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Highlights
- The executive director of the Black woman-led Georgia Stand-Up described for Vox all the work that led up to Georgia’s surprising election results.
- In the Public Interest’s Executive Director Donald Cohen joined the new Feet to the Fire podcast to discuss the recent elections.
- The pandemic is renewing a push to build privatized toll roads in Texas.
1) National/Georgia: One of the founding affiliates of the Partnership for Working Families, Georgia Stand Up, has been playing a key role for years in expanding democracy in the Peach State, which is facing two crucial Senate run-offs in January. Lauren Jacobs, executive director of PWF, says “over the next few weeks, Georgia STAND-UP will focus on voter registration ahead of the December 7 registration deadline. They are also mounting a sophisticated voter outreach and education campaign. Will you stand with Georgia and support Georgia STAND-UP with a meaningful gift to help them grow their pivotal work?”
Georgia Stand-Up joined other Black-led organizations in sharing what’s next in Georgia for Vox.
2) National: In the Public Interest’s Jeremy Mohler points to many significant pro-public wins, including:
- Voters passed a host of ballot measures in states and localities that make government work for all of us, not the wealthy few who rig the rules in their favor. They voted to raise revenue for education, transit, and libraries; expand family leave; reject the failed war on drugs; give workers a raise; and more.
- In Colorado, voters approved Proposition 118, providing workers in the state 12 weeks of paid family leave and 16 weeks for the birth of a child.
- In every state where a ballot measure asked voters to turn back the war on drugs, people approved decriminalization.
- Portland, Maine, voters passed Question A, increasing the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and requiring time-and-a-half pay during emergencies.
- Over 80 percent of Philadelphia voters approved the ban of the use by police of “stop-and-frisk” tactics, which disproportionately target people of color.
- As EveryLibrary reports, voters in 17 states approved 28 measures supporting public libraries. This includes at least $728 million for new construction and renovation of library buildings and hundreds of millions of dollars for collections, programs, and staffing.
3) National: WBAP reports that “Americans approved at least $26.7 billion in state and local borrowing measures, more than half of the proposed bond sales on ballots across the country, while another $15.7 billion are still pending final results.”
4) National: In the Public Interest’s Executive Director Donald Cohen joined journalist Jim Lardner on Lardner’s new Feet to the Fire podcast to discuss the recent elections and the battle to reverse the impact of decades of well-funded antigovernment propaganda and move an agenda of governing for the common good. Cohen talks about how we can go about moving our public ideals and goals through institutions of government. [Audio, about half an hour].
5) Pennsylvania: The exodus of some students to cyber charters is taking a toll on already strained school district budgets. “That’s a problem that could end with a tax raise or programs for their own school districts could end up being shrunk or even cut. You still have buildings, teachers and staff, and more to pay for, and so even if some students leave, district costs aren’t necessarily going down. ‘There will be public schools, school districts, in a lot of trouble financially,’ said Jeff Groshek, the superintendent of the Central Columbia School District. ‘It just can’t continue. It just can’t.’ (…) ‘We’re spending $635,000 on 42 students,’ Groshek explained. ‘Our entire athletic budget or extracurricular programs, we spend $512,000 and that affects hundreds and hundreds of students, so it’s out of control.’”
6) Texas: A record amount of gun control legislation was introduced on the first day of bill pre-filing for the 2021 Texas Legislative Session. Among the bills: House Bill 196, repealing key elements of Texas’ Castle Doctrine law, including stand your ground and no-duty-to-retreat.
7) West Virginia: Preston Board of Education has tabled action on a charter school application until November 30. “In a presentation before the board’s discussion, Preston County Education Association President Susan Waugh and Vice President Cassandra Sisler asked the board not to approve the charter school application.” [Sub required]
8) Think Tanks: Phil Mattera of Good Jobs first has a first take on the names on the Biden/Harris transition agency review teams. He stresses the importance of limiting corporate influence. “The initial signs are encouraging,” Mattera writes. “I went through the list of affiliations and found only about 20 for large corporations. The vast majority of the people are from academia, state government, law firms, non-profits, unions, think tanks and foundations. It is likely that some of the law firms are there to represent specific corporate interests, but the numerous representatives from progressive public interest, environmental and labor groups should serve as an effective counterweight.”
