HIGHLIGHTS

• ITPI brief on contracting serves as tool for local governments–and advocates
• Josh Cowen on his book The Privateers
• Mourning the passing of labor movement giant Bill Lucy

JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST

First, the Good News

1) National: In the Public Interest has released a new issue brief on cost analyses that is an important tool for local governments—and local advocates. As we recently announced and explored in a Q&A with Jobs to Move America (JMA), new updates to the Office of Management and Budget’s Uniform Guidance allow localities and states greater flexibility in incorporating pro-worker and pro-equity standards and tools in their contracting involving federal grant dollars. JMA leads the Local Opportunities Coalition, which fought for and won many of the new updates (In the Public Interest is a member of the coalition).

This brief also goes beyond the primary cost analysis to explore two other important components that should be considered:

• Gaining an understanding of why contracting is being considered in the first place—what is the problem or issue to solve, and are there other, better ways to solve it without contracting; and
• The importance of performing a social, economic, and environmental impact analysis of a proposed contract to understand potential community-wide costs and benefits

To learn more, read the full brief, Procurement Cost Analyses and the Decision to Contract.

2) National: Christina Rosales, Housing and Land Justice Director at PowerSwitch Action, delves into the three big lessons the organization learned from its delegation’s visit to Vienna and Berlin about the intersection of keeping public lands in public hands: Put land in public hands; let people govern it; make it high quality and beautiful. In the past few months, these principles are being applied in, for example, laying the groundwork for social housing in Chicago; going up against corporate landlords and real estate groups in Colorado; and in ensuring that public land serves the public good in California’s East Bay.

3) National: The Network for Public Education (NPE) has launched the National Center for Charter School Accountability “to provide research and recommendations on the lack of charter school transparency and accountability to guide needed reform.  We regularly receive calls from charter school parents, teachers, and public school advocates raising concerns. The Center includes a portal to lodge concerns and complaints.

Other features include:

• An interactive national map that rates state charter school laws which provides the number of charter schools open in the state in 2022-2023 and the number of schools that have closed.
• A searchable database of charter school issues in the press.
• NPE charter school reports.
• Our most recent action alert.
• Access to our toolkit which answers FAQ about charters and vouchers with supporting facts.

At present, only charter trade organizations provide information on charter schools, presenting their clients in the best light. The National Center for Charter School Accountability (NCCSA) presents the other side of the charter school story, providing a factual balance for the public and the press.”

4) National: Last Wednesday, Congress passed a bill to avert a government shutdown, among other things keeping funds flowing to municipalities and public services. “The extension lasts until Dec. 20, kicking the can past the November elections and into the lame duck Congressional session. Friday mark[ed] a recess for both houses, sending lawmakers home to focus on campaign-related business. They will return to Washington on Nov.12. The heavy legislative lifting that will be required when they get back for the lame duck session has some observers expecting an omnibus bill that could attract a muni wish-list of items as riders.” [Sub required]

5) National/New Book: News from the States, part of States Newsroom, has published a two-part interview with Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University about his new book The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers. “We have to have honest conversations about where public schools need to improve,” says Cowen, “but where those conversations can’t go, in my view, is toward a direction where the solution is taxpayer funding for this religious separatist movement in American education, where we’re just going to give people who are giving up on public schools community investment money to go learn in church schools. That’s not the answer. Folks can go learn in church schools if they want to, but if we’re at a point where we’re sending taxpayer dollars for that, I think it’s a fundamentally different vision of what American education is.”

