The one thing ChatGPT can’t kill | Twisted rent control argument | Deadly Beacon Hill explosion, no resolution | About Contrarian Boston |
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What were they drinking? Odd 11th-hour Baker administration decisions raise eyebrows
State bureaucrats gone wild might be one way of describing Gov. Charlie Baker’s final weeks in office.
Administration officials launched a hare-brained plan, first reported here, to punish housing resistant suburbs by - wait for it - slashing local funding for apartments for the poor and elderly.
Then came surprise plans to acquire flood-prone Widett Circle in Boston for a rail yard, which will require the cash-strapped MBTA to fork over at least $100 million.
Now school districts across Massachusetts are bearing the brunt of another confounding decision made by the Baker administration on its way out the door, one that has some scaling back plans to add teachers and even contemplating painful cuts.
The state Operational Services Division has jacked up the amount school districts pay for private special ed programs for students with complex needs by a whopping 14 percent.
The increase by the obscure state agency came without warning and will force school districts to cough up an additional $92 million, according to one estimate. In previous years the increases were in the 1 to 2 percent range, Anna Nolin, superintendent of Natick schools, told Contrarian Boston.
The increase will cost Natick schools nearly $800,000 and chew up the district’s remaining federal relief money under the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA.
“It’s bonkers,” said Nolin, president of the New England Association of School Superintendents. “It just feels like a squeeze.”
Anna Nolin, Natick schools superintendent and president of the New England Association of School Superintendents.
To add insult to injury, private special ed programs, with extra state cash in hand, are now offering thousands in hiring bonuses as they compete with local public schools for a limited pool of special ed teachers and specialists, said Nolin and Daniel Gutekanst, Needham’s superintendent.
“What kind of galls me” is that “I thought they were struggling for cash and here they are offering $10,000 signing bonuses,” Gutekanst said.
Daniel Gutekanst, superintendent of Needham schools
With Baker gone, the big special ed tuition increase - and the disruption it has caused - is now the Healey administration’s headache to deal with.
Nolin, Gutekanst and other superintendents from across Eastern Massachusetts will meet with legislators on March 3 to consider fixes.
Stay tuned.
Top Democratic strategist offers puzzling take on Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s controversial rent control proposal
Here’s hoping Mary Anne Marsh isn’t advising the Boston mayor on the economics of rent control.
But given her prominence and cheerleading for Wu in the press, we wouldn’t bet on it.
A top executive at the influential Dewey Square Group, Marsh offered a novel argument on WCVB’s public affairs show this Sunday for capping rents in Boston.
Defying both logic and the facts, she dismissed concerns that resurrecting rent control would derail plans for new apartment buildings and towers.
Why? “Because they (developers) aren’t building anyway” and “anyway, they will always find an excuse not to build,” Marsh opined in a segment of On The Record.
That would be news to many people in Boston, who saw tens of thousands of new apartments and condos built over the past decade.
That is until about six months ago, or halfway into Wu’s first year in office.
The new housing numbers in Boston have fallen off a cliff since then amid surging interest rates, crazy construction costs and an uncertain economy.
But there have also been rising complaints from developers about Wu’s plan to bring back rent control, which comes even as the city hikes fees on new projects and raises affordable housing requirements.
But we are talking politics here, and Marsh is a skilled political operative.
It will be interesting to see if Wu adopts this blame-the developers-for-the-bad-news approach.
Given how bad the housing numbers are right now, she may have no other choice.
Here’s one thing we aren’t losing sleep over at Contrarian Boston: ChatGPT
Some journalists are clearly terrified they may soon lose their jobs to the AI writing app.
And if all you are doing is rewriting other people’s stories - and there are a lot of those faux news sites out there right now - then ChatGPT may very well be coming for your job.
However, AI is nowhere close to replicating how the human brain thinks, which is the core of journalism - or at least what was once considered journalism.
If you are doing true reporting, 75 percent of your time is spent listening, researching and coming up with good ideas, and then doing the work to nail them down.
The other quarter is the writing, which is the window dressing.
Now, we’ll concede that ChatGPT can mimic writing styles.
But here’s the thing: You actually need a writing style in the first place for it to copy.
At loggerheads: OSHA’s $333,560 fine of major utility in worker’s death on Beacon Hill remains unresolved
By Mark Pickering
Two Eversource workers were injured in a Beacon Hill explosion last summer; one ultimately died.
Now Eversource is disputing the official findings of the federal workplace safety agency, which has recently proposed a fine of $333,560 for the utility company.
Among other things, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation cited Eversource for five violations of workplace safety standards. The deadly explosion took place in an underground “electrical vault.”
“While we disagree with the conclusions reached by OSHA … we share a determination in learning from what happened to prevent future tragedies,” said Eversource spokeswoman Caroline Pretyman.
OSHA cited Eversource for two “willful” and three serious violations. The agency said that the incident occurred when “one employee set … equipment back into place, an arc flash and blast occurred inside the vault. The employee suffered severe burns and later died.”
Eversource could have prevented this “by ensuring effective and necessary training, procedures and work practices were provided and followed," said OSHA’s area director, James Mulligan. "The company knew the hazards related to this type of high voltage equipment, yet it failed to safeguard its employees as the law requires."
The deceased, Fabio Pires, was a member of the Utility Workers of America Local 369. The union’s website said Pires worked as an underground operating mechanic and had started at Eversource in 2016.
He was “conducting routine maintenance (on July 12) when an equipment malfunction caused an explosion. Pires suffered severe burns and was placed in a medically induced coma.”
He died on Oct. 17.
Regarding safety, Eversource strives “to lead by example in accordance with industry best practices,” Pretyman said. “We remain deeply saddened” by the tragic death of one of our employees, she added.
Eversource has until early February to officially contest the charges, said Edmund Fitzgerald, a spokesman for OSHA.
OSHA’s fines vary widely, even when a worker is killed while on the job. The maximum OSHA fine is $15,625 per “serious” violation. The maximum fines for “willful or repeated” situations are about 10 times that, or $156,259 per violation.
OSHA’s Fitzgerald said a number of factors are in play when the agency proposes fines. The maximum penalties are set by Congress. Willful and repeated violations are particularly important, but the size of a company could factor in.
In 2021, OSHA proposed an average fine of $17,610 for employers of workers who died on the job in this state, according to Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health. The average final fine: $11,298.
Last September, OSHA proposed fining JDC Demolition Co. $1.2 million in the death of a worker employed on the demolition of the Government Center Garage. “OSHA cited the company for eight egregious-willful violations, two serious violations and one other-than-serious violation of workplace safety standards.”
Mark Pickering is a veteran of the local news business, having worked on the business desk and the opinion pages of the Boston Herald.
What is Contrarian Boston?
I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
· Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;
· The media and why it does what it does;
· Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;
· And whatever else catches our fancy.