Note: I wrote this in May. I had a larger post in mind, but ran out of time. I think I wanted to expand on some places where I was particularly blunt. Anyway, this seems worth posting as is. Hope it’s worth reading.

A recent post over at Julie’s place about the budget situation in Hartford got me thinking again about problems with how we discuss politics.

My observation was that a number of people were debating policies in abstract terms. For example, one commenter suggested Hartford consider offering tax incentives for businesses to relocate into Hartford or use TIFs to boost development. The incentives idea was criticized because the taxes would eventually go up on the businesses once the incentives expire.

On the surface, this pair of points could make sense, but it really is missing too much detail to be even remotely useful. It’s akin to having a debate about tools. “Hammers are bad” is a pretty absurd thing to say, yet we do this with policy ideas all the time. We discuss the tool, in abstract, without considering specific policies that fill in important details. TIFs, tax incentives, marginal tax rates, etc. are all policy tools. They’re not policies themselves, so we should recognize that in our conversations with each other.

For example, in the case of a tax incentive for a business to relocate, a lot depends on how big the tax incentive is, how long it lasts, and what kind of businesses get the tax break. For example, if a business is easy to move, then the tax incentive is riskier, and less likely to achieve the desired outcome. On the other hand, if a tax incentive is structured to help offset relocation costs, perhaps it makes more sense for the business to move.

This also connects to a larger trap that we often fall into, one reinforced by the political parties and their attempts to sloganize their policy preferences. Folks across the political spectrum have preferences among policy tools but believe the tools are actually policy. For example, Republicans look to tax policy as their only tool for fixing many (most? all?) problems. Yet this is only one policy tool in a vast array of tools available. Maslow’s Maxim applies to policy issues, too. Not every problem is a nail, and we have more than just the hammer to help. Democrats would be wise to remember that as well.

We should all be asking candidates and fellow bloggers or commenters to be at least a little more precise about policies their advocating so we can all save time.

I just had an exchange on Facebook that I feel like expanding on here. I’m going to anonymize the people, but suffice to say the person is a person I respect but with whom I rarely agree politically:

This person linked to a Politico article about Sen. Ensign receiving a handwritten note confirming that not having health insurance could lead to fines of up to $25K and/or up to 1 year in prison. They then made this comment:

Don’t want to buy the proposed mandatory health insurance? The penalty for non-compliance in the bill now is up to a YEAR in jail and $25,000 fine. And it’s in writing from the committee staff.

I read this and thought, there’s no way that’s the first penalty for not having health insurance. And, it isn’t. Here’s my comment back to him on FB:

I think you’re engaging in hyperbole for effect, but here’s some perspective on this that may make this seem more reasonable than you’re implying.

First, the requirement is that everyone will have health insurance, not that we buy a particular plan. Not sure if you meant to imply there was a particular plan, but wanted to clarify that. You and I, for example, will not see any change. The law includes a means test to make sure those who cannot afford insurance will never face the original fine. Certainly, we can debate the means test levels/limits, and I would welcome that.

Which is another point of clarification: the penalty you cited is for failing to pay the fine for not having insurance. The fine for not having insurance is UP TO $1900 (in a judge’s discretion, I assume). The 1 year + UP TO $25K is for failing to pay that fine.

Second, because this is a requirement to have insurance, not a requirement to purchase any particular plan, it’s very similar to how auto insurance works in many states. In CT, for example, failure to carry the proper car insurance can result in fines up to $1000. Failure to pay the fine is a Class A Misdemeanor with additional penalties + up to 1 year in jail.

Even failing to pay a parking/traffic ticket in CT is a Class A Misdemeanor.

Both of those are state penalties for very similar style regulation.

Again, not saying that this is perfect or ideal, but it’s not so bizarre or extreme. Certainly, the requirement for people to have auto insurance hasn’t lead to what [a commenter] above is implying. I’m not aware of a government run auto insurance program in CT, for example.

It occured to me after writing this that the car insurance analogy is actually the one that makes a ton of sense both in highlighting the banal nature of the proposed reform plans but also the risks that such plans might entail. After all, we have had mandatory insurance requirements in CT for at least 20 years (as have many states). Food for thought.