9) Think Tanks: The prominent law firm Steptoe & Johnson has produced three useful charts on the federal COVID crisis response: U.S. Financial Regulatory Agency Action on COVID-19; Federal Reserve Economic Recovery Programs; and Main Street Lending Program (MSLP) Facilities.
Education
10) National: President-elect Biden is sweeping a whole new wind into the education department, reversing DeVos’ policy agenda. “The incoming first lady, Jill Biden, is a community college professor and member of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union. The Biden administration has promised to drastically increase resources for public schools, expand civil rights advocacy for marginalized students and reassert department leadership in policymaking. On the most pressing issue facing education, reopening schools during the pandemic, the Biden administration has signaled a sharply different approach.” Legislation and executive action to relieve cash strapped schools could come soon.
Among the biggest agenda items: The incoming administration has proposed a series of changes that could affect more than 42 million student loan borrowers.
11) National: A glimpse of the dystopian future that lay in store for public education had Trump won the election was laid out by Peter Greene in The Progressive. “Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, sensing perhaps the need to reaffirm her stamp on education policy, recently gave a speech at an education roundtable at Hillsdale College, a private Christian college in Michigan. The Washington Post called her remarks an ‘anti-government polemic’ that reasserted one of her long-held beliefs: that families, rather than the federal government, should be the ‘sovereign sphere’ for deciding how to spend public money for education.
12) National: Can the big yellow school bus make it out of the pandemic alive? Julianne Petrillo votes for privatization. For another side of the story see More Dangerous, More Costly: An Analysis of Transportation Outsourcing by Michael Diedrich and Sylvia O’Brien.
13) National/Utah: The Salt Lake Tribune has a profile of Lily Eskelsen García, a former Utah educator who is now on the short list for education secretary under President-elect Joe Biden. “Though Eskelsen García is reported as a top pick for education secretary, the list also includes Randi Weingarten, who leads the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in the country. Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University, is also a possibility. And there are several superintendents in the mix from California and Washington and New York, according to The Post.”
14) Arizona: Custodial workers at the University of Arizona, a public university, are speaking out about their unsafe work conditions. “The working conditions for custodial staff are just some of the myriad issues at the University of Arizona that triggered the creation of United Campus Workers Arizona. The union launched around Labor Day after months of organizing against what hundreds of staff and faculty felt was a neglectful response to the coronavirus outbreak, excessive layoffs, pay cuts, and furloughs aimed at stemming a budget crisis triggered by the pandemic. The union currently has over 200 members.”
15) California: The San Diego Union-Tribune says San Diego is poised to toughen up its charter schools regulations. “‘It’s been frustrating as a school board member for 12 years to have charter petitions come before us and not be able to ask that basic question: How will this school impact neighboring schools and our district as a whole?’ said Board Vice President Richard Barrera at a recent meeting. ‘And now, not only can we ask those questions, we will ask those questions.’ For example, San Diego Unified could consider how many district and charter schools already serve students where a charter school hopes to locate and how many students a charter school is projected to take away from San Diego Unified and other charter schools.”
16) Florida: Republican state senator Joe Gruters says he plans to introduce legislation “to grant private school vouchers to parents who don’t want their children to wear masks in school, even as coronavirus cases continue to rise in Florida and across the nation.” Not so fast, says the union. “‘It is kind of late in the game because I’m guessing that before his bill would be passed and started, probably next fall, that hopefully we are out of COVID and we are not wearing masks at school,’ said Sarasota teacher’s union president Pat Gardner. ‘Secondly, I just think vouchers are a way to divert money to unaccountable private schools.’ The bottom line, according to Gardner, is that masks in school are important to maintain the safety of teachers, especially as coronavirus cases continue to mount statewide. ‘Our teachers want masks. If they don’t have them, you will lose so many teachers—to leaves to early retirements—that you will not be able to fill the classrooms. We already have horrible problems finding substitutes,’ she said.”
