February 2007
Volume 30, Number 2
February 2007
Gov. Patrick, Peter Lynch Headline Council’s 2007 Annual Meeting
A star-studded lineup of speakers will participate in the Massachusetts High Technology Council’s Annual Meeting on March 7 at the Burlington Marriott (details below). Continuing an unbroken tradition dating back to the founding of the Council in 1977, the state’s chief executive will once again provide the keynote address before the leaders of the Massachusetts business, academic and political communities.
Governor Deval Patrick will present his Administration’s views on priorities that will impact the future of our state economy: education and fiscal policy. His appearance with the Council comes shortly after the release of his first state budget recommendations, which will dominate policy debate on Beacon Hill for the next six months.
Several Council directors who will be elected at the meeting have been active with Governor Patrick’s initiatives, including incoming Council Vice Chairman, Joshua Boger, who is President and CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals and served on Patrick’s transition team.
Following Patrick at the podium will be Fidelity Management & Research Vice Chairman Peter Lynch. The legendary mutual fund visionary will discuss the achievements and continuing objectives of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund and the Computers and Networks (CS-CAN) Program, both aimed at improving education for children living in the inner city of Boston who attend the Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of Boston.
Commissioner Driscoll to Talk Education
The annual meeting will also feature comments and observations from Massachusetts Education Commissioner David Driscoll. During his tenure as Commissioner, Massachusetts has implemented a number of initiatives around standards and accountability that have earned national recognition. Driscoll has timely and thoughtful views on the importance of taking our public education delivery system to the next level, and how the BOE, the Council and others have begun working to achieve that. Driscoll will retire in August and a search process for his successor has been initiated by the BOE.
Bertucci, Boger, Regan, Gauron to Lead Directors
The Annual Meeting will also witness the election of the Council’s Directors and Officers, who include MKS Instruments Chairman John Bertucci as Council chairman, Boger as vice chairman, Dynamics Research Chairman, President, & CEO James Regan as treasurer, and Goodwin Procter Senior Partner Paul Gauron as treasurer.
Also to be released at the Annual Meeting is a summary of the findings from the Council’s 2007 CEO Business Climate Survey. The survey, conducted each year since 1987, polls technology CEOs on their views on the economic and public policy priorities for 2007. The Council enhanced this year’s survey by working with The Monitor Group to include high-level cluster analysis of the state’s technology economy. Immediately following the Annual Meeting, the Council’s directors will meet to approve the Council’s 2007 public policy agenda.
Lewis Joins Council Staff
The Council welcomed a new team member in February by hiring Beacon Hill veteran Wyndham Lewis as its new vice president. Lewis most recently served as Chief of Staff for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Development, where he oversaw all operations, legislative and government relations for former Romney Economic Development Secretary Ranch Kimball.
“Wyndham’s deep government experience and understanding of economic policy make him a great fit for the Council,” said Anderson. “We know he’ll hit the ground running and make a real contribution right away.”
Anderson indicated that Lewis’s work on important projects like the Massachusetts Business Connect and the MassDTI-supported Defense Workforce Project give him a good understanding of the key issues facing the state’s diverse technology economy. Wyndham also worked in policy and communication capacities for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services and the Department of Telecommunications and Energy, and served as public relations director for Imagitas.
“I’m pleased to join the Council team and work with the state’s leading technology CEOs on an ambitious agenda for Massachusetts,” said Lewis.
Lewis fills the spot vacated by Cort Boulanger, who left the Council after six years to start his own communications and public policy shop, Boulanger Public Affairs. Boulanger will continue to provide strategic communications counsel on a contract basis.
MassTrack, Year Two
MassTrack, the Council’s online government assessment tool, began its second year of tracking the policy positions of state and local government leaders. Anderson wrote letters to each of the newly-elected state legislators to begin getting them acquainted with the interactive site. He also sent letters to incumbent legislators and included a copy of their ranking page from October 2006.
Anderson wrote: “Throughout the 2007-2008 session, we will notify you of key MassTrack technology votes based on the most recent priorities set by our CEO members. In September 2008, we will release our new legislative assessment based on roll call votes on these issues. We expect an active session with significant progress on education, economic development, public infrastructure and health care issues.”
Anderson also offered to arrange meetings for legislators at Council member companies and to use Masstrack to help influence the proper implementation of state policy on the local level through MassTrack’s municipal assessment tool, which ranks the Commonwealth’s 351 cities and towns on key technology competitiveness issues.
