HIGHLIGHTS
- Corporations play the long game on water privatization
- Underfunding state DOTs drives up infrastructure costs
- Policy Matters Ohio says tax holiday should go on holiday
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: Shahrzad Habibi, In the Public Interest’s Research & Policy Director, says the long story of water privatization efforts and the public fight against them—“is told in In the Public Interest’s new research report, ‘Water Wars in Pennsylvania: How Corporations Play the Long Game,’ a look at the methods and manners by which those corporations first took hold of legislatures and utility commissions to pass legislation and regulations that cleared the way for taking hold of the water source. The fact that Pennsylvania went from a commonwealth so dedicated to the protection of water that it embedded it in its constitution, to ground zero in privatization efforts, makes it both a case study and a cautionary tale.
“Well-capitalized corporations could approach cash-strapped municipalities eager to balance books with a big check—a one-time infusion—but the sell-offs placed these communities forever at the mercy of companies always thirsty to wring out more dollars from the deal. But, with its stories of consumer and resident victories in a number of eastern Pennsylvania communities, ‘Water Wars’ can also serve as a how-to, providing a path forward to those who want to halt the privatization of water and sewer systems, and keep public goods and services in public hands.”
2) National: AAUP has created a toolkit on privatization and online higher education. “In corporate-run online programs, emphasis on the quality of education may get lost in the pursuit of revenue. If online education programs focus simply on increasing the number of students, without consideration for quality, are students really being well served? As an instructor in higher education, you can work with colleagues to advance good policies through AAUP chapters, academic departments, or faculty governance bodies. We are optimistic that faculty and administrators can work together to reach agreements on policy that prioritize quality teaching for students, not corporate profit—if we act promptly to avoid irreversible costs to students, faculty, and our entire higher education system. We’ve developed a toolkit of resources to help you. See our materials below.”
3) National/California: Writing in LA Progressive, Patrick Range McDonald tells the story of “Fighting Big Real Estate: AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Years-Long Battle Against Corporate Landlord Greed.” McDonald reports that “in 2018, Californians largely supported rent control, but corporate landlords and their lobbying group, the California Apartment Association, rolled out a multi-million-dollar misinformation campaign to trick and confuse voters about Prop 10. Unfortunately, it worked – the pro-rent control initiative lost on Election Day. Two years later, in 2020, AIDS Healthcare Foundation decided to move forward with another ballot measure, Proposition 21, that would reform statewide rent control restrictions. AHF believed that the housing affordability and homelessness crises were so dire, with millions of people facing life-altering consequences, that a quick return to the ballot was desperately needed. (…) This year, AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Housing Is A Human Right are sponsoring another statewide ballot measure to repeal rent control restrictions – and again it’s supported by a coalition of housing justice groups, labor unions, and social justice organizations. It’s called Proposition 33.”
4) National/Vermont: Veteran labor journalist and activist Steve Early, writing in Barn Raiser, interviews a dedicated public service worker on what it’s like to fight for the public interest from within local government. “[Jeremy] Rathbun and his fellow AFSCME members, who work in the town’s Wastewater Division, play a critical role in protecting the local environment, including a major stream which flows into nearby Lake Champlain. As Rathbun explains, their work has become more challenging due to climate change-related extreme weather events, a reality given yet another forceful reminder last week as the remnants of Hurricane Beryl pummeled Vermont with heavy rains and flooding last week. Rathbun spoke with Barn Raiser about his day-to-day work and building the union movement in Vermont.”
