The governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, visited the company I work for yesterday. An email went out to everyone a few days ago (I’m not sure when, because I was on vacation last week) and a reminder went out Monday. He got a tour of the company early and then spoke to everyone (or everyone who chose to come to the cafeteria — but it was as full as for most quarterly company meetings, so, everyone) around 10. Actually, he only spoke for a few minutes and then took questions. I was pretty impressed. He gave real, substantive answers to the questions, like “My kid got one of the Abagail Adams scholarships to UMass for next year, but it’s only going to cover a very small fraction of the cost of college. What’s with that?” “Yes, one of the problems there is that the mandatory fees are greater than the tuition, and the scholarship can only be applied to tuition. The individual campuses can keep the fees, but they have to send the tuition to the state, so they like having the fees higher. One thing I want to do is let the campuses keep the tuition and remove that motivation. We want to put more funding into the scholarships, too. I also want to expand the junior college system, so we’ll have free public education K-14.” [that’s my summary, of course, not a transcription.] But the guy seemed to be on top of things.
Other points: Investing in infrastructure includes the state’s cultural institutions. After all, they’re something businesses consider when deciding where to relocate. Improving schools includes reducing domestic abuse, because kids who have problems at home bring that to their schools. So I give him a lot of credit for being able to see the big picture, not just focus on a few specifics.
(follow-up: the company emailed around a link to an article in the local paper)