HIGHLIGHTS
- What only government can do right
- Republicans set stage for sale of public lands
- Charging the public for public records
JUMP: EDUCATION | PUBLIC SERVICES | INFRASTRUCTURE | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: It may seem odd for a publication that has been warning of the dangers of privatization for over a decade to lead with the good news after the election of a President who embodies the goal of destroying public services, public infrastructure, public education, and public interest regulation, but the Privatization Report has long led with weekly highlights on “the people fighting back”— those who have won multiple battles against the privatizers. This infrastructure is still there, in school board meetings, city councils, public sector unions in education, transportation, municipal, state, and federal services, state legislatures and statehouses defending public goods and public interest regulations, and nonprofits. And it will grow. As In the Public Interest Executive Director Donald Cohen writes in our newsletter, now is the time to ramp up this infrastructure to an unprecedented level. This will be our Project 2025—and beyond.
2) National: Writing in The New Republic, Jason Linkins spells out the implications of the Trump wrecking crew’s plans for massive privatization. A must read. “My experiences with private-sector package delivery are, to put it mildly, not the best. As I write this, I’m watching and fretting over a package that is supposed to be delivered to my apartment by FedEx, which only occasionally manages to locate me despite the several decades of experience I’m told that they’ve amassed in this industry. The gold standard for delivery has been the U.S. Postal Service, which has never failed me, even as I watch UPS and Amazon stumble around outside, frequently almost making it to my doorstep. But now I’m reading that the incoming Trump administration is mulling privatizing the USPS. Chances are the president-elect’s famous reverse Midas touch will ruin yet another service on which I’ve long relied.
“What Trump promises to do to the venerable post office would be the latest example of what has come to be known as ‘enshi**ification’—a term coined by Cory Doctorow and recently defined by the Macquarie Dictionary as ‘the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.” So it’s fitting that Trump is teaming up with techbro goons, in particular Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, on the next big enshi**ification project: ruining the federal government.”
“They will also come with a collapse in faith in government, just as we have soured on the increasingly shi**y tech platforms that dominate our lives. A citizenry that was once fairly well cared for will realize that they’ve been abandoned to the wolves, alone in the world against all manner of natural disasters, high-tech criminals, and a consumer world no longer protected by any kind of watchdog. It’s hard to know what the United States will become once everyone is more like a cornered animal than an actual citizen.”
3) National: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette weighs in on “There are some things only government can do right. Here are two of them.” The editors write, “ Already, two agencies have come under particular scrutiny: the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The former appears to be a particular obsession of Mr. Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), while the latter is discussed in the Project 2025 policy playbook from the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Neither the USPS nor NOAA, however, are suitable targets for privatization. The tasks these agencies perform are of the kind that only an organization with a fully national public purpose and without a profit motive can perform effectively. This does not mean that they cannot be reformed — there is always room for greater efficiency — but they also cannot be eliminated without significantly harming public services.”
PS: Here are nine forecast tools for winter weather watching from NOAA.
4) Connecticut: Instead of outsourcing, some Connecticut towns are moving to a shared services model. “The statewide problems finding workers has led the state’s regional Council of Governments to step in to help. CT COGs are a unit of government created by the state and municipalities so towns can plan and work across boundaries. For federal purposes, COGs are the county equivalents in Connecticut. The urban COGs are also federally created Metropolitan Planning Organizations. ‘We are authorized to carry out federal agency programs for our member towns and to conduct for two or more towns any activity that municipalities are authorized to undertake in Connecticut,’ said Rick Dunne, executive director of the Naugatuck Valley Council of Government. ‘The only thing we can’t do is levy taxes.’ At the request of member towns, the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments began a shared services agreement.”