6) Illinois: The Chicago Board of Education does not plan on any more school closures, The Bond Buyer reports. “The Chicago Board of Education adopted a nonbinding resolution proposed by Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez declaring a moratorium on school closures through spring 2027 during a heated meeting on Thursday. Thursday’s meeting followed a special meeting last week at which the board unanimously approved a five-year strategic plan that calls for CPS to reach 90% of the state’s assessed funding adequacy level in the next five years and to vigorously pursue more state and federal funding as well as leveraging philanthropy. It also followed news reports that Mayor Brandon Johnson asked Martinez to resign amid claims Martinez had lost the support of the board, the entity that controls his fate.” [Sub required]

Education

7) Indiana: Evansville Teachers Association (ETA) President Lori Young says the new school budget, which devotes money to private schools, will make teacher salary raises difficult. “This can include the near-universal private school voucher system which the EVSC and the ETA are not happy with. ‘It’s taking a huge chunk of money from all of our public schools here in Indiana, and I am amazed that the legislators would think that that is Okay, considering most of them went to public schools,’ Young said. According to Indiana Public Radio, $439 million was set aside for student tuition in private schools. There are a little more than 70,000 attending private schools on the voucher system. As of the 2023-2024 school year, up to 90-percent of Hoosier students qualify for a private school voucher—even if parents earn more than $200,000 annually. EVSC Chief Communications Officer Jason Woebkenberg said without vouchers, public school teachers could receive even higher raises, while only seven percent of students attend private schools in Indiana.”

8) New York: Another day, another charter school scandal, celebrity edition. Amidst the blaze of publicity surrounding Sean “Diddy” Combs’ indictment on sex trafficking and other federal charges, the media have largely ignored or downplayed another scandal surrounding Combs—his “disaster” Harlem charter school. Combs “co-founded Capital Preparatory Harlem in 2016.” The Cut reports that “Five months later, Capital Prep would sever ties with Combs after his former girlfriend filed a lawsuit accusing him of abuse, rape, and sex trafficking. (…) Capital Prep is now enrolling students for the 2024–25 school year, its first without an official affiliation with Combs. Will parents be willing to send their children to the school without its celebrity founder? ‘Not every child in Harlem is destitute or parentless,’ [Shirley Payne, whose son, Darnell, had joined the school as a ninth-grader] says. ‘And that’s how they treat them, like they have no parents that care and everyone is just an idiot.’”

9) Ohio: The Columbus school board has until today to file a response brief with the Ohio Supreme Court to a state lawsuit challenging its decision not to offer school bus services to charter school students.

10) Ohio: Reform Austin reports that “Ohio is funding private religious schools with taxpayer money to help them expand and renovate their campuses through a voucher scheme, a movement that is almost unprecedented in modern U.S. history. The move, first reported by ProPublica, will allow the state to provide millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, thanks to a bill passed by its Legislature this  summer. The bill aims to increase the capacity of religious schools so they can absorb more voucher students, according to Ohio Senate president Matt Huffman. Different critics and experts consulted by ProPublica argued the move is ‘new, dangerous, ground,’ and that the move could hurt public schools.”

11) South Carolina: The Times & Democrat reports that a watchdog agency has launched an investigation into the state’s largest charter school district. “The Legislative Audit Council, whose board voted Tuesday to launch the investigation, will have unfettered access to all Charter Institute records, with the exception of tax returns, during its legislatively-requested inquiry and will publish its findings and recommendations when it finishes. The Charter Institute, a taxpayer-funded affiliate of Erskine College that oversees 26 charter schools throughout the state, came under legislative scrutiny earlier this year after reporting by The State Media Co. raised questions about its spending, operations and ability to provide objective oversight of the schools it regulates. While charter school authorizers have historically served the circumscribed role of evaluating new charter school applications and providing oversight and accountability to existing charter schools, the Erskine Institute has operated more like a start-up business with an eye toward expansion and adding new revenue streams.”

