Rutland Daily Herald from Rutland, Vermont • 17

To lease or not to lease C3 Good advice The Molly Fool gives a fun but practical look at investing. Phi C3 SECTION Monday, July 26, 2004 Rutland Daily Herald Page Cl Vt. pays $2.5 million to keep Amtrak By MUCE EDWARDS Herald Staff Vermonts two Amtrak trains will keep chugging along for another year, thanks to a $2.5 million state subsidy thats $200,000 more than last year. But the Ethan Allen Express and the Vermonter continue to be well worth the expenditure of state funds, according to a state transportation official and local business leaders. Charlie Miller, head of the state Agency of Transportations Rail Division, said the state arrived at the new subsidy after negotiations with Amtrak officials.

For years, Amtrak has claimed that it has been underfunded by a Congress that has expressed increasing reluctance to appropriate more taxpayer money to subsidize a national rail passenger service that continues to lose money. The Bush administration has made its position clear by proposing to slash Amtraks budget even further a move that Amtrak officials and passenger rail advocates say threatens its very existence. Its not surprising then, according to Miller, that Amtrak was looking for a bigger subsidy from the state. In the end, he said both sides agreed on the $200,000 increase. Amtrak always wants more.

Whats important is where we ended up, he said. Once signed, the contract will run from July 1 through the end of next June. The Ethan Allen Express serves the western part of the state with one daily roundtrip between Rudand and New York City. The Vermonter serves the eastern side of the state with daily roundtrip service between St. Albans and Washington, D.C., making nine stops in Vermont, including Burlington, Montpelier, White River Junction and Bratdeboro.

Ridership on both trains has declined fromt two years ago. In fiscal 2002, 68,713 passen RLE RUTLAND HERALD Amtrak's Ethan Allen takes on passengers at the Rutland train station In this May 2001 file photo. The state will pay Amtrak a $2.5 million subsidy to keep the Ethan Allen and the Vermonter running for the next year. more. Budget cuts at Amtrak have been felt in Vermont.

There are no longer ticket agents at any stations in the state. Amtrak pays for a custodian to open and close the station in downtown Rudand an hour before and after each arrival and departure. And because there are no ticket agents, the Ethan Allen and the Vermonter no longer have a baggage car, which had ridden the train during the previous 12 months. Miller said no major changes are planned for either train. There will, however, be slight schedule changes beginning in October.

At the request of Rutland officials, the Ethan Allen will have a later Monday departure from New Yorks Penh Station. The Vermonter, too, will leave Union Station in Washington later. The Ethan Allen departs Rutland at 7:10 a.m. and arrives at Penn Station at 12:25 p.m. The return trip departs at 2:45 p.m.

and arrives back in Rutland at 8:10 p.m. As far as feres go, Miller said no significant increases are planned for either train. Amtrak sets the fares but its my understanding theres no large fare increase during this period, he said. The roundtrip weekday adult fare from Rutland to New York is $112. The weekend fare is $10 gers took the Vermonter compared to 61,948 in fiscal 2003.

That number declined again at the end of the fiscal year in June to 60,324. The Ethan Allen Express had 39,613 passengers during fiscal year 2002 compared to 35,786 in fiscal 2003. Unlike the Vermonter, business, on the Ethan Allen rebounded last year. When the books were closed on the fiscal year that ended in June, 38,252 pasengers SeePage CIO: Amtrak Do you blog? Economists are rarely on target with predictions Web logs find their way into the workplace Decisions require more than good data In my last column, I discussed now successful organizations gather good information and then apply it in a way that adds value and attracts customers. By doing so, knowledge is gained and prosperity is enhanced.

However, not all information is used successfully nor is it consistently shared across organizational boundaries. These aspects of information management will be explored in the remainder of this column. Decision-making In successful organizations, managers make good decisions using good information. Unfortunately, the optimum is not always realized. Errors are made or information does not arrive at the right place at the right time.