5) Oklahoma: In a victory for responsible public investment practices in Oklahoma, an Oklahoma judge has issued a permanent injunction against the enforcement of a 2022 state law “that led to four investment banks being banned from underwriting municipal bonds and the targeting of other financial firms for divestment purposes. Oklahoma County District Court Judge Sheila Stinson took the action ‘based upon the act being unconstitutionally vague and violative of Oklahoma’s Constitutional requirement that all pension benefits be used for the benefit of beneficiaries,’ according to Collin Walke, the attorney for a state pension recipient who filed the lawsuit last year against Oklahoma Treasurer Todd Russ.” [Sub required]
6) Tennessee: Middle Tennessee DSA reports that “Queers United In Liberating Tennessee (QUILT) this week abolished $1 million of medical debt held by Tennesseans, and they’re on track to eliminate even more. A campaign of the Middle Tennessee Democratic Socialists of America, QUILT launched their ‘Burn Debt, Not Books’ (1/11).”
7) National: Last week’s Republican National Convention was a festival of racist, sexist, transphobic and other dog whistles and trumpet blasts, often couched in an attack on public education. Given that this was a national political convention, where does this fit in to a systemic view of what’s going on? In their new book, The Black Antifascist Tradition, Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen express a growing consensus: “The erosion of public education and academic freedom in an effort to prop up ‘school choice,’ which boils down to the privatization and charterization of education, is no more than an attempt to apply corporativism to one of the longstanding bedrocks of Western democracy. When books are being banned, curricular materials censored, critical and analytical scholarship substituted with political propaganda and anti-intellectualism, and far-right militia members and groups overrunning and presiding over school board meetings, we understand that to be the systematic Fascist restructuring of education.” (p. 211).
8) Arizona: School vouchers were supposed to save taxpayer money. instead they blew a massive hole in Arizona’s budget, Eli Hager reports in ProPublica. “In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model. Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year. As a result of all this unexpected spending, alongside some recent revenue losses, Arizona is now having to make deep cuts to a wide swath of critical state programs and projects, the pain of which will be felt by average Arizonans who may or may not have school-aged children.”
9) Colorado: “At first blush, charter schools seemed acceptable enough, but they served as a gateway to ‘privatization’ and ‘academies.’ Colorado was the third state to enact a charter school statute in 1993. At the time, several progressive educators felt that some choice was healthy. But as we see throughout the U.S., the end result has been an effort to gut our public school system and create academies that cater to the privileged few, and to privatize education to make a profit,” writes retired educator Gene Orr in The Durango Herald. “The hard work, dedication and talent within our public schools has crafted a school system that meets the needs of our children, our community and a just nation. We must remain vigilant and work hard to maintain not only appropriate funding, but also resist the long-term scheme to remove one of the pillars of our democracy, public education.”
10) Illinois: More than $400,000 has been raised so far in Chicago’s November 2024 school board elections, Mila Koumpilova and Becky Vevea write in Chalkbeat. “The political fundraising arms of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, which has $3 million on hand, and the Chicago Teachers Union, which has around $175,000, are holding their fire for now, putting off making major donations to candidates. That’s not surprising: Many candidates are still sorting out challenges to their petitions to get on the ballot, and spending is likely to pick up once a clearer picture of the most competitive races and candidates emerges.”
11) Kentucky/Think Tanks: The right wing end game: tax dollars for private schools. Will Kentucky citizens vote for it? From James Mayse of the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, “A report issued this week by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy says Owensboro Public Schools and Daviess County Public Schools could potentially lose millions in state education dollars annually if voters elect to make ‘school choice,’ or school vouchers, part of the state constitution. In November, voters will be asked to decide if they want to change the state constitution to allow legislators to allocate funds for K-12 students to attend schools ‘outside the common system of (public) schools.’ Schools outside the system are private schools.”
Read the full KCEP report, “The Impact of Diverting Public Money to Private School Vouchers in Kentucky.”
12) New York: Despite efforts by the charter school industry to expand the cap on the number of charter schools in New Yor State, only 10 new ones will be authorized, keeping the overall number of charters about the same. But “the move to transfer existing charters immediately drew pushback from John Liu, head of the state senate’s New York City Education Committee and a frequent charter school critic. ‘SUNY has continued to take liberties with the law circumventing the State Education Department and putting public school systems in jeopardy,” Liu wrote in a statement. ‘We will continue to pursue legislative remedies toward this end.’”