Council Warns on New Tax “Loopholes”
While Governor Mitt Romney held the line on new taxes throughout his four-year term, he twice relied on closing so-called tax loopholes to help balance the state budget. One of those “loopholes” included changes to the tax code that enforced collection of state Internet taxes, effectively ending the resolute opposition to the Internet tax by the past three governors.
It appears that Gov. Patrick may be following Romney’s lead and has identified more than $400 million in new taxes mostly impacting employers, according to a February 17 Boston Globe report. The Patrick Administration plan would impact up to 10 taxes mostly on “multi-state corporations,” including insurance companies and technology employers with a presence in Massachusetts.
The reaction from the business community was swift and uniform. Anderson was one of a handful of business association leaders to oppose the new tax scheme, telling the Globe that if corporate taxes rise he “would be extremely concerned about the impact on our ability to compete in the global economy.”
The Legislature may be skeptical of the new taxes: House Ways & Means Chairman Bob DeLeo told the Globe “If there are legitimate loopholes in the state's corporate tax structure, then certainly they should be addressed. However, it is always tempting to look at corporate taxes as a painless way to raise revenue.”
Changes to Public Ed Structure in Works
The search for a successor to Dept. of Education Commissioner David Driscoll intensifies at a time when Governor Patrick and his education advisor, Dana Mohler-Faria (who does double-duty as the President of Bridgewater State College), are exploring structural changes to the state’s education delivery system.
At a February 2 State House meeting of Mass Insight Education’s Great Schools Campaign, Anderson (who also chairs the Board of Education), in front of a crowd of business, political and education leaders – including Lt. Governor Tim Murray and Mohler-Faria – endorsed the concept of the Governor working to improve the system.
Anderson: Saxon-type Commission Needed
However, Anderson cautioned that wholesale changes to the state’s early education, K-12 or public higher education require serious study and input from key stakeholders – including employers. Anderson suggested that any changes be made in conjunction with an independent review process, similar to the Saxon Commission concerning the University of Massachusetts in the late 1980s. That panel, chaired by former University of California President and MIT Corporation Chairman David Saxon, recommended the state create an integrated five-campus system that has helped lead to the current renaissance of UMASS.
Reprinted from North Adams Transcript 2/6/07
Students Not Equipped to Compete Worldwide in Math, Science By Audrey M. Marks, Transcript Statehouse Bureau
BOSTON — Although Massachusetts is ranked No. 1 in student achievement, educators, state legislators, and other advocates say students are not equipped to compete worldwide in math and science.
"It is not the national competition that matters, but the global competition," Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, told state leaders Friday during the Great Schools Campaign event, organized by Mass Insight Education.
The nonprofit group's campaign is meant to help schools strengthen their math and science programs through increased education requirements for teachers.
Bridgewater State College President Dana Mohler- Faria, special education adviser to Gov. Deval Patrick, said while visiting schools in Japan he met students fluent in three languages and competent in math and science, unlike most American students.
"I was distraught about where we are in this nation and what is happening globally," said Mohler-Faria.
Mass Insight Education is seeking schools' support of the campaign, in an effort to have legislation passed that will help implement the plan.
Grogan said he has support from nearly 80 districts, including the support of Katherine E. Darlington, superintendent of Pittsfield Public Schools.
Schools would be responsible for keeping the math, science, engineering, and technology curriculum current with the job market and create partnerships with businesses to provide internships and job shadowing for students.
The campaign also calls for the creation of a plan to help move students through each level of schooling, beginning with early education transitioning smoothly to higher education.
Christopher Anderson, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, suggested the creation of a panel to examine all public schools in the state, prekindergarten to high school, and create a plan to standardize and link them cohesively.
Anderson said the exercise would be similar to the panel that linked the five University of Massachusetts campuses into a system of schools.
The Great Schools Campaign also wants to expand the state's Commonwealth Pilot school program. Modeled after the Boston Public School pilot program, the plan identifies struggling schools, and uses low class sizes, and longer class periods for schools that consistently under perform on MCAS testing for at least four years.
While all public state schools are not considered underperforming, they each have their own needs that need to be addressed on a district-by-district basis.
"We need to go to the grass roots of the schools to see what their exact problems are," said Sen. Steve Tolman, D-Brighton.
Don't forget to register!
MHTC 2007 Annual Meeting
Wednesday, March 7
7:30-9:30 a.m.
The Burlington Marriott
Featuring
Governor Deval Patrick
Peter Lynch, Vice Chairman, Fidelity Management & Research
Please visit www.mhtc.org to register.
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