizes research on behavior during a planning session that increased or decreased participation of the focus person. Recommendations challenge team members to think about how their own behavior influences the focus person's participation.

The Potential Impact Of Workforce Development Legislation On Cbos, Edwin Meléndez

New England Journal of Public Policy

The proposed congressional legislation revamping the employment and training system will result in budget cuts, program consolidation, and block grants for the states. These changes are potentially harmful to community-based organizations (CBOs) because (J ) they eliminate categorical funding that traditionally has required contracting with organizations which specialize in servicing the disadvantaged, and (2) they introduce stricter performance standards that may be unattainable for many small-scale operations. However, the adoption of best practices in serving non-English-speaking and poor populations, increasing connections to emerging government intermediaries in labor markets, and establishing greater linkages to postsecondary educational institutions may offer CBOs the …

From Welfare To What?: The Limitations Of Low-Income Work, Lande Ajose

New England Journal of Public Policy

The premise of the welfare law enacted by Congress is that people living in poverty could vastly improve their economic status if only they were employed. The author argues that economic security for welfare recipients will not be realized simply by increasing the labor-force attachment. Home health aides comprise an occupation that could absorb many of the large pool of workers expected to join the labor market because demand for their services is high and barriers to entry are low. However, as this survey shows, the home health field offers limited promise to welfare recipients because, significantly for women rolling …

Foreword, Andrés Torres, James Green

New England Journal of Public Policy

Many important debates about public policy at the national level and in states like Massachusetts have centered on health care and human services, including welfare and the care of children, the abused, the disabled, the elderly, and those suffering from mental and physical illness. In this issue scholars and advocates examine a range of problems in the health care and human service fields from a perspective often lacking in the public policy discussion — that of the workforce and of the labor organizations that represent the workforce.