Citations for the penalties above, in case the lawyers want to correct anything I wrote (please do!):

Insurance violations

• Sec. 14-12c: Verification of security coverages. Surrender or confiscation of plates, when. Penalties for failure to insure or maintain insurance and for presentation of false or fraudulent identification card.
• Sec. 41-164r: Failure to pay or plead [looks to be general penalty for not paying a court ordered fine or fee]

Traffic ticket violations

• Sec. 53a-173: Failure to appear in the second degree: Class A misdemeanor [ my read of my research this AM: if you don't pay your ticket, it gets sent to court, which turns into this]
• State of CT Table on Fines & Penalties

While I don’t have any particular plan to take a break, it seem clear that blogging is on some sort of hiatus for me. I’ve been very busy and, when I have free time, I’m choosing to do other things.

Beyond that, I’ve also realized that I’m not sure what I want to have as the purpose for this blog anymore. Over the last 5-6 years of its existence it’s morphed a few times. It used to be fairly light-hearted with a number of voices and styles contributing to the blog. Over the last two years or so, it’s turned into a mostly single-author blog with a far more, let’s call it intense focus on politics.

So, a few things are in play. First, I just haven’t had the time to read much any more. Little things like eating lunch at the cafeteria with co-workers rather than at my desk make a huge difference in how much news I consume. Beyond that, I’m also fairly dispirited by the state of politics both at the local and national level. I have a decent amount of optimism in the President, but watching the debate around the issues I see the same stuff from the Republican side of the aisle that we have for the past 15 years. Gov. Jindal brazenly repeating well-debunked lies in a nationally televised response. Republicans complaining about high taxes when they’ve been the lowest they’ve been in 50 years or so. Locally, I see the same thing. Lots of arguing, very little in the way of listening.

I’m not sure how to fix it, but I’m certainly not helping by repeatedly pointing at it and getting annoyed. So, I’ve cut back writing about that stuff, just passing on articles with significant information or analysis. Those are few and far between so, combined with the time issue, this blog is more or less silent.

Those of you with keys to post, feel free to post whatever (even or especially if you disagree with me). If anyone wants to be added to the roster or writers, feel free to drop me a note. Won’t guarantee anything, but am open to adding more voices.

I’m sure I’ll be back soon enough, once I find time or figure out if I need to change the blog up a bit.

(PS. One intentional plan, though, is to disengage from local issues on twitter. I’ve been a bit of a jackass about stuff lately, mostly out of weariness of the local budget nonsense that’s happening locally and at the state level. Again, if I’m not helping, I’m hurting. Need to step back for a bit. Oh, and sorry to everyone for being a jackass. Mean that quite sincerely.)

I’ve been following the discussion in Hartford on switching to district representation with some interest. The idea is simple enough, that rather than having at large representation on the council, perhaps they should be elected based on their local voting district. The reason for considering the change is that the town council in Hartford is currently made of up people living in the western part of the city. There are entire regions, usually with different socioeconomic demographics, that have very little representation on the council.

I don’t have any data on this (census information or other demographic information), but I trust the folks on the council know their neighborhoods. For West Hartford, the town GIS site has our census districts, so it should be possible to correlate the tracts with demo data collected by the census bureau in 2000. I’ll see if I have some time to dig through that.

Anyway, I’m just explaining the map that follows. I took the addresses of the current town council members in West Hartford, plotted them on the map and drew an approximation of our town borders as well. You can see that only 2 members live south of Farmington and only one lives south of Park.

Whenever we talk about development in town and debate Blue Back, one thing that comes up pretty regularly is why no attention is paid to the Elmwood area (by S. Quaker and New Britain Ave for the non-WH folks) by the town. I’d suggest that if you look at the map, you may have at least an inkling of why that might be. This isn’t to say they’re ignoring it on purpose, but that it’s not really part of their neighborhood. It’s easier to forget about when you’re not there that often. Heck, I go months without going down there, though that will likely change now that I have a friend living in the new condos down there.

View Larger Map

Maybe some geographic representation might be worthwhile in West Hartford, as well?

When my Twitter feed for today posts in a little bit, you’ll see some random tweets about Hartford/West Hartford bashing. I figure I should probably explain myself a bit, because Twitter makes everything short of funny seem curt to me.

My general issue is simple: There’s too much negativity in local politics. It is, quite frankly, worse than the national debate because the “theys” being created are literally neighbors. Disagreements seems to inevitably reduce themselves to demonization.