5) National: What will education look like under Trump and Vance? The Hechinger Report has an overview. “President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance are persistent critics of public K-12 schools and higher education and want to overhaul many aspects of how the institutions operate. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly called for the elimination of the federal Education Department, arguing that states should have full authority for educating children. (Abolishing the department has been a long-standing goal of many Republicans, but it’s highly unlikely to win enough support in Congress to happen.) Trump also supports efforts to privatize the K-12 school system, including through vouchers for private schools. Both he and Vance have launched repeated attacks on both K-12 and higher education institutions over practices that seek to advance racial diversity and tolerance and policies that provide protections to transgender students, among other issues. The candidates have also argued that higher ed institutions suppress the free speech of conservative students; as president, Trump took at least one action to tie funding to free speech protections.”
8) National: Education advocates warn that public schools funding and immigrant students will bear the brunt of Trump’s education policies. “Harold Jordan, nationwide education equity coordinator at the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] Pennsylvania, said while he does not think that the Department of Education will be eliminated, there might be attempts to radically shift the way it functions. The changes could mean an increase in privatization efforts such as school vouchers, promoting school choice and less enforcement of civil rights laws barring racial discrimination, he added. Jordan said changes to Title I funding or student loans might not emerge immediately, but he anticipates disruptions to the department’s Office of Civil Rights, which could impact and undermine diversity initiatives. ‘The Office of Civil Rights, instead of promoting equity and fair treatment of students, will be weaponized to cause harm, to come up with new interpretations of civil rights laws that are not consistent with what has been done in previous administrations and what the courts have upheld,’ he predicted.”
9) Arizona: ProPublica’s Eli Hager reports that after Arizona regulators closed a failing charter school, it reopened as a private religious school funded by taxpayers. “When it was a charter (which is a type of public school), these things could be known. There was some oversight. The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools had monitored the school’s finances and academics, unanimously coming to the conclusion that it should be shut down. Yet just a month after the board’s decision, ARCHES was re-creating itself as a renamed, newly religious private school, simply by pivoting to accept voucher dollars. In other words, it was closed down by a public governing body but found a way to keep existing and being funded by the public anyway, just without the standards and accountability that would normally come with taxpayer money. Arizona does no vetting of new voucher schools. Not even if the school or the online school “provider” has already failed, or was founded yesterday, or is operating out of a strip mall or a living room or a garage, or offers just a half hour of instruction per morning.”
10) Idaho: Rural students could bear the brunt of Idaho’s school privatization program, the Idaho Statesman reports. “All kinds of arcane things can and have been done to move money from one pot to another. Any assurance that one pot of money is safe from another should be treated like what it is: a politician’s promise. So any voucher program will put public school funding in competition with private school funding (along with fraudsters who do things like claim vouchers for kids who don’t exist.) The biggest losers will be in vast swaths of rural Idaho, especially eastern and central Idaho, which has exceedingly few private school options. The funding for their schools would be in competition with funding for expensive private schools in the western half of the state.”
11) National: Congressional Republicans have laid the legislative groundwork for the most extensive sell-off of public land in history by placing an option to pass legislation in its rules legislation. “House Republicans on Friday also made it easier for Congress to give away federal lands to state and local governments, a move that conservation groups warned could lead to Americans losing access to parks and other protected areas. The measure essentially renders public lands as having no monetary value by directing the federal government not to consider lost revenues when it transfers land to a state, tribe or municipality. While the same provision has been in effect when Republicans controlled Congress in the past, activists worry that under the Trump administration it will result in a sell-off of public lands.
“Mr. Trump has promised to expand oil and gas drilling and mining, a goal shared by Republicans who now control both the House and Senate. Environmental groups said they feared the measure approved Friday could open the door to new efforts to liquidate public lands. States often lack the resources to adequately maintain natural areas, they argue, and are more likely to sell formerly federal lands to mining and drilling companies or other private development. ‘If those lands get sold off, given to states, you’re going to see large privatization,’ said Michael Carroll, the public lands campaign director for the Wilderness Society, an environmental group. You’re going to see loss of access and large-scale development,’ he said, adding that states would ‘keep the best and sell off the rest.’”
