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November / December 2009
Volume 21, Number 6

Quotations of interest that may affect counties

SCHOOL OF DEBT
The average annual cost of tuition and fees at four-year public colleges rose 6.5 percent from last year, to $7,020, according to a report issued Tuesday by the College Board. Including room and board, the average total cost of attendance is $15,213, up 5.9 percent from last year.

Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, called the increases “hugely disappointing,” particularly in a period of low inflation. From July 2008 to July 2009, the Consumer Price Index declined 2.1 percent.

“Given the financial hardship of the country, it’s simply astonishing that colleges
and universities would have this kind of increases,” Mr. Callan said. “It tells you that higher education is still a seller’s market.
The level of debt we’re asking people to undertake is unsustainable.”

— New York Times

CUTTING THE TREES
Programs to improve and conserve the environment have emerged as a popular target for states and cities looking for places to cut costs. A number of states, including Connecticut, Maryland, Missouri, New York and Pennsylvania, are considering or have already made big cuts in efforts ranging from clean water and conservation initiatives to programs that encourage more efficient buildings.

Miami may eliminate a high-level mayoral position that oversees the city’s sustainability initiatives. Officials in Columbus, Ohio, have curtailed an ambitious pollution-reduction plan begun in 2005.

Observers generally agree that state and local governments are more conscious than ever of promoting sustainability in operations and purchasing. Yet environmentalists say the cuts illustrate how many communities view those efforts as indulgences, not necessities.

— The Dallas Morning News

TRAIN SET
“This is all happening because my father didn’t buy me a train set as a kid.”

— billionaire investor Warren Buffett on his decision
to buy the Burlington Northern railroad for $34 billion.

POVERTY FIGURES
The level of poverty in America is even worse than first believed.

A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government’s official figure.

The disparity occurs because of differing formulas the Census Bureau and the National Academy of Science use for calculating the poverty rate. The NAS formula shows the poverty rate to be at 15.8 percent, or nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to calculations released this week. That’s higher than the 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million, figure made available recently under the original government formula.

That measure, created in 1955, does not factor in rising medical care, transportation, child care or geographical variations in living costs. Nor does it consider non-cash government aid when calculating income. As a result, official figures released last month by Census may have overlooked millions of poor people, many of them 65 and older.

— Time magazine

TRIBUTE TO A TEXAN
Mike Cahill, a 62-year-old physician assistant of Cameron, Texas, suffered a heart attack two weeks ago and returned to work at the base as a civilian employee after taking just one week off for recovery, said his daughter Keely Vanacker. “He survived that. He was getting back on track, and he gets killed by a gunman,” Vanacker said, her words bare with shock and disbelief.

Cahill helped treat soldiers returning from tours of duty or preparing for deployment.

Often, Vanacker said, Cahill would walk young soldiers where they needed to go, just to make sure they got the right treatment. “He loved his patients, and his patients loved him,” said Vanacker, 33, the oldest of Cahill’s three adult children. “He just felt his job was important.”

— CBSNews in a profile of the victims of the Nov. 5 Fort Hood
shootings. Cahill was the only civilian to die in the massacre.