The trigger for this conversation was Helder’s complaint about the Blue Back Square (BBS) development in town. Complaints about BBS are a semi-annoying subject to me because it comes up again and again in WH itself, as it gets brought up ad nauseum by folks who opposed the project. Now, I’ll admit to being in a grumpy mood before this started because of other things going on. I also realize he meant this as a joke. Also, this isn’t about Helder himself. I think he gets most of what I’m about to say. I don’t want to just let it go, though, because these sentiments come up pretty regularly in town discussions (read the comments for any Courant article that talks about Hartford, for example)

With those disclaimers out of the way, what really got me, though, was the idea BBS was elitist, actively designed to keep low income and working class families out of the center. The conversation flowed from there, but this was where I got my hackles raised.

This is worthy of a longer conversation, and probably one in person, so I’m going to keep these short. Would love to talk about this further. Consider this my conversation starter, basically what I was trying to get across via Twitter:

• I generally agree with folks concerned about the health of Hartford, of urban flight in general, and the prevailing wage/class issues that created the suburbs in the first place. Even though I live in West Hartford, believe it or not.
• I’m not really sure that it’s “wrong” in any sense to have spaces that cater to people with higher incomes. (the involvement of public funds makes this more complicated, certainly)
• West Hartford center, for better or for worse, catered to the same crowd before and after BBS’s arrival, at least since I’ve been living here (2003). The longer term shift (say, from 20 years ago) is, to me, part of the greater urban flight story and not endemic to West Hartford itself. Further, BBS itself is, at worst, a symptom of changes that have already happened in town, not the cause (or even an early sign) of the change itself.
• Debates about the health of the region, especially as we discuss greater regionalism and projects that have multi-town impacts, like new rail projects, would be more constructive if people on both sides would get past the us/them mentality. We’re neighbors. It’s natural to prioritize our own neighborhoods and towns, so the goal is to find mutually beneficial policies. (it would be helpful to express policies in those terms, too.)
• The name calling and using nearby towns as an epithet or pejorative is counterproductive, let alone being pointless.
• Finally, West Hartford isn’t uniformly wealthy or white, so the implications of drawing class/race divisions between Hartford and West Hartford ignores the living situation of thousands of WH residents.

That’s all I was trying to get across. I know I haven’t been in the area for decades or whatever, but I think that’s actually not a bad thing. Fresh perspective and all that jazz. Really, my bottom line is this: I’d love to see people talk about what we can do rather than attacking potential allies.

One last thought that seems related here: The trends in Hartford and in the interaction between the suburbs and the city don’t seem all that unique to me. Where do we have the conversation to talk about solutions to this problem? Where are they already happening? We don’t need to figure this out all over again by ourselves…

And Helder, we should get together at some point and grab a drink and you can fill me in on the history from your perspective. Would love to hear it.

Heidi has a review of Bombay Olive. Bombay Olive is one of the newest Indian Restaurants in West Hartford. I pretty much agree with her entire review, so go give it a read.

Heidi and I had dinner with friends Amy & Kyle tonight at Firebox in Hartford. Firebox is located at 539 Broad St in a very cool building with lots of exposed brick and intriguing decor. The food at Firebox focuses on using locally grown ingredients whenever possible. The food is contemporary American cuisine. The menu includes a prix fixe selection that features CT grown ingredients. It’s the hook for Firebox.

I loved the building. The bar area is beautiful, with cool wrap-around booths and lots of exposed wood and bricks. I almost wish the dining room was in the bar area because the decor there is much simpler.

As for the menu, there’s not much for vegetarians. Just a few salads, a risotto dish, and a chef’s vegetarian special (the only entree that’s vegetarian). Beyond that, it’s a pretty typical menu for a higher end dining experience: a reasonable number of choices, an interesting cocktail list, and what is supposed to be a good wine list. We didn’t order any wine, so I can’t really comment on that.

Overall, I liked our meal and the experience there. There was one snafu with our orders, where Amy, who also ordered the vegetarian entree, got it prepared the way I needed (without mushrooms) rather than as described on the menu. Beyond that, the service was unremarkable but timely. I really liked the food I ordered, even devouring the broccoli (and I hate broccoli normally). The portions were enough to sate our hunger, but the consensus seems to be that they were a bit smaller than ideal (Kyle’s salmon was the only exception, I think).

We did have a shock at the end of the meal when we got the final bill. With no wine or drinks at all, the bill was well north of $100 for the four of us. In that light, the meal didn’t measure up. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but not that good. Because of the price and limited choices, I don’t know if I’d go back there. It’s certainly good food, but I like the food at Bricco better if I’m going to be spending that kind of money.