12) National: Billionaire Bill Ackman says he expects Trump to privatize the nation’s two largest government-owned lenders, the Independent reports. “The move would potentially make them private companies again, which Ackman said would generate ‘$300 billion of additional profits to the federal government’ if successful. Ackman, a major shareholder of Fannie Mae, said there is a ‘credible path’ to remove the companies from conservatorship in the next two years with Trump at the helm. ‘During Trump’s first term, Secretary Mnuchin took steps toward this outcome, but he ran out of time,’ Ackman said. ‘I expect that in the second @realDonaldTrump administration, Trump and his team will get the job done.’ (…) Following the housing market collapse in the 2008 crash, the companies suffered huge losses and were placed in conservatorship under the Federal Housing Finance Agency.”
13) National/Puerto Rico: The island’s privatized power grid fails again, bringing misery and risks to its people. Common Dreams reports that “‘in its singular pursuit of American investors, the local government has ignored political protests and demonstrations, disregarded the concerns raised by opposition political parties, and ignored studies that caution against privatizing the public power utility,’ Pedro Cabán, a professor in the Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Department at the University at Albany, wrote for The American Prospect last year. ‘For many Puerto Ricans, the Pierluisi government seems intent on converting the archipelago into a dystopia for its people.’ ‘LUMA has Puerto Rico in an energy stranglehold, and Puerto Ricans shouldn’t have to put up with continued subpar service.’ The Associated Press quoted Puerto Ricans expressing their frustration over the New Year’s Eve blackout, which came months after an outage left 350,000 people without power.”
14) Massachusetts: Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi raises awkward questions about the proposed privatization of White Stadium. “Now comes Mayor Michelle Wu and her big and controversial idea to redevelop White Stadium in Franklin Park in partnership with a women’s professional soccer team. The terms of a lease agreement have finally been disclosed, which is good news. But the total cost of Wu’s plan is still unknown—and its ultimate compatibility with Franklin Park and the surrounding neighborhood is still an open question. On cost, the agreement signed with the National Women’s Soccer League’s BOS Nation FC does not set any ceiling. Indeed, during a pre-Christmas Zoom news conference, Wu acknowledged that the current $91 million estimate of the city’s share is ‘probably’ not the final number. When Jennifer Epstein, the controlling manager of BOS Nation FC, was asked about cost, she said that restoring a ‘treasured asset’ would require “significant capital investment”. She did not put a number on what that might be. (Globe CEO Linda Henry has a small, noncontrolling ownership stake in BOS Nation.) Writing for CommonWealth Beacon magazine, Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor and longtime critic of public investment in sports facilities, predicts the final price tag will rise ‘well above $200 million.’ [Sub required]
15) Think Tanks: Good contracts can make for good infrastructure P3s. But they are no guarantee.
16) National: Media reports say Trump will make another effort to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. In 2018, the OMB “suggested a privatized mailing entity would be able to reduce services, raise rates and offer less generous pay and benefits to its employees.” Government Executive reports, “Still, there remains bipartisan support for a robust Postal Service. Just in recent weeks, a myriad of lawmakers in both parties blasted Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for his plans to slow down delivery of some mail and reduce service standards. Lawmakers representing states or districts with significant rural populations have been particularly supportive of improving and expanding USPS. While Trump alluded to private companies like FedEx and UPS, they do not face the same obligation to deliver to all areas that are not profitable as does the Postal Service. They have historically leaned on USPS’ network to boost its offerings and do not currently offer mail delivery, as that is reserved for the government agency.”
Forbes reports that “fully privatizing USPS or ending its universal service obligation would likely take an act of Congress, and it’s unclear if there would be enough support from Republicans to do so. Many GOP lawmakers represent rural districts that rely on the Postal Service’s universal service mandate, though while there was bipartisan opposition to privatization during Trump’s first term, it remains to be seen if enough right-wing lawmakers would still be willing to push back against Trump should he propose it again in the coming months.”