13) Texas: Philadelphia multibillionaire Jeff Yass, an ardent backer of school privatization, has pumped another $4 million into Gov. Abbott’s effort to unseat Texas House Republicans who oppose private school vouchers. Yass, who wants to channel taxpayer money into private schools, has, according to ProPublica, “avoided paying $1 billion in taxes while largely escaping public scrutiny. He’s then poured that money into campaigns to cut taxes and support election deniers.” ProPublica reports that “Yass is looking to harness discontent with public schools during the pandemic to push privatization of the system. He has given $15 million as the sole funder of a political action committee, the School Freedom Fund, that says ‘school closures, mask mandates, critical race theory, and more’ have created ‘a unique opportunity to promote School Choice as the structural solution to dramatically improve education in America.’”
14) International: There’s an old saying in Africa that the missionaries “came to do good and stayed to do well.” It looks as if the “social impact bond” (SIB) industry is carrying on that tradition, teaming up with their more nakedly straight-up, for-profit investor cousins.
Neha Wadekar and Ryan Grim, writing for The Intercept, report that Two Harvard Grads Saw Big Profits in African Education. Children Paid the Price. “Over the next decade, Bridge grew into a chain of schools providing a homogeneous curriculum developed by researchers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to hundreds of thousands of students in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia, and India. Today, it is the largest for-profit primary education chain in the world. As the company mushroomed, it found ready investors. “It was not social impact investors,” May said in a 2016 MIT video case study, “it was straight commercial capital who saw, like, wow, there are a couple billion people who don’t have anyone selling them what they want.”
“But the social impact investment crew was behind Bridge, as well. The company is financed today by some of the highest-profile do-good donors in the game — or rather, the for-profit arms of their networks, including Chan Zuckerberg Education, LLC, linked to Mark Zuckerberg; Pearson Education; Gates Frontier LLC, tied to Bill Gates; Imaginable Futures, linked to eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, a major funder of The Intercept; and Pershing Square Foundation, tied to billionaire hedge fund mogul Bill Ackman. The United Kingdom’s development bank, the European Investment Bank, and the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank funded it too.”
15) International: Private equity groups are battling it out over who will control Nord Anglia, a $15 billion private school operator, the Financial Times reports. “Bain Capital, Permira and Veritas Capital are among the contenders through to the last round of the sale process, according to people familiar with the matter. Final bids for a majority stake in the London-based group are due later this month and the business could be valued at up to $15bn, the people added. Other bidders could yet be involved, one of the people cautioned. Nord Anglia’s existing owners—Swedish private equity group EQT and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board—are likely to retain a stake in any deal, the people said. The Singapore wealth fund GIC is also likely to co-invest alongside a possible winning bidder, they added. The deal is among the largest potential transactions in Europe this year…” [Sub required]
16) National: Generative AI is a climate disaster, reports Sasha Luccioni on the must-listen latest episode of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, hosted by Paris Marx.
From the show: “Now, you’ve probably seen plenty of stories in the past year or so about the rising emissions at companies like Microsoft and Google, the large water use of their data center networks, and of course, the growing concerns about the energy use and computational demands of generative AI tools released by OpenAI, Google, Meta, and these other major tech companies. At the same time as temperatures seem to be rising, as the natural disasters that we experience globally seem to be getting worse because of climate change, the tech industry has decided to massively increase its energy use and its computational demand to build out many new hyperscale data centers in order to power these AI ambitions with little thought for the climate impacts and the sustainability goals that they’re breaching by chasing their business interests, by trying to grow their cloud computing businesses, and by rolling out generative AI tools that don’t actually provide the benefits that they claim.”
