Free WiFi fini in Philly

The company that created Philadelphia's citywide WiFi network announced last week that it will begin to dismantle it starting June 12. This comes after the company, Earthlink, declared last fall that they would no longer be in the municipal wireless network business, as it wasn't fiscally feasible. (Last month Earthlink pulled out from a partnership with the City of New Orleans after failing to find a buyer for the network.)

The City of Philadelphia and Earthlink attempted to turn over the network to a non-profit, but those efforts haven't panned out. On the assumption they won't, Earthlink has asked a federal court to rule that next month it can retake possession of its network equipment, which currently provides WiFi coverage over 75% of Philadelphia.

All in all, providing free municipal WiFi coverage seems to be a bad business model, as Milwaukee Talkie noted previously. There haven't been many rumblings about citywide WiFi in Milwaukee lately, since our own partnership with Midwest Fiber Networks fell apart last summer, . . . is this idea finished here, as well?

Hat tip: Governing's 13th Floor

Metro Milwaukee among safest cities for teen drivers

A report released by Allstate insurance company this month finds the metro Milwaukee area is among the "least deadly" places for teen drivers.

The study analyzed federal crash statistics, Allstate claims data, and U.S. Census data to score the 50 largest metro areas nationwide on their rates of fatal accidents involving teen drivers. Milwaukee ranked 45th, just behind Boston and ahead of Cleveland.

High speeds most often were the cause of these crashes, but drugs and alcohol can play a part, too. The study finds Milwaukee had the fewest drug-related crashes, at 0%, but relatively high alcohol-related crashes, at 11%. Speed was the contributing factor in over 40% of all fatal crashes involving teen drivers in metro Milwaukee.

In addition to ranking the metro areas, the study highlights the disparities in fatalities between rural and urban areas. Nationally, fatal accidents occur two times more frequently in rural areas than in urban areas, with 51.5 fatal crashes per 100,000 teens outside metro areas versus 25.4 such crashes per 100,000 teens in the metro areas. The pattern held true in Wisconsin, where the metro rate is 23.4 fatal crashes per 100,000 teens but the rural rate is 47 fatal crashes per 100,000 teens.

Despite being mostly rural, states like California, Utah, Oregon, and Washington had fewer than 24 fatal crashes per 100,000 teens, while Wisconsin's mostly rural nature resulted in a rate of 30.1 fatal crashes per 100,000 teens. Thus, certain state policies are thought to play a role in reducing fatalities. For example, while the lack of a seat belt was a contributing factor in a third of all crashes, in California the seat belt non-usage factored into as few as 7% of crashes in San Jose. All six California metro areas ranked at the bottom for unbelted fatalities.

The contributing factor found most often in Milwaukee? Lack of a seat belt, a contributing factor in 45% of fatal crashes.

Engaging the Public on Tough Budget Issues

To most Wisconsinites, May signifies the beginning of warm weather and the first taste of summer. But to local government officials in Wisconsin, it signifies something far more foreboding: the start of a long and difficult budget process.

In light of the economic downturn, which has created new revenue holes and added significant new expenditure needs for counties, municipalities and school districts, the sense of foreboding this year is worse than ever. Indeed, local budget officials already know this will be one of the worst budget years ever.

But what if this year -- instead of grappling with their immense problems in private all summer and then springing agonizing budget decisions on the public in the fall -- these officials engaged the public early in the process and leveled with citizens about their challenges?

A recent article by the city manager in Phoenix describes how that city did just that. Faced with certain public uproar over unavoidable decisions to cut services, city leaders launched a comprehensive public information campaign to inform citizens about the causes and nature of their challenges and the menu of difficult options from which they would have to choose. The city even went so far as to create an 8-page primer on budget options in tabloid form that was inserted in the Sunday newspaper. The result was a rational debate that apparently was high on public empathy and low on hyperbole and friction.

Another approach employed in California by the non-profit Next 10 (and highlighted in a Milwaukee Talkie blog post last fall) invites citizens to log on to a web site and take the California Budget Challenge, an interactive tool that requires them to try to balance the state budget themselves. More than 40,000 Californians have taken the challenge so far -- you can do so by clicking here.

Could such approaches work here? Unfortunately, the way we have typically approached public discussion of tough budget issues makes that debatable. Previous efforts to initiate public dialogue at public budget meetings have often turned out to be community organizing exercises. For example, as previously reported in the Journal Sentinel, public meetings on the Milwaukee County budget typically have generated significant participation from union members and advocacy groups, but little from regular citizens. While there's nothing wrong with professional organizers showing off their prowess and having their say, this phenomenon does tend to detract from the value of these sessions to policymakers.

Also, efforts to engage the public in reasonable dialogue must first pass through the lens of the local news media, which sometimes can be problematic. Last week, for example, the Forum released a comprehensive 40-plus-page report detailing the history behind Milwaukee County's transit crisis and presenting policymakers with a menu of options. The Journal Sentinel headline writer's take on our report was that we were "calling" for the most controversial of those options -- a $10 vehicle registration fee.

