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Source: Houston Chronicle, April 29, 2007, 10:17PM
…… Fearful that Texas drivers will wind up padding private investors' pockets to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, the Texas Senate last week approved a two-year moratorium on private financing of toll roads. The measure goes to the House, which can accept it or negotiate a compromise with its own transportation bill.
Source: By Emily Thornton, Business Week, MAY 7, 2007
……With state and local leaders scrambling for cash to solve short-term fiscal problems, the conditions are ripe for an unprecedented burst of buying and selling. All told, some $100 billion worth of public property could change hands in the next two years, up from less than $7 billion over the past two years; a lease for the Pennsylvania Turnpike could go for more than $30 billion all by itself. "There's a lot of value trapped in these assets," says Mark Florian, head of North American infrastructure banking at Goldman, Sachs & Co (GS ).
There are some advantages to private control of roads, utilities, lotteries, parking garages, water systems, airports, and other properties. To pay for upkeep, private firms can raise rates at the tollbooth without fear of being penalized in the voting booth. Privateers are also freer to experiment with ideas like peak pricing, a market-based approach to relieving traffic jams. And governments are making use of the cash they're pulling in—balancing budgets, retiring debt, investing in social programs, and on and on. But are investors getting an even better deal? It's a question with major policy implications as governments relinquish control of major public assets for years to come.
Source: CATHY HENG, THE SAGINAW NEWS (MI), Sunday, April 29, 2007
MIDLAND -- Employees, citizens, union members, family members and even pickets are having their say before the Midland Board of Education as it considers outsourcing some school support services.
..... Employees and citizens have expressed concern about the loss of jobs, student and staff safety, reliability and background checks. They also say the proposals are cut-and-slash tactics, provide wages set at poverty levels and go against public opinion. Fred Baker, a district retiree, gave the board signatures of 1,905 community members who do not want privatization of school services.
Source: By Tim Evans, Karen Eschbacher and Vic Ryckaert, Indianapolis Star (IN), April 24, 2007
State officials will temporarily halt the transfer of Arizona prisoners to the New Castle Correctional Facility after a riot Tuesday that prompted calls for an end to housing another state's inmates in Indiana. Department of Correction officials said nine people -- two prison employees and seven inmates -- suffered minor injuries in separate disturbances involving Arizona and Indiana prisoners during a two-hour period Tuesday afternoon at the facility 50 miles east of Indianapolis.
....... The New Castle prison is state-owned, but Indiana contracts with GEO Group of Florida to operate it.
Source: South Bend Tribune (IN), March 27. 2007 6:59AM
Go ahead, call us skeptical. It has been made very clear in this space that we have deep and abiding concerns about statewide privatization of the delivery of welfare services to 1.1 million needy Hoosiers.
It would have been reassuring, as the privatization contract with a consortium of IBM and Affiliated Computer Services was negotiated, if Gov. Mitch Daniels had permitted the Indiana General Assembly an oversight role. But the governor took it upon himself to enter into the $1.16 billion, 10-year deal between the state Family and Social Services Administration and the IBM-ACS group.
FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob was a vice president of ACS prior to coming to work for Daniels.
Source: By Robert Kuttner, Boston Globe, April 21, 2007
THE DEEPENING college loan scandal is a classic case of what can happen when government uses private companies as middlemen to carry out public goals. Lately, investigations by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, US Senator Edward Kennedy, and others have revealed a number of problems:
.........The private student loan industry adds nothing of value. The policy of subsidizing private lenders to serve public purposes (and to corrupt our colleges and universities) should be scrapped in favor of the direct federal loan program.
If this saga sounds familiar, it exactly parallels the privatized Medicare drug program and the efforts by the insurance industry to turn the rest of Medicare into a taxpayer subsidy for private industry. Though three decades of government-bashing have left many politicians reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion, it is often more efficient and less corrupting for government to do the public's business directly.
A tv commericial for Rhode Island's AFSCME Council 94 urging opposition to privatization at the Rhode Island Veterans Home Dietary and Eleanor Slater Hospital Dietary and Housekeeping Services
Source: MSEA News, Vol. 15 no. 4, April 2007
In a recent Arbitration decision, the Michigan State Employees Association (MSEA) aggressively protected bargaining unit work that was temporarily taken from our membership. The temporary loss of this work resulted in financial loss to our members who had job duties and work schedules changed as a result of this management decision.