The Financial Times gets into the “staggering” numbers. “The scale of capex by the big US tech companies—Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Meta—is staggering as they all heap their poker chips on their conviction that AI is going to transform the world. Their collective investment splurge amounts to arguably the biggest, and certainly the fastest, infrastructure rollout in history. Arete Research estimates that these companies will spend about $480bn in capex in the next two years, much of it on the 100 data centres they are currently building.” [Sub required]
17) National: President Biden has just signed the ADVANCE Act, which promotes nuclear power. Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, says it’s a terrible idea. Grossman quotes the Nuclear Energy Information Service: “The controversial bill aggressively promotes the narrow, short-term interests of the U.S. nuclear industry in ways that threaten the long-term national environmental, climate and national/international security interests. Further, it functionally rewrites the mandate of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission in ways that potentially cast it into the role of promoter instead of federal regulator of the controversial and moribund nuclear power industry.”
18) National/Think Tanks: Poorly resourced and understaffed state departments of transportation are driving up the cost of infrastructure, and “force[s] outsourcing and the hiring of pricey consultants.” the Bond Buyer reports. “On the other hand, procurement practices that increase competition among contractors help bring down costs, said Will Nober, an economics doctoral student at Columbia University, Zachary Liscow, a professor at Yale University and Cailin Slattery, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, authors of a study titled ‘Procurement and Infrastructure Costs’ presented Wednesday at Brookings 13th annual Municipal Finance Conference. ‘The capacity of a state DOT is a huge driver of project-level costs,’ said Nober, who is also a staff economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisors, as he presented the paper at the conference. He added, federal data confirms that state DOT workforces have been shrinking over the last 10 to 20 years. (…) the latest study finds state DOT workforce shortages force outsourcing and the hiring of pricey consultants.” [Sub required; read the 62-page paper, it’s worth it]
19) Illinois: Illinois American Water and Aqua Illinois, “the two largest privately owned water utilities in Illinois, are seeking to raise rates for a combined 1.5 million customers around the state,” WJBC reports. “The requests must be reviewed by the Illinois Commerce Commission before the utilities are allowed to modify their rates. The ICC will then likely modify the requests to comply with state law, and it will respond to arguments presented by entities such as the Illinois attorney general, local municipalities and advocacy organizations. Decisions in the cases are expected by the end of the year, with water rates going into effect around the start of 2025. To collect public input in the two cases, the ICC set up a series of five hearings around the state. While the first in Jerseyville was held on June 26, the rest are scheduled over the next two weeks.”
20) Ohio: Conservative state lawmakers are considering legislation that would bar the state’s pension systems, state colleges and universities and the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation from “prioritizing” responsible investment practices. Republicans control the state House, the state Senate and the governorship in Ohio. “Senate Bill 6 is the latest salvo in a battle over ESG investing that has seen some states pass legislation targeting banks and other financial firms as well as local governments in an attempt to curtail ESG investing or boycotts of the fossil fuels industry. Despite a recent studyfinding that a Texas law targeting underwriters has driven down competition in the municipal bond market for Texas debt, leading to higher interest costs for local governments, and despite a lawsuit by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association against the state of Missouri over its two new anti-ESG securities rules, Republicans continue to favor bans on ESG considerations.” [Sub required]
21) International/United Kingdom: “Water companies should pay to fix their own mess, not rely on customers to bail them out,” says a new petition drive directed at the government water regulator by 38 Degrees. “Water companies have built up over £60 billion in debt, and now they want to raise customer bills to bail them out for their mistakes. It’s their fault, they should fix it. Our bills must not go up to bail out failing water companies. Why is this important? OFWAT has approved water companies proposals to increase our water bills to pay for infrastructure updates. Put simply, they want their customers, people like you and me, to bail out the water companies for their mistakes. Private water companies have been pillaging our system for years, making millions in profits, bonuses and shares meanwhile continuously failing to invest in ageing systems, flooding our rivers and seas with sewage. Now, they’ve built up over £60 billion in debt and they want to put up YOUR bill to pay to clean up their mess.”
