Source: Doug Sword, Herald Tribune (FL), Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 2:52 p.m.

The panel investigating whether Sarasota County Libraries should be privatized recommended today not to pursue the idea. Whether or not to accept that recommendation will be up to county commissioners, who are expected to discuss privatization of libraries next week as they meet to try to fill an estimated $40 million shortfall in next year's budget.

Source: By Dan Mihalopoulos, Chicago Tribune (IL), June 3, 2009

City Hall's inspector general blasted Mayor Richard Daley's parking meter lease Tuesday, alleging the administration gave up the potential for hundreds of millions in additional cash when aldermen rapidly rubber-stamped the deal. 

While Inspector General David Hoffman put an official seal on what critics have been saying for months, the scathing report comes amid public outrage. Anger over the parking meter meltdown has yet to subside in a rare case where a blunder is sticking to a mayor who has outrun many controversies during his two decades in office.

Source:  LESLIE WAYNE, New York Times, June 5, 2009

It was hailed as a win-win for Main Street and Wall Street -- a way for states and cities, along with financiers, to make some money.  But now privatization, the selling of public airports, bridges, roads and the like to private investors, looks like a boom that wasn't. Deals are collapsing. Airy hopes of quick profits are vanishing. And what was celebrated as a new wave in finance is, for the moment, barely making a ripple. 

What happened? The financial crisis, for starters. The easy money that Wall Street was counting on to finance its purchases has largely disappeared. Then the Obama administration unintentionally damped interest with its $787 billion economic stimulus package, a windfall that local governments are now racing to spend.

Source: By Beth Smith, The Suburbanite (OH), New! Fri Jun 05, 2009, 10:02 AM EDT

Members of the Coventry Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE) accepted a pay freeze and rolled over their contract. The announcement was made at the school board meeting by Brian Smith, president. OAPSE represents clerical, support staff and bus drivers.  Closely related, a number of citizens attended the meeting expressing concerns about the future of busing and Coventry bus drivers.

.... School Superintendent Rusty Chaboudy has begun an exploration of Petermann LLC  to provide bus transportation for the district's students. Coventry would give up their bus fleet and the cost of its maintenance in favor of buses dispatched from a Petermann terminal on Triplett Blvd.