This can be illustrated using a two-by-two matrix with Good and Poor information on the horizontal axis and Good and Poor Decisions on the vertical axis. Using this method, there are four possible outcomes. Possibility One Good Information and Good Decisions: This is the expected outcome of the managerial process and is representative of professional management. For example, when cbnsider-ing the introduction of an MBA program, The College of St. Joseph collected information relating to consumer demand, available teaching resources, and competitive programs.

Once the information was evaluated, the program was adopted through the leadership of college President Frank Miglorie and has been a successful addition to CSJs academic offerings. Good Information and Poor Decisions: This combination suggests management made a mistake and is either inexperienced or inept. It is clearly the case in Quaker Oats purchase of Snapple for $1 .7 billion. Five years after acquisition, Quaker sold Snapple and lost $1.4 billion in the process. There was plenty of good information available to the management team at Quaker Oats.

However, they were unable to use the information wisely and thereby turned a winner into a loser. Poor Information and Good Decision: This outcome is an accident. In other words, if good decisions result from poor information, management is lucky. I dont have a specific example for this combination of information and decisions, but there is a growing body of literature that suggests that luck plays an important role in many corporate success stories. Poor Information and Poor Decisions: For this combination, Mure is an inevitable outcome.

For, if information is deficient and management in incapable, a good decision is not possible. Heres an example. The State Bank and Trust Company in Ohio decided to enter the leasing business. Executive management did little market research, had no experience in the leasing area, and ignored expert advice that entry into the leasing area was inappropriate. They entered anyway.

When the dust setded, shareholders realized a loss of about $2 million. Banrlwrs Even when good information is available, it may not get to the right place at the right time. Such an omission may seem unlikely, but for political, turf, or power reasons, those having critical information may not share it with others in an organ- Its one part science, about 10 parts the art of the forecaster and a lot of luck. BY RBUMMHnilGU Knight Rklder Newspapers WASHINGTON The sudden recovery of the U.S. job market thk spring caught many economic forecasters off guard and boosted President Bushs re-election campaign.

Then, the job market slumped in June, again surprising forecasters and delivering fresh ammunition for Democrats to attack Bush's economic policies. Predicting the economy is a tough game. Everyone wants to know where its headed, from presidential candidates to home-buyers tracking mortgage rates. Companies and investors pay big bucks to get a peek at expert forecasts. Its a huge business.

Yet the experts often get it wrong. And they admit their job a bit of a crapshoot. Its one part science, about 10 parts the art of the forecaster and a lot of luck, said Michael Donihue, an economics professor who runs a forecasting model at Colby College in Maine. Forecastings poor track record not for lack of brainpower. Ivy frustrations as a resident assistant in a UCF dorm.

It was a journal for my sanity, not so much for my productivity, said Shannon, a 22-year-old philosophy major. It kept me from going berserk. Id get help from others Id get two to five responses for each entry in the blog. Shannon, who left hk dorm job a year ago, said he and hk buddy figured they could say what they wanted about their jobs because of their pseudonyms. But such thinking is a mistake, Herbert said.

When you write in a Web '8 he Warns- ils a VuS man8 statements in pub- rr rr.5 Though Herbert hasnt v-it-n mi A handled any cases involv- ing blogs yet he has L. 44 handled many cybersmearing lawsuits in which people engaged in Internet slander. Tney use an anonymous name and think theyre anonym mous. But theyve set up account with an provider, and we can usually get the detaik (on them) by serving a subpoena. knight R.D0ER A company doesnt have to prove slander or anything eke to fire an employee, Herbert points out.

With most private-sector employees working at will, companies can terminate them for any reason. Simply put, if youre criticizing your company and die boss finds out, that can be grounds for being fired." And it doesnt matter if you are telling the truth, Herbert said. Though you might get away with gossiping privately to a colleague about your bosss recent bladder infection, the same gossip on your blog could easily land you in an unemployment line. Though some attorneys worry about the potential dangers of blogging, others laud its potential. Denise Howell of Newport Beach, who started her blog (bagandbaggage.com) in 2001, writes frequently on workplace blogging issues.