22) National/International: Commenting on the global Microsoft outage triggered by a crummy software update by CrowdStrike, Evgeny Morozov says “today is a good day to remember that *for almost a decade now* Microsoft has spearheaded a ‘Digital Geneva Convention’ that would transfer more power over cybersecurity from states to companies.”
23) National: Politico reports that it found a widespread climate of alarm and despondency among government workers and officials over the prospect of a massive Trumpian purge and corporatization/privatization of the civil service and federal bureaucracy. Although the story was filed before Biden dropped out of the race, it remains to be seen if this will change. “Some USDA staff are now openly talking with colleagues about making plans to leave their posts early, according to the three current and former USDA officials. ‘One set of folks that seem to be the most concerned and bewildered would be the civil servants within USDA, who have endured so much and that really went out of their way to carry out the Biden rural agenda,’ said one of the USDA officials. ‘Those are the folks that really seemed to be like, do they stay or do they go? Because they just cannot endure another phase of uncertainty.’
“Several USDA branches, including the team that oversees the country’s largest anti-hunger program, have already had significant turnover of senior career staff this year and are currently operating with a number of vacancies. Yet much of the anxieties among federal employees are not centered on Biden, but rather his rival—and what a second Trump administration would entail.”
24) Pennsylvania: SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania on July 12 “filed an objection to the sale of three Pittsburgh-area nursing homes, saying the facilities have collective bargaining agreements that expire in 2025 which the buyer has rejected, according to the union,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. “‘In fact, by letter of July 9, 2024, WeCare has specifically stated that it will not agree to the terms of the collective bargaining agreement for any period of time,’ the SEIU alleged in its objection. The company did not return a call seeking comment on the issue. A hearing on SEIU’s objections and other issues in the nursing home bankruptcies is scheduled for [last—ed.] Monday. SEIU’s profile in the region has risen in recent years, in part because of its role in backing the winning candidates for both the Pittsburgh city mayor’s job and that of Allegheny County executive. Whether SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania will have the same kind of success in bankruptcy court that it’s had at the ballot box is uncertain.” No word yet on an official response to SEIU’s complaint.
25) California: “California sent a mentally ill man to a state hospital. Then it charged him $760,000,” CalMatters reports. “The first bill arrived in Sultan Khan’s mailbox two years after his release from Napa State Hospital. Khan had received psychiatric treatment there for three years after pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to a criminal charge stemming from an assault. He stared in disbelief at the paper in front of him. The Department of State Hospitals wanted him to pay back the cost of that stay: $769,490. Wondering if he was being scammed, Khan phoned the department. They suggested a payment plan.”
26) Minnesota: As the Minneapolis park worker strike enters its 15th day with no clear end in sight, the City Council has voted on a resolution of support. “‘We want not just a good wage, but we want language that respects us and that protects us,’ Chelsea Akin, a seasonal garden, said. ‘I miss my job so much I can’t wait to get my hands back in the dirt and make it look pretty around here.’ Workers have been calling for better pay and benefits. The workers are tasked with maintaining the city’s parks, which are consistently ranked among the top in the nation. The union represents a little more than a third of the city’s full-time and seasonal labor staff.” [The workers are represented by LIUNA Local 363—ed.]
27) Montana: “The library is a commons,” says Emily Drabinski. “In the context of more than four decades of neoliberal disinvestment in public institutions, the persistence of public libraries is surprising. The ALA has taken a clear and consistent position against the privatization of public services, stating that ‘publicly funded libraries should remain directly accountable to the public they serve.’ The last 20 years did see privatization efforts make some inroads through outsourcing companies like Library Systems and Services, but when LS&S pitched cost savings as a reason for the Prince William Public Libraries in Virginia to outsource its management, for example, the library board balked at the company’s plan to cut staff by 20%. By and large, public libraries have stayed public. One reason is that the private sector is hard-pressed to find a library substitute.”