17) National: The right-wing U.S. Fifth Circuit has struck a blow against a federal program to address the critical shortage of broadband services in rural America. “Outgoing FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said she was ‘pleased’ that the Supreme Court would review the Fifth Circuit’s ‘misguided decision.’ ‘For decades, there has been broad, bipartisan support for the Universal Service Fund and the FCC programs that help communications reach the most rural and least-connected households in the United States, as well as hospitals, schools, and libraries nationwide,’ Rosenworcel said in a November statement.” But “some worry that, amid other tech debates in Congress, including on the future of Section 230 and content moderation on social media, USF may be overshadowed. ‘It’s not clear at this point whether there’s going to be a serious appetite for doing anything substantial on USF next year, or if it’s going to fall to the wayside,’ said Angelina Panettieri, legislative director for IT and communications for the National League of Cities.’”
18) California: Get ready for January 21. Voters could decide whether to ban privatizing libraries in Huntington Beach, LAist reports. “The Huntington Beach City Council will have two possible library-related ballot initiatives to discuss at its first meeting of the year, on Jan. 21 — this one, and the potential repeal of a controversial children’s library book review board. What’s the backstory? Public library advocates mounted a petition drive last year after the City Council flirted with outsourcing library operations to a private company. The company ultimately canceled its bid, but opponents continued collecting signatures to change the city’s charter to prohibit selling any public libraries or outsourcing management. Next steps: The council can adopt the measures outright, order an impact study, or put them on a future ballot.”
19) Colorado: Gov. Jared Polis (D) is having another go at privatizing Pinnacol, the state workers compensation carrier, to plug a budget gap, Denver Post reports. “Krjsten Forseth, a lobbyist for the AFL-CIO, said arguments about the program’s competitiveness miss the point. As the insurer of last resort, it acts as much as a social safety net, of sorts, for employers who need to cover their workers. She also took umbrage at it being pitched as a way to soften the budget crunch, with little detail on how it would work — or assurances that it wouldn’t blow up and further hurt employees who rely on PERA. ‘The frustrating way this conversation started — with the promise of money with nothing else to back it up — I feel like that’s a very unfair approach to a conversation that’s been going on for over 10 years,’ Forseth said.”
20) National: Far from putting America First, experts say Trump’s policies would seriously damage the scientific research agenda. “They foresee less money for basic research and a restricted flow of foreign scientists into the country. They also expect the new administration to ignore the scientific consensus on numerous topics, including climate change and public health. ‘There’s no good news for science in this election,’ says Rice University physicist Neal Lane, former director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and science adviser to President Bill Clinton (D). ‘And that means no good news for U.S. high-tech industries and for the country.’ As a result, ‘We’re going to be playing defense,’ says Bart Gordon, a former Democratic congressman who is now a lobbyist at K&L Gates. Government spending on research rose from $161 billion to $200 billion in the first 2 years of President Joe Biden’s administration. But it plateaued this year after a budget agreement capped overall federal spending; nonmilitary research, about half the total, fell by 10%. Spending on civilian science could drop even further as Republicans seek cuts to offset the massive increase in the federal deficit expected to result from Trump’s push for lower taxes, says Gordon, who chaired the House of Representatives science committee from 2007–10.”
21) Ohio/New Jersey: Gov. DeWine (R) signed a bill to charge the public for public records. “Cash-strapped media outlets could bear the brunt of the cost, which would certainly damage their ability to cover issues in the public interest. “Morgan Trau, a reporter for Cleveland’s ABC Channel 5, explains, ‘Law enforcement could charge people for the “estimated cost” of processing the video — and you would have to pay before the footage is released. Governments could charge up to $75 an hour for work, with a fee cap of $750 per request. Legal experts say this could affect access to video from dash and body cameras, as well as surveillance video from inside jails [Northeast Ohio Correctional Center is a privately-operated facility in Ohio run by CoreCivic—ed.]—which are public records in Ohio.” In New Jersey, Gov. Philip D. Murphy (D) also signed legislation hindering access to public records while insisting that this would not turbocharge “public corruption,” which apparently is not a problem in Tony Soprano’s home state.
Many thanks to everyone who extended best wishes to me on my recent health crisis, and to the In the Public Interest team for being there for me. Let’s hear it for traditional Medicare, Medicaid, the FDA, CDC, Social Security and wonderful physicians, hospital staff and their unions. Privatization Watch will be there to confront the greatest challenge to the public interest role of government in decades—Lee Cokorinos