Globe editorial
Short Fuse
May 27, 2009
- |
Pensions: Making way for middlemen
Anthony Rust, a rainmaker with close political ties to state Treasurer Timothy Cahill, is casting a cloud over the state's $37 billion public pension fund. According to Sunday's Globe, Rust earned about $2.3 million when his client, Ivy Asset Management, scored a 2004 contract to manage $393 million in state pension funds. Other third-party marketers, including Edward M. Kennedy Jr., son of US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, have smoothed the way for clients seeking to manage public pension funds here. The financial arrangements aren't illegal. But they do raise an obvious question: If the pension fund's competitive bidding process for money managers is all that Cahill cracks it up to be, why would it require the presence of well-connected middlemen in the first place?Senate: Holidays for history's sake?
Senator Jack Hart of South Boston wasn't a big participant in last week's budget debate, but one matter brought him to his feet: an amendment to eliminate Evacuation Day and Bunker Hill Day as public-sector holidays unique to Suffolk County. To hear Hart tell it, those days off are vital to the intergenerational transmission of Suffolk County's storied history and traditions. Why don't we, asked Hart, just eliminate Thanksgiving? Or the Fourth of July? Or Christmas? Listening to it all, one couldn't help think the county might even need a new holiday, one to honor its redoubtable defender. How about Hyperbole Day?Rail trails: Your backyard is better for it
When the state converts abandoned railroad tracks to trails for pedestrians and bicyclists, it promotes outdoor exercise and knits communities together. A proposal for a trail on a 1.1-mile stretch from the Riverside T station in Newton to the former Grossman's home repair site in Wellesley has run into some opposition from abutters - as such conversions often do initially. The state should have plenty of time to allay concerns, since it only has funds immediately available for repair of the old railroad bridge across the Charles River; the trail itself will come later. In the meantime, opponents ought to visit some of the region's successful conversions, such as the Minuteman Bikeway, to see the benefits to trail users and abutters alike. Sooner or later, most communities come to see the trails as amenities, not nuisances.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