With so little to gain and so much to lose, it is little wonder that local government officials tend to conduct their internal budget processes behind closed doors. But given the excruciating decisions facing local government leaders this fall, maybe full-scale public participation is worth a try. Creative efforts -- similar to those employed in Phoenix and California -- to educate the public and to engage it in rational public discourse over budget issues might be just what is needed to have our entire community take collective ownership over the fiscal problems we are facing.

Milwaukee County's Transit Crisis

Coverage of the Public Policy Forum's latest report, "Milwaukee County's Transit Crisis: How did we get here and what do we do now?" appeared in Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Unfortunately, the headline was somewhat misleading. It stated that the Forum is calling for a wheel tax, which we are NOT. This was simply one of a number of options that we identified in the report as possibly helping to solve the financial crisis faced by MCTS if policymakers wish to solve it with a new revenue source. That said, the article did a good job summarizing the Forum's research, which found that policymakers face a stark choice:

They can accept a transit system that is a shell of its former self – one that contains no freeway flyer service, few night and weekend options, and sparse service west of 76th Street, south of Oklahoma Avenue or north of Silver Spring Drive – or they can consider one or more selections from a difficult menu of policy options that could either delay the day of reckoning once again, or perhaps prevent it altogether.

Key findings from the Public Policy Forum's analysis of the Milwaukee County Transit System funding crisis:

• Barring an infusion of new funds from the federal government, the need for federal funds in the system’s operating budget soon will outstrip the amount of funds available by well over $15 million annually. Funding projections developed by the Forum – and reviewed for reasonableness by current and former Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) officials – show potential overall shortfalls of $1.6 million in 2009, $18.3 million in 2010, $23.7 million in 2011 and $21.1 million in 2012.


• Since 2001, nearly $40 million of a $44 million reserve of federal capital funds has been allocated by the county to fill holes in MCTS’ operating budget and avoid significant service cuts. At the same time, bus purchases have been deferred to allow for the expenditure of those reserves on operations. The elimination of the reserve and the looming need to replace at least 150 buses sets up an ominous fiscal crisis.


• MCTS not only faces serious funding issues pertaining to fixed route service, but it also must address a growing funding gap in paratransit services for persons with disabilities due to increased demand for those services.


• MCTS’ fiscal challenge has been greatly exacerbated by a new governmental accounting rule that requires the system to budget annually for its long-term liability for retiree health care benefits. This has added approximately $8.5 million per year to MCTS’ operating budget.


• MCTS buses carried 10.3 million fewer riders in 2007 than they carried just seven years earlier, ranking it first among 13 peer transit systems in lost riders from 2000 to 2006. Only once in the last seven years did MCTS see an increase in ridership (a 1.9% increase between 2004 and 2005). The uptick corresponded to the only year that fixed-route bus service was increased.


• The cost effectiveness of MCTS buses was best among peer systems in 2006 based on data from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration, indicating that further cost savings due to efficiency improvements may be limited.

Learning to count = accountability?

As more state and local governments decide to invest in quality improvements for early childhood education, two questions must be answered: What is the definition of high quality? And how will we know whether the investments have paid off?

Quality really comes in two forms, structural and process. Structural quality is that which can be measured: teacher turnover, child-teacher ratios, facilities, etc. It can set the stage for process quality--what the child experiences. Some elements of process quality are more difficult to measure; for child-teacher interactions, there is no standard for "lovingness." Other elements, however, are more similar to things we do measure in older children, such as educational attainment, behavioral adjustments, and hitting developmental milestones.

Which begs the second question: How do we hold early childhood educators accountable?

This month's State Legislatures magazine asks this same question, noting:

...[D]eciding the fate of preschool programs based on children’s test scores does raise concerns. Today’s teachers commonly use child assessments to help their instruction. But judging schools on these results could change what today is creative, play-based, multi-dimensional learning into practices that are geared only to the assessments. Instead of going outside to explore the changing seasons to learn science and math and engage their curiosity, children may be kept inside to sit and practice their letters and numbers.

The article highlights findings from the final report of the Pew Charitable Trusts' National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force. The report suggests four alternative approaches to accountability for early childhood programs, ranging from a universal analysis of the status of all children in the state, to a specific program-evaluation style analysis of individual providers.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, some 20 states are already utilizing the universal approach, by assessing children's school readiness status as they enter Kindergarten. Other states model the federal Head Start program and design program-specific accountability tests. At least one state evaluates individual preschool classrooms.