17) Florida: Jacksonville residents are angry that a charter school is being built right across the street from their public school. “‘It’s going to draw resources, funding, and it’s going to bring our student enrollment down, and it could very much possibly affect our teachers. Everyone is worried about this school coming across the street from our school,’ said Lisa Britt, PTA President at Alimacani Elementary School. (…) Teachers and parents told News4Jax they were also frustrated that the school board signed off on the project so close to an existing school seemingly without notice.”
18) Idaho: The University of Idaho is going to receive an up-front payment of $225 million for a 50-year lease agreement in which a developer consortium will maintain and operate its steam plant and utility system. “The university will initially pay a fixed fee of $7.6 million annually to the private operator for utility and maintenance costs, Campbell said, slightly more than what the university currently pays in utility costs.” [Sub required]
19) Massachusetts: Staff members at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School (PVPA) “have reached their first labor contract with the school, according to the local union chapter.” The Daily Hampshire Gazette reports that “under the three-year contract, staff members have access to a formal grievance procedure, protections for performance evaluations and disciplines, and correction of ‘a longstanding inequity in the pay scale,’ according to United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) Local 2322 Servicing Representative Karen Rosenberg. Staff members formally unionized un
der UAW in February 2018.”
20) North Carolina: Incomplete audits of a charter school are being blamed on the school’s accountant. “The audits were among the items cited this week when the State Charter School Advisory Board unanimously voted in favor of revoking Essie Mae’s charter. A final decision would need to be made by the N.C. Board of Education, which could come in December. If the decision is supported by the state board, the charter will then have the chance to appeal the decision—something the school’s chairwoman said it intends to do.”
21) Rhode Island: Critics of a new charter school application for Providence say the Boston-based school “will draw millions of dollars away from the traditional public schools and, combined with a proposed expansion of Achievement First, create two parallel school systems. (…) ‘Frankly, it could be the best school in the universe,’ said state Rep. Rebecca Kislak of Providence. ‘I want to know why the mayor signed off on more than 6,000 additional charter seats at Achievement First and Excel. It’s a quarter of Providence’s public school students. I am incredibly concerned about what happens to the 75% of students left in the district’s schools.’ (…) Kislak said the charter application speaks to a larger concern. ‘As a parent, it feels to me like the policymakers, the governor, the mayor and the education commissioner, are giving up and saying, ‘We can’t fix your schools. The best we can do is let a quarter of our kids go to these other schools.’”
Infrastructure
22) National: President-elect Biden’s plans for a major national infrastructure development initiative are coming into view. The focus in the media has largely been on transportation and transit, with the spotlight on a “message delivered Thursday during an American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials virtual conference by John Porcari, co-chair of Biden’s infrastructure policy committee and former deputy secretary of transportation.” [Sub required]. Porcari may be under consideration for Transportation Secretary.
TTNews reports that “the group that will help shape that agenda during the transition is led by Phillip Washington, CEO of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to the Biden-Harris camp. The transportation transition team also includes Polly Trottenberg, New York City transportation commissioner and formerly a senior transportation policy official during the Obama era, Brendan Danaher with Transport Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, and Therese McMillan, formerly at the Federal Transit Administration. The Biden team said announcements regarding Cabinet-level positions could begin as early as this month. Various officials and congressional aides told Transport Topics that former USDOT officials, such as Porcari, are likely to have a role with the new administration.”
The team also includes Dave Barnett of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, David Cameron of the Teamsters, Brad Mims of the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials, and Mario Rodriguez of the Indianapolis Airport Authority.
23) National: Writing in Infrastructure Investor, Stephanie Baxter explains why good project and corporate governance is essential to infrastructure. “Environmental, social and governance issues are becoming a major part of everyday life for investors. Not only is there societal pressure to ‘do the right thing’ but financial regulators and governments are mandating new checks on it, too. For the moment, at least, the mainstream focus has turned to the environmental and social risks of any capital allocation, but investors still need to be aware of how governance is a crucial part of investment decision-making. Infrastructure companies or projects with poor governance practices can pose significant risks to investors. These risks can be translated into a slump in the value of companies due to a lack of board supervision, counter-power to the management or independence within the board.”