(PS. it’s been really hard to not type Firefox instead of Firebox this whole time)

West Hartford folks, there’s a budget referendum today. You can read the cases for voting yes or no as presented by WH FIRST and by the WHTA, respectively, over at WHForums.

As I seem to do every year, now, I’m voting yes for two reasons. First, I have issues with the way the WHTA presents their case. Too often, it has involved pure dishonesty, and that makes it difficult to evaluate their claims (not that they present much evidence) without extensive fact checking. I have more trust in the town council at this point.

Second, and much more significant, is that I think the idea of budgets being cut in response to referenda to be a flawed idea. These conversations should be happening over the year, and should be handled through elections. I would also love to see specific cuts people would make that are actually possible. If enough folks really care about this, there should be primary challengers to the council Democrats, as well as folks running as Republicans. We never see that, though, so it’s hard for me to take this seriously.

I actually forgot to vote this AM, so I’ll see you at the polls this evening.

WHForums and Talk of West Hartford have pulled some interesting data together about our local test score debate. You can get my take and links to the earlier posts here at FM. The two new posts I’d like to highlight are these:

• Free/Reduced Lunch Eligibility and Hartford County Test Scores – WH Forums
• CMT Scores and Per Pupil Spending – Greater Hartford Area – Talk of West Hartford

Both are interesting posts and worth considering.

I suspect they also say a lot about how each of those writers approaches the school budget debate (as this post will say about mine, shortly). Basically, ToWH focuses on outlays, per pupil expenditure vs. results as measured by the tests. WH Forums takes a different tack, starting with the question of “what makes our town different than Avon, Simsbury, and Farmington” and proposing a theory.

To me, both are valid starting points. In fact, the only concern I have is using this test score as a proxy for “results”… but since it’s easy to turn into a number and easy to correlate that to other numbers, there we go.

So, I’ve done a couple of things that I hope help the debate out a bit. First, I’ve put the numbers from ToWH’s post and the 2000 census data on median household income by town into a spreadsheet. I’ve put that spreadsheet online at Google Docs so everyone can look at it, re-sort it, and download it. I’ve invited both ToWH and WH Forums’ writers in as collaborators, as well. If you want to add data to the spreadsheet, feel free to drop me a line at codesujal -at- gmail and I’ll invite you in. I took the census numbers from the Dept. of Economic and Community Development’s site and I’ve added that spreadsheet to Google Docs as well.

Second, the per pupil numbers are interesting to say the least. Hartford City Public Schools spend by and far the most dollars per pupil. The next thing I’m going to do when I have a moment is dig through the budget breakdowns to see how they allocate money vs. West Hartford. Here are the relevant links:

• Hartford Public Schools 06-07 budget — (here’s the executive summary, which contains most of the info I was looking for
• West Hartford Public Schools 08-09 budget

The executive summary for the WHPS system doesn’t contain the same level of detail as the Hartford one, so I’ll have to cull that from the Section C Breakdowns (PDF link). It looks a little daunting and I need to get back to work on my real job. So, that will come later.

Finally, looking through all of these numbers, I’d like to summarize how I’m seeing the conversation evolve. We’ve got two conversations, really, that are going on together. First is the bottom-line expenditures by the school district and the size of the budget overall. There are many people understandably upset about the overall growth in the budget. This conversation is, to me, focused on purely fiscal issues — comparative pay of school administrators and teachers vs. other towns, audits looking for waste in school expenditures, etc. The second conversation is about whether the WHPS budget is delivering appropriately for the town. This conversation is about test scores, programs, and student outcomes.

The two conversations could be happening without the other. One could be perfectly satisfied with the school performance but feel like it should be or could be cheaper. One could also be perfectly fine with the tax rate, but care about test scores and our relative performance to other districts, to dropout rates, to college attendance rates, etc.

Because of the budget debate, though, I think both are happening together, and are being used as ammunition by each side of both. It’s also pretty clear to me that the conversation one focuses on indicates an underlying stance on the budget issue. Speaking for myself, I’m focused on the test results because the tax issue is tied to why I live in West Hartford: I want good schools. I really want the best schools, and will be willing to pay a premium even if I don’t take advantage of the system (no kids yet). So, I want to know if my willingness is being taken advantage of or not, and whether we can do better as a town. I think if the tax burden were making it hard for me to afford living in town, or if I were on a fixed income, I would be more focused on the bottom line growth in the budget. So, I think it’s important that we acknowledge that difference if we’re going to come to some sort of consensus on a budget.