28) Ohio/Think Tanks: Policy Matters Ohio says it’s time for the Buckeye State to take a permanent break from the sales tax holiday. “At the end of July, Ohioans will be bombarded with ads promoting a newly-expanded tax gimmick that has been panned by experts across the political spectrum. Both the Tax Foundation, a conservative research group, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank, have called sales tax holidays ineffective, poorly targeted, and another drain on public resources already squeezed by anti-government legislators. Policy Matters Ohio has proposed a better-targeted, more effective, and less expensive sales tax credit that would help Ohioans who need it and balance their need for tax relief against our collective need for the wealthy to pay what they truly owe. A version of that policy is already working in at least seven states. The legislature should replace the sales tax holiday with a targeted credit — and implement the three other tax code changes proposed by Policy Matters this spring.”
29) International: Striking public service workers with the Liquor Control Board have the Ontario public’s support. “The Ontario Public Service Employees Union has said the main issue is the province’s alcohol expansion plans that would see ready-to-drink cocktails sold outside LCBO stores—a move it maintains poses an existential threat to the LCBO and could lead to major job losses. Colleen MacLeod, chair of the union’s LCBO bargaining unit, has said the plan would ‘mean thousands of lost jobs, fewer hours for the 70 per cent of LCBO retail workers who are casual and struggling to make ends meet, and hundreds of millions in dollars of lost public revenues drained from health care, education and infrastructure.’ The LCBO, a Crown corporation, nets the province $2.5 billion a year.”
30) National: Guess who has scheduled their national conference for the week after the presidential election? Why it’s the Federalist Society, which in keeping with the racialist agenda of what they hope will be the next administration will be themed “Group Identity and the Law.” Will they discuss Plessy v. Ferguson originalism? Three-fifths compromise originalism? Will their extremely diverse Alabama Chapter be there to weigh in? For more on the role of the Federalist Society, and in particular the connections of its leader Leonard Leo to J.D. Vance and their plans for a next Trump administration check out the latest episode of Daniel Miller and Brad Onishi’s Straight White American Jesus podcast.
31) National: “The threat of cybercrime perpetrated against municipalities continues to mutate into more sophisticated and life-threatening schemes,” The Bond Buyer reports. “‘If I had to tell you what keeps me up at night, it’s not necessarily the garden variety ransomware,’ said Omid Rahmani, an associate director for U.S. public finance at Fitch Ratings. ‘It’s the advanced, nation-state, havoc-based attacks. These are attacks with the sole purpose of causing physical damage, disruption, sabotage, all the way up to and including loss of life.’ (…) Qualifying for insurance has now become part of the equation. ‘We’re at the point where cyber insurance is not just become unaffordable for small to medium sized issuers,’ said Rahmani. ‘It’s frankly unavailable, as in, they just don’t meet the basic criteria of cyber readiness to qualify for insurance.’” [Sub required]
32) California/National: The state is weighing in on the labor rights of ICE detainees in private, for profit, detention centers. “The Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex facilities, operated by The GEO Group, a Florida-based federal detention contractor, have been a hotbed of activism since the pandemic. But it’s not The GEO Group’s staff agitating for better pay and working conditions. It’s their detainees—immigrants awaiting the outcomes of deportation cases or asylum claims, many of whom also work where they’re jailed, scrubbing bathrooms and cutting hair for $1 a day. (…) Even more novel: The state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health in May sent the U.S. Department of Homeland Security a request not to deport seven complainants for at least two years, under a Biden administration program to temporarily protect immigrant workers who are assisting with labor investigations. ‘Cal/OSHA cannot properly pursue enforcement action without the cooperation of worker detainees in these situations,’ agency chief Debra Lee wrote. It’s ‘highly unusual, if not unique’ for the state to ask federal immigration authorities to temporarily waive deportation for state witnesses against the immigration authorities’ contractor, said Anastasia Christman, senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project.”