Collins Center Working With City of Lawrence to Address Budget Challenges
 The Collins Center is helping the City of Lawrence prepare its operating budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2010. The partnership was entered into with Mayor William Lantigua. The Center will also assist the Mayor resolve the City's existing deficit, estimated to be in excess of $24 million. Robert Nunes, the Deputy Commissioner of Revenue and Director of Municipal Affairs, has ascribed the deficit, which had been created during the three previous fiscal years, as the result of both management issues and sharp cuts in local aid.
The Center's project manager for this undertaking is Deputy Director Stephen McGoldrick, who served as chief of staff to the Receiver of Chelsea during that city's turnaround in the early 1990s. McGoldrick will be joined in Lawrence by Collins Center Associate Stephen Lisauskas, who served as Executive Director of the Springfield Finance Control Board, which oversaw Springfield's recent financial recovery, operational reform and renewed focus on performance management. In addition to its work assisting with the Fiscal Year 2011 budget and analyzing the sources and causes of the deficit, the Collins Center Team will also help the City recruit a permanent budget and finance director, a position that has been vacant since December.
The Patrick Administration has made repairing the financially-troubled City's finances one of its priorities. Secretary of Administration and Finance Jay Gonzalez met with Mayor Lantigua and City workers last week to underscore that point. The Governor recently signed legislation allowing the City to deficit borrow up to $35 million to give the newly elected Mayor and other officials the ability to stabilize the City's finances. Under the terms of the new law, Gonzalez will shortly pick a financial overseer to work with the City, and in particular, with the new budget and finance director to help develop solutions to Lawrence's recurrent fiscal problems.
The legislation also gives the state's Secretary of Administration and Finance the ability to call for the creation of a Finance Control Board if the City is unable to restore stability to Lawrence's budget.
Mayor Lantigua said he welcomed the support and the expertise that the Collins Center brings to Lawrence. "Its team has unique abilities and experience assisting older cities experiencing grave financial difficulties, and I look forward to working with them to get the City of Lawrence back on the right track."
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Collins Center Assisting in Expansion of Regional E911
 The Collins Center recently entered into an agreement with the Executive Office of Public Safety's State 911 Department, the agency charged with the coordination of Enhanced 911 services throughout the Commonwealth. The Center is assisting the Department in the development of Regional Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), which handle all emergency calls in an area and Regional Secondary Public Safety Answering Points (RSAPs), which manage either fire or police emergency calls. The Center will also help the Department enroll additional communities in the state's several new Regional Emergency Communications Centers (RECCs). These three types of facilities provide regional dispatch and coordination of emergency services.
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Collins Center Report on Municipal Health Care Costs Receives Wide Editorial and Expert Endorsement; Mayors Call for Legislative Action
 A report issued last month by the Collins Center and The Boston Foundation identified how four communities, including Boston, could save millions of dollars annually on their health care coverage costs. The response has been impressive: both major Boston newspapers editorialized in support of its recommendations and several op-ed columns endorsed the report's findings. The Massachusetts Taxpayers' Foundation and the Boston Municipal Research Bureau also weighed in supporting the study. The report, The Utility of Trouble: Leveling the Playing Field: Giving Municipal Officials the Tools to Moderate Health Insurance Costs, even found its way into the gubernatorial campaign, as the four leading candidates for Governor were asked for their positions on its recommendations.
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Collins Center Sponsors Symposium on Accountability and Performance
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 The Collins Center, together with UMB's Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Society of Public Administrators, the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies (MGS), Rutgers University's Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Network and the Boston Chapter of the National Forum of Black Public Administrators, is sponsoring a symposium and discussion on accountability in the public sector on Wednesday, April 28 from 5:30-7:30 on the 11th Floor of UMass Boston's Healey Library.
The event, "Accountability and Performance: What Works, What Doesn't and Why?", will feature presentations by Melvin Dubnik, Director of the MPA Program at the University of New Hampshire and Marc Holzer, Dean of the Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration.
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Collins Center Online Course has Worldwide Appeal. The Collins Center's first online course in Performance Management for Governments and Non-Profits has attracted students from around the world. One student is participating from Sri Lanka and five states are represented: Nevada, Kansas, Virginia, Maine, and Massachusetts. State and local government employees include CPAs from a state controller's office, municipalities, and regional planning agencies. Employees from non-profit sector and health insurers are also participating in the inaugural offering of this course. The students share the common goals of making their agencies more efficient and effective, and improving the quality of their organization's performance.
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The Edward J. Collins Jr. Center for Public Management
100 Morrissey Boulevard
Boston, MA 02125
Phone: (617) 287- 4824
FAX: (617) 287- 5566
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About Ed Collins
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Throughout his outstanding public career, Edward J. Collins, Jr. epitomized the spirit and goals of the Center that now bears his name. We at the Collins Center are proud to continue the work of Ed's life - helping governments work effectively and productively for the benefit of their citizens.More about Ed |
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