24) Hawaii: The Honolulu rail authority’s executive director is digging in and refusing to give up on a P3 to finish a rail line. “Robbins’ long-shot attempt to draw the city back in comes as the HART board has indicated it intends to replace him when his contract expires at year’s end. On Thursday, the full board voted to start looking for an interim director after its Human Resources Committee weighed the matter in closed session. Several members later criticized Robbins on Thursday for continuing to pursue the P3 after a majority of them previously indicated they wanted HART to stop. Board member Hoyt Zia told Robbins he would be considered ‘insubordinate’ in the private sector.”
25) Michigan: Grand Rapids is looking at kicking $6.25 million into a P3 that would redevelop a city-owned waterfront property near downtown into a 14,000-seat amphitheater, MBiz reports. “In recent months, Grand Action—the business group led by Dick DeVos, Carol Van Andel and Fifth Third Bank Regional President Tom Welch that pushed for several major downtown developments over the past two decades—reconvened to focus on new downtown projects, including an amphitheater potentially at 201 Market. Grand Action Spokesperson John Truscott said the business group is not involved with the proposed sewer project and property deal, but rather is undergoing a study into potential project that would be a ‘good fit for downtown Grand Rapids.’”
26) Missouri: The Eureka City Council is expected to approve tomorrow a deal to sell the city’s water and sewer system to Missouri American Water. Citizens approved the agreement in August. In a pleasant surprise, they’ve published the 500-page contract.
27) New York: At a virtual public hearing, ratepayers and lawmakers denounced the proposed deal to sell New York American Water to Liberty Utilities, “demanding instead that the state agency that must approve the sale work to facilitate public water for the embattled Nassau system.” Agatha Nadel, a Glen Head ratepayer and leader of the North Shore Concerned Citizens, said “New York American Water is the absolute worst and Liberty Utilities will be no better. We are demanding affordable public water once and for all.”
Nadel “was one of 11 speakers, including watchdogs, state lawmakers and ratepayers who spoke in vociferous opposition to the sale, while urging the PSC to find a path to make the water system, which spans from Lynbrook to Sea Cliff in Nassau County, public. Outside the companies, only a single speaker, a union rep for utility workers, spoke in favor of the sale. Shawn Garvey, a national representative for the Utility Workers Union of America, said the sale was ‘in the best interest of our members.’”
28) Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has won approval consider charging tolls on major bridges to fund repairs or replacement and use leftover money for other transportation projects. “The program, approved by the Public Private Transportation Partnership, will allow PennDOT to charge tolls and turn the construction and maintenance of the bridges over to a private company. The partnership is a board set up by the Legislature to encourage such public-private partnerships, so the concept doesn’t need additional legislative approval, PennDOT spokeswoman Alexis Campbell said. Once the bridges are selected, each individual each one would have to go through environmental clearances, public outreach and other steps to meet federal requirements before tolls could be charged.”
29) Texas: Looks like we’re in for another round in the Texas P3/toll roads war. Melanie Torre, reporting for CBS Austin, says the pandemic is renewing a push to build toll roads in the Lone Star State. “Now Keep Texas Moving—a coalition of businesses focused on improving gridlocked roads—is urging state leaders to re-authorize public-private partnerships (P3s) to fund major road projects. That’s when the private sector puts up the money to get the work done and then gets paid back over time through toll revenues.”
Terri Hall, a redoubtable opponent of Texas toll road P3s for years, weighed in immediately: “NCTCOG’s push for yet more toll roads, especially public private partnerships like the over priced Lexus lanes operated by a private, foreign corporation on I-635 and I-820, defies the Governor’s promise and flouts the will of the taxpayers who have persistently said ‘No’ to such corporate welfare. It’s time to tighten their belts, not ask hurting Texas families to dig deeper.”