12) Texas: Writing in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, Bill Lewis, treasurer of the For NBISD Kids political action group, tackles the pricey illusion of school vouchers in Texas. “As Texas approaches the 2025 legislative session, discussions involving terms like ‘school choice,’ ‘educational savings accounts,’ and ‘voucher programs’ are intensifying. Proponents of these programs argue that tax-dollar-funded measures would give parents more control over their child’s education, potentially creating competition for public schools. However, a closer look at how Texas funds its public schools — and the heavy mandates they must meet—reveals a system already struggling to support students adequately. Rather than improving public education, vouchers threaten to drain resources from schools that are already underfunded and overburdened. (…) Vouchers will siphon billions of taxpayer dollars into the private sector, with little to no accountability. It will likely drive up the cost of private tuition. To create a truly competitive and equitable education system, the focus must be on fixing the funding model and reducing the administrative burdens and costs that weigh down public schools.”

13) Texas: The Times Record-News (Wichita Falls) reports on a candidates’ debate that touched on school vouchers, a key issue in the next Texas state legislative session. “‘I do not support school vouchers,’ Democratic candidate Walter Coppage said. He said the program is backed by Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilks who are ‘interested in Christian nationalism.’ He said the billionaires have ‘spent a lot of money to elect people who will vote the way they ask them to.’”

Infrastructure

14) National: The Wall Street Journal reports that municipalities are facing a financial crunch due to climate change. “Extreme weather is pressuring local budgets, sticking Americans with the bill and putting the $4 trillion market for state and local bonds at the center of the climate-change fight. Clyde, Texas, will likely face increased borrowing costs after the city defaulted on debt last month during a drought. Higher parking fees at the beach in Naples, Fla., are helping repay bonds sold to rebuild the city’s hurricane-damaged pier. Residents of Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma will spend the next two decades chipping away at the multibillion-dollar cost of maintaining power during a 2021 winter storm.”

“Clyde is the latest U.S. city to suffer a climate-related default. In December, a Paradise, Calif., city agency missed payments on bonds issued in better days, before a downed power line in a drought-ravaged forest sparked the huge 2018 Camp Fire. In November, Californians will vote on whether to borrow $10 billion to address issues such as rising sea levels and forest fires. The U.S. Senate Budget Committee held a hearing earlier this year titled ‘Safeguarding Municipal Bonds from Climate Risk.’” [Sub required]

Meanwhile, the right-wing assault on ESG investing standards continues. but has provoked an angry backlash.

15) National: Will parks be out of bounds as climate change worsens? Inside Climate News has a series of articlestouching on the subject. Wyatt Myskow reports that “In Arizona, researchers are studying playgrounds where the equipment gets so hot it can burn kids’ skin. As heat worsens nationwide, other communities will need to take note. (…) It’s an issue across the country, as climate change has led to 14 straight record-high monthly global temperatures, with Midwestern cities like Chicago seeing an unprecedented heatwave in August. But it is especially pronounced in places like the Phoenix metro area, which includes Tempe. Heat is a constant fact of life here—and a present-day peek into other communities’ future. Already, cities from New York to Los Angeles are rethinking playground design. ‘Playgrounds are really at the heart of extreme heat impact,’ said Ariane Middel, the SHaDe Lab’s director and an associate professor focused on the intersection of extreme heat and urban climates, including at playgrounds in the Phoenix area.”

16) National/International: The Economist reports that new technologies can spot pesky leaks in water pipelines. “On Capri’s neighbouring islands of Ischia and Procida, however, new monitoring technology designed to spot water leaks kept the leakage rate closer to 20%. Xylem, an American firm, first began monitoring the pipes that connect the islands with the mainland in 2019 using its “SmartBall” and “Sahara” systems. The SmartBall is a tennis-ball size tool that travels through water pipes freely, whereas Sahara is tethered. Both come with acoustic sensors to identify the distinctive hissing sound of a leak, and GPS connectivity to pinpoint their exact location. Subsequent repairs to cracks identified by Xylem saved Ischia 50 litres of water each second, equivalent to a third of the island’s consumption. Similar methods could have similarly dramatic consequences elsewhere. (…) For now, no single technology offers a perfect solution: SmartBalls can get lost; satellite imagery can be fuzzy; and robots still require human operators, which increases costs. But these are minor quibbles. More accurate information about how pipe networks actually function will be vital to making the most of the world’s supplies of drinking water.” [Sub required]