Any sort of testing of very young children is controversial. But as Samuel Meisels of the Erikson Institute puts it in a paper entitled Accountability in early childhood: No easy answers, high-stakes testing is "a failure because it ignore[s] the complexity of early childhood development, which teaches us that no single indicator can assess a child's skills, achievements, or personality." Dr. Meisels argues four reasons for not using high-stakes tests as accountability:

1. Practical problems of measurement. Most young children are developmentally not ready for test taking.
   
2. Unintended consequences. The probable result of high-stakes tests, teaching to the test, is risky in early childhood, when diversity of experience is most needed.
   
3. Opportunity to learn. Tests that ignore children's backgrounds and prior opportunities to learn can hinder programs from tailoring teaching to meet children's individual needs.
   
4. Variability and predictability. Early development is a time of extensive change, which occurs in spurts and not in a linear, predictable fashion. Long-term conclusions cannot be drawn from brief snapshots of a child's abilities.
   

Dr. Meisels recommends, instead, that program evaluations be conducted of individual early care and education providers with only a sample of children tested, to answer policymakers' questions about what is being taught, how, and how well.

The nuances between accountability, high stakes testing, and program evaluation may not matter to policymakers, however. In an era where no child is to be left behind, the more data on individual children the better, it seems. In fact, parents may be just as reliant on this data as policymakers. If your older child's progress is monitored and reported yearly, and put in context alongside his classmates' scores, you may wonder why your preschooler's progress seems to be getting less attention.

Indeed, there are no easy answers for policymakers wanting to spend public money wisely, as they are likely to be confronted with parents who want more information, educators who are divided on the benefits of testing, and taxpayers who see high price tags on nearly every option.

Lens of "constrained choice" can foster new policy options

A new book by RAND sociologist Chloe Bird and Harvard sociologist Patricia Rieker presents a fresh way of viewing individual choices about health that could provide a useful way of examining a range of social policy issues. In their book Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choices and Social Policies, a model of “constrained choice” reveals how family, work, community and government shape individuals’ opportunities, thus constraining their choices.

The constrained choice model shows how policy decisions can have unintended effects on individual behavior. Thus, traits like health are not only an individual responsibility, but one that is also shared by decision-makers at each level of social policy, community actions, work and family. The researchers’ examples show that constrained choice related to health can result from:

National-level social policies that focus on the needs of women and children over those of men




Community decisions about neighborhoods that limit opportunities for walking and exercise




Workplace actions that limit employees’ autonomy over their work and schedule




Health research that overlooks the consequences of the growing complexity of balancing work and family.

With their focus on gender and health, Bird and Rieker use the constrained choice model to answer the question, “Why are some women and men able to create and maintain healthy lifestyles, while others are not?” This model, however, could be applied to other policy areas in which it is helpful to view outcomes as resulting from a web of complex inputs rather than solely individual decision-making.

For instance, the answer to a policy-related question like, “Why don’t all people stay in school so they will earn more money in the long-run?” is not, simply, that some people are irrational decision-makers. Rather, such an answer might be seen more clearly through a lens that analyzes the constraints on the choices of the decision-maker that are created by social/government policy, community and family factors.

A constrained choice lens changes the way one searches for policy solutions. While the goal of policy reform would be the same (a healthy society, for example, or increased high school graduation rates), the route to creating policy interventions would have to include questioning whether other policies create unintended negative consequences or disincentives. Additionally, interventions would seek to increase opportunities for people to pursue the positive action in question, thus loosening the constraints on their choices and decision-making.

Individual responsibility’s importance cannot be underestimated, but models that reflect the complex forces that impact decision-making could yield new strategies for addressing social policy problems.

Smoking ban research: policy kills

A recent issue of The Economist includes a small blurb on new research published in the Journal of Public Economics by two Wisconsin economists. Scott Adams, of UWM, and Chad Cotti, of UW-Oshkosh, have found that when public smoking bans are implemented at the county level, drunk driving fatalities in adjacent counties can rise. Presumably, this is due to smokers no longer patronizing local establishments and driving to and from bars in the counties that have not prohibited public smoking.

For instance, they found that when Colorado's Boulder County banned smoking, fatal accidents in Jefferson County, between Boulder and Denver, went up by 40%.

Smoking ban opponents will find this research useful in arguing that the ban's benefits may not be outweighed by its other impacts. Smoking ban proponents may use the findings to argue that a statewide ban is the most appropriate, so as to reduce the potential for cross-county drunk-driving by smokers.

However, the economists also looked at statewide bans, finding, for instance, that accidents increased 26% in Pennsylvania's Delaware County after the neighboring state of Delaware introduced a smoking ban in 2002.

However, it's unclear which way this finding cuts for Wisconsin, as our neighbors Minnesota and Illinois both have new smoking bans in effect this year, while Iowa's goes into effect soon. Would a statewide smoking ban endanger our citizens on the road, forcing them to drive to Michigan's Upper Peninsula? Or, without a statewide ban are we (at least in our southern and western border counties) about to see an influx of intoxicated drivers from the Twin Cities and Chicagoland?