From the Executive Director

from NewsLink, Vol. 3, No. 4, Summer 1999

Many will remember Ray Shamie as a candidate for U.S. Senate and as the charismatic chairman who rebuilt the Republican Party in Massachusetts.

At the Beacon Hill Institute, we remember him most as an innovator and a humanitarian. He thought long and hard about how best to help human beings suffering adversity. He concluded that the foundation to a better life was through personal responsibility and discipline. But he knew that people often need support and guidance as they move toward self-sufficiency.

Ray encouraged us to develop alternatives to what he saw as the failed welfare system. He believed that private organizations were the cornerstones to real welfare reform. In December 1995, with Ray's support, BHI published Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: A New Approach to Welfare Funding, which described how welfare services in the United States could be privatized through federal tax credits for gifts to charitable organizations. We followed that with two more major publications, opinion editorials, forums and seminars in Washington, D.C. and Boston, and testimony at both the Congressional and state levels.

Now, the Beacon Hill Institute has established the Ray Shamie Center for Civic Enterprise. The Shamie Center's aim is to create a more humane society by bringing to the public domain the ingenuity, drive and know-how that animate a market economy. To that end it will study, develop, articulate and disseminate information on how private initiatives can improve society. The Shamie Center will be located within the Beacon Hill Institute. Joseph Gallant, former Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, has been named Director of the Shamie Center.

We hope the Shamie Center will become a fitting legacy to a remarkable man.

A Dinner to Remember Ray Shamie

On Thursday, October 14, the Beacon Hill Institute will host a dinner at Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel to remember Ray Shamie. Edna Shamie will be our guest of honor. All proceeds will help endow the Shamie Center. I hope you'll plan on attending.

BHI and Heritage Foundation to study state taxes

We're pleased to announce that the prestigious and influential Heritage Foundation and the Beacon Hill Institute have formed a strategic alliance to study tax policy at the state level. Our first effort is a reestimation of BHI's Ohio STAMP, completed during the summer. You can download the entire study from our web site at http://www.beaconhill.org.

---

NewsLink is the quarterly newsletter of the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research at Suffolk University. © 1996-2003. All rights reserved.

HTML format revsion on 03-Jul-2003 10:58 AM