What follows is an attempt to fact-check some of the claims and charges of Mayor Thomas Menino and City Councilor Michael Flaherty Jr. during their hour-long debate at the Kennedy Library Monday night. The fact-checking is based on interviews and reviews of public records wherever possible. CommonWealth encourages readers to comment, offering their own analysis of what was said during the debate.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino seems to feel that repeating the same inaccurate claim over and over again will make it true.
At two previous debates, Menino said the high school dropout rate during his 16 years in office had fallen by 33 percent. CWunbound each time noted the claim was misleading. Menino’s aides say they came up with the 33 percent figure by comparing the average annual dropout rate during the mayor’s 16 years in office to the average annual dropout rate for the previous 13 years, but that’s a false comparison to the administration of Raymond Flynn that doesn’t reflect what’s actually happened to the dropout rate on the mayor’s watch.
Last night, Bob Oakes of WBUR highlighted this false comparison in posing a question to the mayor. Oakes said the dropout rate was 7.5 percent shortly after Menino took office in 1994 and slightly higher at 7.6 percent last year. Menino insisted his 33 percent number was accurate, which prompted Oakes to say the numbers he cited were state numbers.
“What do you expect?” Menino asked sarcastically. “They’re state numbers. City numbers show the dropout rate has gone down 33 percent.”
Not true, mayor. The Boston Public Schools website says the dropout rate for the 1993-1994 school year, Menino’s first year in office, was 8.3 percent. The dropout rate fell to 7.2 percent during the 2007-2008 school year, a decline over the 16-year period of 13 percent, not 33 percent. (It was unclear why Oakes’s numbers differed slightly. Oakes could not be reached for comment.)
City officials say they came up with the 33 percent number by comparing the average annual dropout rate from 1980 to 1993 (12.7 percent) with the same figure for 1993 to 2008 (8.2 percent). The difference actually represents a 35 percent — not a 33 percent — reduction. But that’s a misleading comparison because the dropout rate was in double digits for most of the Flynn era. It started trending down in 1984 from a peak of 17.4 percent and dropped into single digits for good in 1990. In essence, Menino is selecting a comparison that makes his record look good.
Natasha Perez, a spokewoman for Flaherty, said the mayor is continuing to use a misleading number even though he knows it’s inaccurate. “Mayor Menino is either comfortable being dishonest with the voters or, as he’s gotten older, he’s become confused,” she said.
Flaherty says the Boston Public School system is the most expensive in the nation, with per pupil spending close to $20,000. According to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Boston isn’t even the most expensive school district in Massachusetts. The DESE data for fiscal year 2008 show more than 20 school districts spend more per pupil than Boston. Boston comes in at $17,150, compared with $25,187 in Cambridge; $17,681 in Waltham; $24,002 in Provincetown; and $17,486 in Concord-Carlisle. Flaherty’s campaign cited as their source for the claim an op-ed piece earlier this month in The Boston Globe by Jim Stergios and Liam Day of the Pioneer Institute. Stergios said his information came from the US Department of Education and only applied to the 100 largest urban districts in the country. According to the federal data from fiscal 2007, Boston’s per pupil spending was $19,436, well above New York ($16,443), Los Angeles ($10,364), and Chicago ($9,666).
Flaherty says 100 of 143 Boston schools are in the category of “needs improvement.” Menino says half of all schools statewide are in the same category and adds that wealthy suburbs like Brookline, Weston, and Wellesley are no different from Boston. “They all fall in the same category that we fit into,” Menino said. There’s some truth to what both candidates said, but Menino seems to be stretching the truth the most. State records indicate 100 out of 132 schools in Boston are not meeting the standard of “adequate yearly progress” as set by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Schools fail to meet adequate yearly progress if even a subgroup of the school, such as a minority group or the special education population, fails to meet the standard. Boston had many subgroups that failed to meet the standard, but it also had several schools that overall failed to meet it. Boston was one of 54 multischool districts across the state that failed to make adequate yearly progress as a school district. As Menino said, half of the state’s 1,846 schools failed to make adequate yearly progress. Wellesley, Weston, and Brookline are grappling with the same standards, but their problems are not in the same league as those in Boston. Wellesley and Weston reported single schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress because of a subgroup failing to meet the standard. Brookline had six of its 10 schools fail to make adequate yearly progress, in each case because of failings by subgroups.
With the cost of medical care far outpacing inflation, the two candidates were asked what they would do to rein in the city’s health care costs. Flaherty said he would engage in frank discussions with city unions to convince them to give up their bargaining rights on health care issues and join the state’s Group Insurance Commission. He also said he would cut city costs by pushing municipal retirees onto the rolls of the federal Medicare program. Menino said he supports state legislation that would take health care issues out of the collective bargaining process and give Boston and other municipalities control over health plan costs and design. Menino said he was reluctant to force current retirees to go with Medicare; he favors a plan that would allow some 1,700 existing retirees to retain their city coverage but force future retirees to shift to Medicare. The odds of success for either the Flaherty or Menino approach are slim. Union opposition to tampering with health care coverage is strong. Beacon Hill is unlikely to buck the unions and convincing the unions to voluntarily give up their collective bargaining rights, as Flaherty proposes, is also unlikely unless the city is willing to compensate them in some other way. On the Medicare issue, Menino is staking out a middle-of-the-road approach, while Flaherty is more aggressive in pursuing cost savings. Sam Tyler, who heads the business-backed Boston Municipal Research Bureau, said Flaherty’s approach would save millions of dollars.
Making universities and hospital increase their in-lieu-of-tax payments. Both candidates favor wringing more money out of the city’s nonprofits, but neither is very specific about how they would do it. Flaherty said he wants universities and hospitals to pay their “fair share,” but he hasn’t said what that share would be. Menino has a task force working on how much the nonprofits should pay and whether services to the community should count toward the payment. It’s a tricky issue. Boston can’t force nonprofits to make in-lieu-of-tax payments and it also doesn’t want to anger the educational and medical institutions, which represent the city’s employment backbone. In fiscal 2009, in-lieu-of-tax payments to the city amounted to more than $32 million, with nearly half coming from the Massachusetts Port Authority. Payments vary wildly, with Boston University making a cash payment of $4.9 million and Northeastern University contributing just $31,000.
City reserves. Menino said he would use city reserves to prevent the layoff of police officers this fiscal year. The city has $121 million in reserves but is already planning to use $45 million to balance this year’s budget. Tyler, head of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, says the size of the city’s reserve account is unlikely to grow in the next few years, so the city has to be careful not to drain the account too quickly. Tyler said the city will be grappling with budget shortfalls for the next few years.