She said blogs allow companies to open themselves up to customers and the world. Blogs also offer advantages over e-mail. You get tons of e-mail thats interesting. Maybe you save it, but if you do its hard to search. And once its deleted its gone.

Blogging gives internal communications a permanent home and makes them searchable Winter Park, entrepreneur Buzz Bruggeman boasts about hk network of 165 per- See Page CIO: Hog By HMRY VESSEL The Orlando Sentinel Virtually unknown five years ago, Web logs aka blogs are maintained by an estimated 2 'A million Internet users. Akin to online diaries, blogs are Web sites with frequent updates displayed in reverse chronological order, maintained by individuals or small groups. Most bloggers are younger than 30, with the activity popular among teenage girls. But Web logs also are emerging as powerful workplace took, helping workers stay on top of their professions, as well as helping organizations manage team projects. Its not all sweetness anp light, however.

Used unwisely, blogging can cost you your job. In May, a low-level staff member in a U.S. Senate office was fired after posting unsuitable and offensive material to an Internet Weblog. Jessica Cuder, 24, had blogged about her sexual encounters with unnamed officials. Last fell, Microsoft contract worker Michael Hanscom was fired after he posted a photo on hk blog of Apple computers being delivered to a Microsoft loading dock.

In 2002, popular Web blogger Heather Armstrong (dooce.com) reported being fired for remarks she posted about her company, even though I had never mentioned the company or any employee by name." And according to Rebecca Blood of San Francisco (rebeccablood.net), author of The Weblog Handbook, (Perseus, 2002) at least one person she knows was not hired for a position because the people at the new job found out she was complaining about her present employer on her blog. Employees who keep blogs should realize that what theyre writing can easily get back to an employer, said Greg Herbert, an attorney specializing in First Amendment and intellectual property law with the Greenberg Traurig law firm in Orlando. More employers are using software programs that monitor the Internet and search for company names. University of Central Florida senior Matt Shannon and a friend maintained a blog site to which they both contributed, using pseudonyms. Shannon said the blog allowed him to vent Ilk job Mtiael Dorihue, economics professor Humans are humans, observes Chris Varvares, president of Macroeconomic Advisers, a St.

Louk forecasting firm, with major automakers, Wall Street firms and several U.S. government agencies as customers. They dont respond identically to similar situations through time. Their responses are varied, and their behavior is subtle," Because of the guesswork involved, some university economists disdain the field of forecasting. Its like the black sheep of the family, Donihue said.

No one wants to talk about it. No one wants to acknowledge it. But in the world outside academia, demand for economic soothsaying runs high, from companies figuring out whether to rev up production and hire more workers to Federal Reserve policymakers debating what to do with interest rates. Ford Motor manager of sales analysk, George Pipas, said he uses economic forecasts to gauge which way the wind blowing." At the Fed, officials are wrestling with how much and how quickly to raise interest rates. Their current thinking to lift rates slowly based on a forecast for mild inflation.

Their policy is probably the right one, if their forecast right," said Matthew Rafferty, an economist at the business school at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. If theyre wrong, League graduates and Ph.D. econ-omkts get paid six-figure salaries to read the economic crystal ball. But the economy simply wont cooperate. For starters, economkts often dont know whats happening with the economy today, let alone six months down the road.

They rely on economic reports, many of which are based on surveys that are at least a month old and often revised in subsequent months as more data comes in. Unforeseen developments, from a terror attack to a rise in oil prices, can derail projections. Perhaps most important, economics doesnt revolve around fundamental and immutable laws, as do basic sciences such as physics and biology. Economists are trying to model human behavior, which, unlike Sir Isaac Newton's law of gravity, changes. See Page CIO: See Page C3: Hahn J..