In 1994, Harold Levy went back to school. In the 25 years since he'd stepped inside a New York City school building, he had risen from a star pupil at the Bronx High School of Science to a corporate lawyer chairing a high-profile commission examining the infrastructure of the city's public education system. In those years, his old elementary school had not fared as well.

One afternoon in the fall of 1995, John McDonough tells us in his new book, "Experiencing Politics," he was sitting in his seat on the floor of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as the chamber prepared to vote on a huge tax break for Raytheon, the locally based defense contractor.

Go to Honolulu's Web site for information on the city council or local elections, and you will encounter something you might not expect to see on a government Web page: an advertisement from Prudential Locations.

The idea of crafting a budget based on performance measures is catching on--slowly.

Credentials may be important, but the skills, abilities, knowledge and behavior of applicants are at least equally so.