Enough meta-debate for now.

Let me get back to the test scores again. If we use the test scores as a proxy, we’re not in the top 5 as a district (and that’s just in our county). Like WH Forums, I wonder if this is a big deal or not. Certainly, I’d like for us to be much higher, but I don’t know whether the goal of being top 5 or number 1 makes sense for our town. Again, it matters whether the scores are a good proxy for educational results.

My take, which I think is pretty clear, is that the test scores cover two subject areas and that’s hardly the full measure of a student’s academic success or the quality of the education they’re receiving. For example, the WHPS executive summary highlights other, unmeasured differences. WHPS starts foreign language study in 3rd grade (kindergarten in some cases). They offer a gifted and talented program, which was important in my own education and an alternative high school program. Read the summary for others. These things don’t show up directly in test scores, even though they make for a broader education. These things are important to me. Therefore, I’m not sure the test scores serve as a good enough proxy for results.

This is worth having a wider conversation about in town, because we’re often speaking past each other when discussing the budget. Are we all going after the same goal? Do we agree on what makes a good public education system?

PS. local bloggers — if you don’t mind, could we all start using Google Docs or something like it when pulling together these type of spreadsheets? It can import Excel files if you’re more comfortable in the tools, and lets everyone play with the numbers rather than just look at a static file. I’d appreciate it.

I primarily want to point at two posts on local West Hartford blogs that are examining the local Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) scores. These are the state mandated testing that students in CT have to take. Both of these tests feed into No Child Left Behind requirements for the state.

The first post is at WH Forums: A Closer Look at West Hartford’s 2008 CMT Results: The Problem with DRG. The second post is at Talk of West Hartford: Talk of West Hartford.

Most of you (at least the local folks) know that I tend to (strongly) disagree with the folks behind Talk of West Hartford. They are anti-school spending, anti-union, and anti-teacher. So, it won’t be a surprise that I have some issues with the way the Talk of West Hartford blog frames their response. While the WH Forums post takes some time to pull numbers and actually lay out the data (without drawing strong conclusions), the Talk post says bold, unsubstantiated things like:

Personally, Talk Of West Hartford doesn’t think economic situation should have any bearing on kids in our schools. If the schools are good schools (like West Hartford’s are supposed to be) anyone from any walk of life should have the equal opportunity to learn within the district and excel, and especially in West Hartford where so many intervention programs are available and at their fingertips. Especially in West Hartford where our teachers and PTO’s are supposedly top notch. Poor kids in West Hartford schools should be doing just as well as more affluent kids. They are, after all, in the same school district which offers amazing resources to everyone regardless of demographics.

This paragraph might actually be true. It also could be completely false. And nothing in the paragraph or any subsequent paragraph sheds any light on whether it’s remotely true. (it’s remarkable how long the post is without actually supporting any of the conclusions they draw).

This goes beyond the blog post itself. The quality of the debate in this town over the budget and the school budget itself has been similarly full of garbage assertions, mostly by the anti-tax folks but by both sides. As someone who likes looking at the data, this debate by assertion is tiring and useless.

In the debate over demographics and their influence on education, I believe Talk of West Hartford is glossing over a lot of important details. Parental participation rates would seem to correlate with single parenthood, income, and job flexibility. For example, white collar, higher paying jobs might allow a parent to come to school during the day for a parent/teacher conference. Wealthier students tend to work less, and less as a necessity.

So, more detail is necessary to see if this stuff is true. I would suspect, based on other studies I’ve read and talking to teachers in my wife’s circle of friends (she’s a teacher, too), that income levels tend to correlate well with other factors in a student’s educational success. In other words, having “programs” isn’t the same as knowing whether those programs are appropriate for the student population. PTO organizations, for example, aren’t going to help if an entire group of parents can’t make it. Russian classes won’t help a student who is working a lot of hours and is prioritizing that over homework.

Of course, I don’t know if these things are an issue or whether the studies and anecdotes I’ve mentioned apply to West Hartford because I haven’t seen any data about this. And, judging from the Talk of West Hartford folks, I’m not alone.

More data, less assertions, please.