30) Virginia/National: Yet another company has sold off a major P3, as the sector continues to slump. “Skanska continued its exit from the U.S. P3 sector by divesting the company of Virginia’s Elizabeth River Crossings tunnel project. The Sweden-based company announced Monday that it signed a binding sale agreement to shed its 50% ownership stake in Elizabeth River Crossings HoldCo LLC, the concessionaire that has a public-private partnership with the Virginia Department of Transportation. In 2018, Skanska said it would stop bidding on mega-P3 projects in the United States because the risk and reward tradeoffs for such ventures had become unattractive here. Also on Monday, the other private partner in the project, Macquarie Infrastructure Partners II, announced that it will divest its 50% managed equity share in ERC HoldCo LLC. The company, however, is not exiting the P3 sector.” [Sub required]
31) International: The conservative Liberal Party premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, is going to privatize the rest of the WestConnex tollway to one of her biggest campaign donors—Transurban. “Christopher Standen, a transport analyst at the University of Sydney, has slammed the WestConnex privatization as ‘the biggest waste of public funds for corporate gain in Australian history.’ A new report by the Grattan Institute shows how WestConnex and other mega projects built by governments and then privatized are notorious for cost blow-outs that benefit private corporations. Standen estimated that the public would end up subsidizing 66% of the cost of WestConnex after privatization. Privatizing the remainder of WestConnex during the COVID-19 pandemic (when toll traffic is down) will lower the price, or involve other public subsidies through ‘tollway holidays’ to
sucker in users. This increases the public subsidy to the private corporate operator.”
32) International: The former CEO and other top managers of the company tasked with overseeing the Morandi Bridge in Genoa were arrested last Wednesday in an investigation linked to its deadly 2018 collapse. In 2018 the David Broder, writing in Jacobin, said “the Genoa bridge collapse in Italy is an absolute disaster. It’s also the result of privatization and austerity.” Bloomberg reports, “Giancarlo Cancelleri, Italy’s deputy infrastructure minister and a member of the Five Star Movement, said the police action vindicated his party’s push to investigate. ‘This is an absurd situation,’ said Cancelleri, whose group is the biggest party in the governing coalition. ‘People have pocketed all the money from toll licenses without doing proper maintenance.’”
Criminal Justice and Immigration
33) National: The Trump administration has deported at least six women who allege they were operated on without consent and is in the process of deporting at least seven more, according to The Associated Press. The human rights violations allegedly took place at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, which is operated for profit by LaSalle Corrections. Sterilization abuse has a long history in Georgia and the United States. “They said one of the women was told by ICE officials a hold on her deportation had been removed within hours of her speaking to investigators, while another was told to sign deportation papers after personnel took her to an airport in Georgia. The woman was returned to the facility after her lawyers filed a federal lawsuit. (…) Lawyers for the women allege the agency is deliberately sabotaging the case by deporting witnesses and creating a significant logistical obstacle to their testimony.
‘ICE is destroying the evidence needed for this investigation,’ Columbia University law professor Elora Mukherjee, who is assisting several of the plaintiffs, told the AP.”
34) National: Is DHS using torture to force people to consent to deportation? Daily Kos reports that “top Senate Democrats have joined immigrant rights advocates in calling for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog to immediately investigate allegations that federal immigration agents and private prison officers tortured a number of Cameroonian men to coerce them into signing their own deportation orders. Just days after advocates filed a complaint last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despicably tried to deport two of the asylum-seekers. Groups led by Freedom for Immigrants alleged in their civil rights complaint that ICE and officers at a private prison in Mississippi physically assaulted eight Black immigrants in attempts to force them to sign their deportation papers, leaving one man with broken fingers. ‘This pattern of coercion and unwarranted use of physical force by ICE officers is abusive, unlawful, and tantamount to torture,’ group said.”
35) National: The Project on Government Oversight reports that “private prison companies have received billions of dollars in federal contracts. At least one of those companies also took advantage of federal pandemic relief and received millions more in taxpayer aid. But rather than investing that money into their facilities to keep them adequately staffed, safe, and virus-free, they devoted a sizable amount of it to lobbying, campaign contributions, and other forms of political influence. The leading players in the industry are GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), which have each received in excess of $1 billion in contracts from the Trump administration. Both companies have been among the president’s financial backers during the recent election cycle.”
36) National/Colorado: A Denver hospitality house is restoring hope to immigrants released by ICE. “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) releases immigrant detainees almost every evening from a private 1,532-bed detention facility run by the Florida-based GEO Group, Inc. Even during a pandemic lockdown, detainees are released with little notice from the back doors after hours, when their lawyers’ offices are closed. Inside they had access to phones, but now they are in a strange city at night with only the long-dead cell phones they carried when they were taken into c
ustody. Waiting in puffing cars to keep warm, a group of volunteers springs into action as people emerge from the detention center. They approach the released detainees to ask if they need a place to stay.