17) California: A veto by Governor Gavin Newsom (D) means “California hospitals will get no extra time to retrofit hospitals against earthquakes. (…) Under existing regulations, hospitals will be forced to close if they don’t finish required earthquake safety work by a 2030 deadline under a state law originally crafted following the 1994 Northridge earthquake. (…) Almost two-thirds of the hospitals in the state will not meet the 2030 deadline, which requires hospitals to be fully operational after a major earthquake, Jan Emerson-Shea, vice president of external affairs for the California Hospital Association, told the Bond Buyer in June. In his veto message, Newsom said ‘any extensions considered for the 2030 deadline must balance the increased risk to patients, hardworking hospital staff, emergency responders and the people living in that community.’” [Sub required]

18) Texas: A family business has been forced to close Mimi’s and Papa’s restaurant—just 8 months after opening—after the Bluff’s Landing Marina privatization. [Video report, about 3 minutes]

19) Vermont: One of the largest stormwater projects in the state’s history has been announced. “This critical project made possible with a large grant from the state, exemplifies a public-private partnership in environmental initiatives. It has been championed by Pomerleau Real Estate, Champlain Housing Trust, State of Vermont and the City of Burlington.  Together, they have set a new standard for stormwater management that aligns with Vermont’s Stormwater Act, which mandates net-zero stormwater runoff. (…) The project, currently under construction, will be completed by the end of the year. It serves as a key step in the city’s efforts to comply with the MS4 permit, which mandates municipalities to manage stormwater in a way that reduces pollution in local waterways. With this initiative, Burlington can set a precedent for other communities.”

20) International/United Kingdom: Has the U.K. infrastructure sector hit rock bottom? Infrastructure Investor senior editor Bruno Alves, deputy editor Kalliope Gourntis and Americas editor Zak Bentley discuss the issues, including the crisis in the water sector, on the publication’s podcast. “That includes news of outreach to some of the industry’s biggest fund managers to inject equity into troubled utility Thames Water; worrying evidence of contagion from the Thames Water debacle for recent debt raises by some strong sector performers; a discussion on how to bring down the sector’s daunting debt pile; and much more.” [Audio, about 23 minutes]

Meanwhile, in a story that should give pause to advocates of the panacea of infrastructure banks, the Financial Times says that the Labour government’s £7 billion pledge has piled up pressure on sluggish UK Infrastructure Bank to deliver. “The UK Infrastructure Bank has invested a fraction of the £22bn of taxpayers’ money made available to it since its launch, even as the Labour government has promised to give it an extra £7bn. Since its founding in 2021, the UKIB has invested £4bn of the funds apportioned to it on private sector projects addressing climate change or driving economic growth. Despite MPs criticising the bank last year for ‘reinventing the wheel’ by funding projects already backed by private capital, the government in July pledged the UKIB an extra £7.3bn via a new National Wealth Fund. Dieter Helm, professor of economics at the University of Oxford, said it was ‘hard to see how giving the infrastructure bank an extra £7bn would help it do better than it has in the past.’” [Sub required]

All this as the U.K. faces a massive funding shortfall to tackle its crumbling infrastructure. “The EY report, led by former Treasury adviser Mats Persson, estimated a £1.6tn in required spending between now and 2040 in areas including energy, transport, and defence. Far greater private sector involvement would be required alongside public spending if the needs were to be met, said Persson, now an EY partner. ‘There is an absolute need as well as significant potential for more private investment into UK infrastructure assets and capital programmes that have traditionally been funded by taxpayers,’ said Persson.” [Sub required]. How this private investment, which is not free money, and is therefore a financing not a funding, is to be paid back, and what the cost of the money will be, was not specified by the FT.

