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	<title>Policy Wonk</title>
	<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org</link>
	<description>Let&#039;s talk about where we&#039;re headed...</description>
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		<title>What is a Taxing District?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[New York’s Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has made government restructuring a centerpiece of his campaign for Governor—a necessary and welcome platform! As his Plan for Action notes, we’d never have designed the current system. Rationalizing local government can improve the quality of public services and save tax payers money. Along the way, populist sentiment at [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/scott/what-is-a-taxing-district/</link>
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		<title>Smart Regulation Cuts Airport Congestion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Score a hit and a miss for federal regulators. Nearly three years ago I wrote a piece for the now-defunct New York Sun complaining about delays from New York’s Kennedy International Airport (JFK). In August 2007, nearly a third of scheduled departures were late. The average delay was an hour and many planes waited far [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/kent-gardner/smart-regulation-cuts-airport-congestion/</link>
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		<title>Indicators Continue to be Mixed</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The latest US Employment Report reminds us again of the “jobless recovery” phrase first used to refer to the recession of 1991.  The report shows Private Non-Farm Payrolls in July grew by an anemic 71,000 jobs, falling short of consensus estimates.  The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5 percent, stable only because of the 181,000 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/eric/indicators-continue-to-be-mixed/</link>
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		<title>What&#8217;s the Role for Charter Schools?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When Eva Moskowitz chaired the Education Committee of the New York City Council, she demanded to know why Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein didn’t do a better job improving public education. Rochester Schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard, then a regional superintendent in the NYC schools, remembers his own time on the Moskowitz [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/kent-gardner/whats-the-role-for-charter-schools/</link>
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		<title>Taking Action When Fiscal Storm Clouds Threaten</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The fiscal crisis club has a new member: the City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Faced with staggering debt payments it simply can’t afford, the capital city is weighing its options.  And none of them are particularly pleasant.  Does the city file for bankruptcy?  Does it make use of Pennsylvania’s Act 47 fiscal emergency program and avail [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/joe/taking-action-when-fiscal-storm-clouds-threaten-2/</link>
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		<title>Local Development Corporations: Honest Graft?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A story surfaced last week (in a rival publication) that brought local development corporations (LDCs) back into public view. CGR studied LDCs in 2008, and we were never able to find a “smoking gun” suggesting that an LDC had been used for evil deeds. But we still wonder. As we recounted in our report (see [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/kent-gardner/local-development-corporations-honest-graft/</link>
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		<title>Making a Difference: Measuring Outcomes in the Human Services</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I’ve a dear friend who has been in poor health for many years. What, exactly, is wrong is unclear. Over the decades, diagnoses have come and gone, as have various treatments—and the value of some seems far-fetched. When a new treatment is particularly odd and I raise an eyebrow, she invariably informs me that the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/kent-gardner/making-a-difference-measuring-outcomes-in-the-human-services/</link>
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		<title>Mayoral Control: The conversation continues</title>
		<description><![CDATA[School Board President Malik Evans and CGR are portrayed as being on different sides of this “mayoral control” discussion. Yet we agree that community opinion matters. The response of CGR was to conduct a poll with our partner, Metrix Matrix. At a forum televised by WXXI last Thursday, Mr. Evans suggested a referendum. But it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/kent-gardner/mayoral-control-the-conversation-continues/</link>
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		<title>Mayoral Control Survey Informs the Community and Empowers Decisionmakers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Reaction to CGR’s survey on mayoral control, conducted with partner Metrix Matrix Inc (MMI), has reinforced what the survey revealed: Our community cares deeply about this issue and the education of our city’s children. The only prior test of community sentiment was a relatively small telephone survey of parents. Yet parents-to-be, grandparents, resident property owners, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/kent-gardner/mayoral-control-survey-informs-the-community-and-empowers-decisionmakers/</link>
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		<title>Inform &amp; Empower Voters to Decide the Future of Their Community</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The results of village elections on March 16 cast a ray of hope that perhaps New Yorkers are finally willing to take responsibility for deciding the future of local governments across the state.  In five villages, from Port Henry in the east to Randolph in the southwest, voters went to the polls to decide whether [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.policy-wonk.org/charles-zettek-jr/inform-and-empower-voters-to-decide-the-future-of-their-community/</link>
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