Friday, October 13, 2006

Hey Scot, Why Can Higher Ed Reform Wait?

So, let me get this straight, fixing computers is more important than the more than 100,000 students enrolled in Massachusetts public colleges and universities?
On this one, the speaker is right: The higher-ed bill, though important, can wait until next year.

Um... it can wait until next year? Scot, if there's going to be some tuition relief in this higher ed bill (or lowering of class sizes, etc.), it can't wait. Reform is needed now before the concrete at UMASS Dartmouth falls in on itself. Heck, just look at Group 6, that place is a building just waiting to implode.

Lehigh thinks that it's a swell idea to have a special session to fix the IT bill. That's fine and dandy, but Senator Trav is playing political hard ball: he says he'll only have the Senate come back if the Speaker of the House also takes up the Higher Ed bill. The House has had ample time to take up this massively important bill - the fact that they haven't sends Finneran-esque chills through my spine. Lehigh is wrong; the Legislature doesn't need marriage councilors, it needs someone tough to make sure the legislatures are prodded in the right direction. It needs Deval Patrick, but for now Senator Trav seems up to the challenge. Let's hope Speaker DiMasi gets off his buttinsky and actually does something to help some of the people who need it most in this state.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gee, isn't the House and Senate both run by Democrats? And they can't get stuff done. Oh great let's give em the governorship too.

Ryan said...

It's not a matter of Democrat vs. Republican. It's a matter of old politics vs. new politics, the machine vs. the grassroots. It's about special interests vs. human interest.

Deval Patrick, for example, is a reform candidate. Kerry Healey, on the other hand, is 4 more years of the same old, same old...

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