Public Services

21) National: States that cut taxes over the past few years are facing budget crunches. “A combination of federal stimulus dollars, the resulting economic boom, and increased tax revenue flowing into the states turned into fat budget surpluses and eventually tax cuts. The cuts arrived in the form of one-time reductions, property tax caps, expanded exemptions, and constitutionally mandated rebates to taxpayers. Some state budget watchers are concerned about the resulting funding shortages and the amount of political capital needed to raise taxes to cover the deficits. ‘At that moment, it is not a question of your future or your policy goals,’ said Auxier. ‘It’s can we get back to our head above water?’ Earlier this year Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska promised taxpayers a 50% cut in property taxes, which according to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities would have resulted in a $1.85 billion shortage.” [Sub required]

22) National: Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early ask “Will Walz or Vance Tackle Issue of VA Privatization?” The debate is tomorrow. “The VHA operates the nation’s largest public healthcare system and provides high-quality, direct care (not insurance coverage) for former service members, who have low incomes or service related medical problems. But, in the September sequel to the presidential debate in June—with so many other things to talk about—veterans affairs became a topic little discussed by Trump or VP Kamala Harris. The next opportunity for a more substantive exchange about the past, present, and future of VA care will be Tuesday night, Oct. 1. During their first and probably only vice-presidential debate, two former non-commissioned military officers will have the chance to embrace or reject the costly and disastrous bipartisan experiment with VA outsourcing that began under Obama, continued under Trump, and expanded under Biden.”

23) National/Illinois: Brushstroke by brushstroke, a University of Chicago professor depicts the hidden web of police privatization. “On October 12, the Hairpin Art Center in Logan Square is hosting the opening night of Robert Vargas’ first solo exhibition, which will run until October 19. Two dozen of his paintings (and an AI chatbot) are featured in the exhibit under the title “Powerscapes and Hidden Agendas,” a reference to the obscure private entities shaping the political agenda around public safety. (The U. of C., where Vargas works, has the largest private police force in the country, with a jurisdiction that spans roughly 6.5 square miles on the South Side of Chicago. Through the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, the U. of C. gave Vargas a small grant for the exhibition.) ‘One thing that the Defund Movement got wrong was that folks didn’t have a sense of the extent to which policing has become privatized,’ Vargas said. ‘My objective is to get people to set their sights on the right elements of the structure, and they can decide where to go from there.’”

“After the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, he said, many of the police reforms requiring new trainings and use-of-force guidelines were not created by the agencies themselves, nor were they designed in consultation with legal scholars or social scientists like Vargas. Instead, private companies, often led by former law enforcement officers, bid and won contracts to write the new policies without any outside, independent evaluation.” [Hyde Park Herald, September 26, 2024]

24) National: Project 2025 could become a political reality that would upend medical practice. “The playbook’s far-right agenda would likely have negative outcomes for public health, healthcare, and health as a human right, according to a new JAMA commentary by Nicole Huberfeld, Elizabeth McCuskey, and Michael Ulrich.”

Writing for the Boston University School of Public Health website, Jillian McKoy reports that “the authors also discuss how the playbook would privatize and defund aspects of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Project 2025 proposes to deregulate Medicare Advantage—but also make it the default enrollment option—while also imposing block grants and work requirements for Medicaid, which would result in loss of coverage for many patients. Consequently, ‘low-income people predictably would become uninsured, meaning they wait longer to receive care or seek none, their health deteriorates and thus becomes harder and more expensive to treat, they cannot afford necessary healthcare, and any costs accrued are passed on to insured patients through higher premiums,’ the authors write.”