“Casa de Paz, run in a small, three-bedroom home nearby, is a hospitality house where legally released detainees on parole or awaiting their asylum hearings can stay for up to three days while they make arrangements to return to their families or sponsors. Representatives from the United Nations have studied Casa de Paz’s service model, which is described in a new book, The House That Love Built: Why I Opened My Door to Immigrants and How We Found Hope Beyond a Broken System (Zondervan), by founder Sarah Jackson with Scott Sawyer.
37) Tennessee: Amidst a budget crunch, Shelby County is having to dip into its reserves for an anticipated new contract with Corizon Health to provide health care to county corrections prisoners and inmates. “Meanwhile, Wellpath announced Monday that it intends to sue the county claiming the contract was originally awarded to Wellpath, continuing a 14-year run with it as the health care provider, before an abrupt switch to Corizon. Gilliom said contract negotiations with Wellpath broke down and the administration is now talking with Corizon.
‘The way we are funding this. … I just quite frankly feel very, very uncomfortable,’ Commissioner Mark Billingsley said of the series of surprises.”
Public Services
38) National: Budget holes loom in some states after voters reject some tax increases. “State budgets have taken a hit in the economic downturn sparked by COVID-19. But voters mostly rejected tax ballot measures, leaving state and local officials to grapple with other fiscal fixes during their 2021 legislative and budgetary debates. Voters in California, for example, rejected a billionaire-backed property tax measure that would have taxed business properties worth more than $3 million at higher rates than residential properties.” Nationwide, state tax collections for fiscal 2020, which ended for most states on June 30, “will finish down more than 5% from the previous year and then decline another 6% in fiscal 2021, according to a September report from Moody’s Investors Service.”
39) National: Did Mike Pence engage in a bit of partnership-washing (think greenwashing but with public-private partnerships spin) on the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine? “Pfizer has distanced itself from Mr. Trump and Operation Warp Speed. In an interview on Sunday, Kathrin Jansen, a senior vice president and the head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, said, ‘We were never part of the Warp Speed,’ adding, ‘we have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.’”
40) National: The private, for-profit waste sector is cleaning up in the pandemic. “Waste Management, Republic Services, GFL Environmental, Waste Connections and Casella Waste Systems all reported higher year-over-year recycling revenues. And they all said the average price of recyclables flowing through their MRFs was up this year. The latest numbers are a continuation of what the companies reported during the second quarter, when the COVID-19 pandemic impacts took hold, affecting supply and demand and driving up prices for some recyclables.”
41) National: The sale of Advanced Disposal to Waste Management was finalized at the end of last month, possibly removing more competition from waste bidding by public entities. However, “as a result, a significant portion of the business in the Midwest has been divested to GFL Environmental. This includes the landfill in Calumet County as well as the Chilton Hauling Division (High Street and Park Street).”
42) International: Public-private partnerships have no place in Canada’s post-COVID just recovery, says Dylan Penner of the Council of Canadians. “The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and amplified many structural inequalities in our societies. As workers and communities continue to struggle with the ongoing consequences of the pandemic, we urgently need government to put people at the core of its COVID-19 response and recovery plan. However, what we have seen so far are troubling signs that the Trudeau government is planning to ramp up their privatization agenda through the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB). For decades, infrastructure has been severely underfunded in Canada, and local governments have been bearing the brunt of it. Under the Harper government, securing federal funding for major infrastructure projects required a public-private partnership (P3) screen, while provinces’ austerity budgets downloaded more cost to municipalities. Aging water and wastewater infrastructure urgently needs upgrading, while investments in public transit, regional rail and green infrastructure are critical to transition to a low-carbon economy and adapt to a climate crisis.”
Everything Else
43) National: Trump’s Schedule F Executive Order signed last month “has been heavily criticized from good government groups, public administration experts and unions,” Government Executive says. “The concern is that the spoils system could come back to the federal civil service, invalidating over 100 years of precedent.” Dr. Donald F. Kettl is Professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at University of Texas at Austin, joined the
GovExec podcast to discuss the issue.
Photo by Victoria Pickering.