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Source: By TONY NAUROTH, The Express-Times (PA), Tuesday, February 23, 2010

 

After six and a half years working for Sodexo Food and Facilities Management Services at Lafayette College, Genevieve Repsher grew tired of earning $8.25 an hour as a cashier in the Farinon Hall cafeteria.

When she showed interest in organizing fellow workers with Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, she found herself followed, watched, interrogated and disciplined by Sodexo management.

Source: by Alex Friedmann, Prison Legal News, December 2009

 

..... The same day that the APPF contract was announced, PLN began preliminary background research into the company. Within a matter of hours it was learned that APPF had been incorporated in California in March 2009 and its website went up two months later; the firm's Washington, D.C. address was at a location that provides "virtual office" services, but APPF didn't have an account there; the company was not registered to do business in D.C. or Montana; and APPF was not listed in a database of federal contractors.

By Jonathan Walters, Governing.com December 8, 2009
 

Well it's happened again--another spectacular crash and burn of an information-technology system that was supposed to be the magical answer to a state human services system's performance and cost woes. This time it is Indiana's 10-year $1.16 billion deal with IBM to pre- and re-qualify clients for health and human services ranging from TANF to Medicaid to food stamps. Two and half years into the deal, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels flipped off the switch, cancelling the contract and sending IBM packing.

....... As the story is told in the general media, it's the classic and predictable bad-guys-in-action story line: Governor Mitch Daniels, conservative Republican, looking to do a little union-busting, decides to turn over a significant portion of the work done by the state's Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) to IBM. As part of the deal, hundreds of former public employees are summarily shifted over to IBM, where they serve as at-will employees, outside of the state's public employee collective bargaining system.

Source: By Michele McNeil, EdWeek blog, November 23, 2009

When your government-funded program is on the chopping block, a rather damning Inspector General audit will do little to bolster your case for continued funding.

 ....... We the People and the Cooperative Civic Education and Economic Education Exchange Program. Both seek to foster civic education in K-12 schools. Both programs are also part of a laundry list of cuts the Obama administration has proposed. The savings, according to the Obama folks, would be $33.5 million. The center is a California-based nonprofit corporation that gets about 82 percent of its revenue from the U.S. Department of Education

Auditors from the Education Department's Office of Inspector General reviewed about $7.4 million of $23 million in grants that the Center for Civic Education charged in a one-year period to the federal grant programs, including We the People. Of that $7.4 million, auditors found $1.2 million of the spending was not allowed under federal regulations, and another $4.7 million couldn't be supported by proper documentation. That's a whopping 80 percent of charges that were either unallowable, or unsupported.

 

Source: AMERICAN-STATESMAN (TX), Monday, November 09, 2009

 

Here's a Monday morning reminder on a lesson we seem to need to periodically relearn: Privatization of traditionally governmental functions can be a good thing, or not.  Two recent examples from that latter category remind us that governments at all levels must move carefully and precisely when farming out functions to profiteers promising to save some tax dollars. .... Texas is blessed with many fine state employees, often willing to go above and beyond the call of duty, who do their jobs and deliver services even when the politicians and higher-ups screw things up.

Source: By Stephenie Steitzer, The Courier-Journal (KY), November 6, 2009

 

A Northpoint Training Center corrections officer testified Friday that inmates rioted at the prison in August because they weren't being fed enough and the food they did receive was of poor quality.

... The department has said it is satisfied with the quality of food provided to inmates by Aramark Services, a private food service company in Pennsylvania.

..... Hughes was among about 25 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees who appeared at Friday's hearing. AFSCME officials are pushing the state to improve safety measures for corrections officers. Hughes and Yonts testified that food portions are often small and that about 20 percent of the inmates can't afford to buy food from the inmate canteen to supplement what they get in the cafeteria.

Source: By DAN MIHALOPOULOS, New York Times, November 20, 2009

After a rocky start hurt their bottom line, Chicago's new parking meter operators are raking in more than $1.1 million a week and expect even more revenue next year, according to internal company documents obtained by the Chicago News Cooperative.

 ....... Financial experts who reviewed the data say Chicago could have made out much better in the long run had it just kept the meters. The private company, Chicago Parking Meters LLC, paid the city $1.15 billion in February for the right to reap all parking fee revenues for 75 years. Under the deal, rates immediately quadrupled at most of the city's 36,000 meters.

Source: Washington Post, Friday, November 13, 2009

 

THERE ARE many questions surrounding the D.C. group homes owned by Individual Development Inc. (IDI), a nonprofit whose officers number among the city's most politically connected. Such as: How did the group take in millions of government dollars, hand out handsome salaries and deliver substandard care? And: Why did it take two years and the deaths of three people before the District took any action? Most of all: Is the city right to give the group yet another chance to keep its promises about improving care?

Source: Eddie Baeb, Chicago Business (IL), September 28, 2009

Developers and businesses in Chicago fear they could be on the hook for millions of dollars when they want to replace a parking space with a driveway or a loading zone.

The reason: Mayor Richard M. Daley's controversial $1.16-billion deal to privatize the city's parking meters requires that whenever a metered parking space is eliminated, somebody has to pay for it -- and if it's not business, it likely will be Chicago drivers.

Source: By Alan Greenblatt, Governing, August 2009


Parking has gotten worse in Chicago, and many see Mayor Richard Daley's decision to privatize parking meters as the culprit. Daley has been a privatization pioneer, starting with his leasing of the Chicago Skyway for 99 years. So, when a consortium led by Morgan Stanley offered $1.2 billion for the right to collect street-parking fees over the next 75 years, it seemed like a no-brainer. The plan sailed through the city council but ran into trouble almost as soon as it was implemented in February.

Parking fees quadrupled in some areas, running to $3.50 an hour in the Loop; downtown rates will rise to $6.50 by 2013. The need to stuff meters with 14 quarters a shot jammed many of them. Meanwhile, 250 pay-and-display devices that take credit cards broke down right after installation.