25) Kansas: Gov. Laura Laum (D) is resisting efforts to deprivatize the state’s long-troubled foster care system. “The Sept. 16 report was the third since Kelly’s administration settled a class action lawsuit with a deal intended to spur change by DCF and its private contractors to address key issues that have plagued the system for years. Despite improvements in some areas, the state has backslid in others and the report’s author said the state ‘is far from meeting the majority of the anticipated final targets within the time frames expected.’ In her first public event appearance at the Statehouse since the report, Kelly told reporters on Thursday that ‘I’m very aware of the concern. I’m also concerned, and DCF is doing their due diligence.’ (…) The advocates who sued the state indicated to reporters last week that they may pursue mediation or look to reopen the lawsuit. ‘It doesn’t seem like the state is really capable of making the changes that need to be made,’ said Teresa Woody, litigation director at Kansas Appleseed, adding, “Unless that happens, we’re pretty close to taking next steps.’”

26) Washington: Will Spokane’s public opioid treatment services continue down the road to privatization? Range did this interview with the union rep. “Q&A: What’s at stake for employees as Spokane Regional Health District considers privatizing their opioid treatment services? Union Representative Suzie Saunders sat down for an interview with RANGE to outline the stakes for employees and patients, should the Board of Health vote to continue down the road to privatization for Treatment Services.”

“Q. When did you first start hearing about the potential of privatization, and what were your first reactions to that?

Answer: For me, it was the beginning of this year, maybe around March or April when the Feasibility Study was announced. I’ve heard other people say that they’ve been talking about it for a really long time, but that was the first I’ve heard of it.

I was really alarmed. That kind of tack is very scary to me because who knows what will happen to the workers, if that were to come true. I immediately was concerned about their livelihoods. Are their jobs going to be guaranteed? Are they going to be able to continue their benefits? Are they going to have a union at whatever this new entity is going to be? Are they going to be able to have their pension follow them? As their union rep, that’s what comes to mind for me.

If you talked to any of the workers, their first concern would be their patients. And that is a concern of mine as well. I live in this community and I really care about the most vulnerable among us as well. But again, my first concern was for the workers and the potential for them to lose their jobs.”

27) International/Argentina: Right-wing President Javier Milei, who is waging war or public sector unions and state assets, has said he intends to privatize the country’s national airline by decree this week. “However, Congress could still override Milei’s decree, as it has done several times before.”

All the Rest

28) National/Florida: “President Biden has just approved $1B in FEMA relief for Florida. @RonDeSantis has just banned 100 books on climate change.” – @TheFungi669.

29) National: Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau mourns the passing of AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy:

“The word ‘giant’ is thrown around so often that it can seem meaningless. But I can’t think of a better word to describe Bill Lucy. Bill was a giant in the U.S. labor movement—as Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and founder of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU). He was a giant in the civil rights movement and a once-in-a-generation leader whose impact will be felt forever. He was famously with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was assassinated in 1968, there in support of striking sanitation workers, the majority of whom were Black. His work was about forging a deep connection between the civil rights and labor rights movements in the United States.

“We were honored that Bill, or ‘Mr. Lucy,’ as so many of us fondly called him, was a founding board member of Solidarity Center. He was also an elected leader for many years at Public Services International (PSI). Our connection as Solidarity Center and our global union partners to the CBTU in the United States was Bill Lucy’s vision. He was a committed internationalist who believed in human rights and democracy for all.

“Mr. Lucy championed the cause of many trade unionists around the world. He was among the first U.S. union leaders to build bridges to the Brazilian labor movement after the founding of Solidarity Center. He went to Zimbabwe in the early 2000s in solidarity with the trade unions who were facing repression, and was confronted by that same repression, but never stopped shining a light on that movement for democracy.”

30) International/Canada: Writing in the Terrace Standard (B.C.), Al Lehmann says privatization guarantees an end to the world. “In the privatized world view dominating our culture, though, class structure and monied privilege has grown to outrank other considerations. The ethos seems to be, however destructive my own behaviour might be, if I can afford it financially, it’s none of anybody else’s business. Leave me alone to make my own contribution to the general collapse! Don’t give me a mask or vaccination! Don’t tax my carbon! That’s freedom, right? Certainly more important than survival!”