Last summer, Boston brokered a truce between two of its bloodiest gangs in a ceasefire that was kept secret until recently, when the Boston Globe published a long article about the process. For several years, Boston was in the midst of a gang war, with the result that in 2005 the city saw its homicides rise to a 10-year high. Finally, a former gang member brought together police, social workers, probation officials and ministers to figure out how to stop the war between two gangs, Heath Street and H-Block. Social workers fanned out in the neighborhoods to learn who the gang members were, and police printed up and distributed flyers inviting the gangs to the summit. The contact name on the flyers was a respected minister, the Reverend Jeffrey Brown. He coordinated with those who called to be picked up at prearranged places and taken in church vans to the meeting. Gang members agreed to stay away from rivals' neighborhoods, not to shoot each other outside of home turf and to call a minister before retaliating for slights. The city has worked since July to deepen the commitment to peace, by providing some summer jobs to gang members, offering tutoring and arranging for free tickets to football games.
BIG BUCKS IN GOVERNMENT
Everybody knows that government workers receive benefits that are increasingly rare in the private sector: generous defined-benefit pensions and health coverage after retirement. And then there's job security, which also is all but gone in corporate America. But this is part of the bargain, municipal unions say. After all, government workers are paid a lot less than employees in business, right? A new study says perhaps not. The study compared government paychecks in New Jersey with those in private industry and found that public sector workers are now paid more than those in business. Add in benefits, and the value of a government pay packet would be much greater. Thirty years ago, government workers were paid less in New Jersey than private workers and may still be in other parts of the country. In 1970, men working for New Jersey state and local governments made about 13 percent less than those working for companies, Rutgers University Professor William M. Rogers III found in his study. By 2000, men in government had passed their private-sector counterparts. (Interestingly, women in government have long made more than women in business.) Rogers thinks two things caused government wages to catch up. First, business pay stagnated. Second, unions remained strong among public employees, and their bargaining has boosted government paychecks.
NICKEL-AND-DIME APPROACH
Baltimore and its downtown organization, the Downtown Partnership, have been thinking a lot about homelessness and panhandling. As everywhere, these are big impediments to downtown renewal (visitors hate walking a gantlet of panhandlers; residents hate stepping over people camped on the sidewalks). The Downtown Partnership has come up with an idea that may cut down on panhandling while helping pay a portion of the expense of programs for the homeless. The organization has painted old parking meters and installed them along busy streets. Rather than dropping a quarter in a panhandler's cup, residents and visitors are invited to deposit it in a "Make a Change" meter. It's hard to say how much money will be collected this way, but probably not a lot. The aim isn't as much to collect money as it is to change behaviors that hurt cities (people giving to panhandlers). All the change collected will go to Baltimore Homeless Services Inc., a nonprofit that helps steer people out of homelessness.
