HIGHLIGHTS
- Conservatives complain of “woke” charters
- “Parks and Degradation”: Is Aramark Ruining Yosemite?
- Thames Water soaks Canadian pensions
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: In the Public Interest’s Donald Cohen joined the NC Newsline podcast News & Views to discuss the Trump-aligned Project 2025’s proposal to turn things like the National Weather Service and the Transportation Security Administration over to profit-making businesses. “So, we’ve heard a lot about the many tentacles of Project 2025,” Cohen says, “but let’s focus on one aspect that maybe hasn’t been discussed quite as much. And that’s what it means to really eliminate core public services and structures and hand them over to profit-making private interests.
“There’s, gosh, the National Weather Service and TSA. Let me just say first in general, when you give something over to the private companies that are public things, that like our health, our safety, whether our airplanes stay up in the air, whether our food is safe–I mean, you can go down the long list–when you hand it over to private interests, they get two things. One of which is they get money. Private industry, private companies have profit and they have returns to shareholders, and they have high executive compensation, some of them. Every one of those dollars is a dollar that you’re taking out of the service, the thing that we all want, and we don’t have money to spare, to be honest.
“But the second thing you get is that you get their incentives and their purpose embedded into the service itself. Let me be a little clear. I just always say this, businesses do one thing, they sell stuff, and they want to sell as many as possible of what they sell.” [Audio, about 11 minutes].
2) National: Are conservatives turning on charter schools? For many years there have been tensions between different segments of the right wing over charter schools, with one wing, mainly very rich people, churches and other entrepreneurs of all sizes who stood to make money off them; and another alliance of hardline antigovernment libertarians and religious interests that preferred publicly funding totally private schools without any strings attached to their access to taxpayer dollars.
In a terrific piece in the Progressive shared here by In the Public Interest, Jeff Bryant analyzes a new stage in this battle between pro-privatization forces, where the hardliners are now going after the charter schools/voucher industrial complex by name, such as the Walton Foundation. Much of the rationale for this was laid out in a June research paper by the Heritage Foundation, whose President, Kevin D. Roberts, reportedly an adherent of a resurgent, radical, conservative Catholicism (the Catholic Church operates a multibillion dollar school system largely walled off from public funding at present), initiated and supervised Project 2025. After reading Bryant’s piece, look at the Heritage paper to get a sense of the vehemence of this conflict.
Bryant puts it all into political context. “Normally, a prominent industry’s opposition to government regulations would put it in the same league with pro-business conservatives. But the Republican Party of today, fully ingratiated to Donald Trump, is far more interested in fighting culture wars than it is in free enterprise. Nevertheless, Rotherham’s advice to bring back Democratic support of charter schools also seems insincere.
“At a time when public schools in many places face an existential threat due to the spread of rampant privatization, the charter industry has noticeably stayed away from the progressive coalition that supports public education. And as evidence of charter school corruption continues to pile up, industry lobbyists staunchly oppose any regulatory reform Democrats have proposed. Is it any wonder that these schools now find themselves in a political no man’s land of their own making?”
3) National: Today thousands of AFSCME members from across the country will join together in Los Angeles for the start of the union’s 46th International Convention. The convention goes through Friday. “Following a wave of nonstop organizing, AFSCME comes to Los Angeles with thousands of new members in our union family,” said AFSCME President Lee Saunders. “From museum and library workers to EMS personnel and nurses, we are stronger than ever and ready to take on any attempt to curb our growing worker power – including Project 2025. Our convention gives us the opportunity to strategize against these unprecedented attacks on our freedoms, and we will take the energy from LA back with us to our communities to elect Kamala Harris for president.”
4) Colorado: School districts are working on new ways to find gifted students from all backgrounds, Chalkbeat Coloradoreports. “Educators are taking new steps to make sure students who have long been underrepresented in gifted programs across the country, including students of color, English language learners, and those from lower income families, are better represented. Districts and organizations are now focusing on new data analysis, looking at multiple tests, and training teachers to identify behaviors that might signal high abilities among students of different cultures. Some districts are closing gaps and are identifying more students, although statewide the gaps remain.”
5) Illinois: The Chicago Tribune reports that the Windy City is moving closer to opening a city-owned grocery store to help improve food access on the South and West sides. “The study recommends the city pursue some version of a municipally owned store or stores—and finds such stores could even turn a profit. It also suggests the city not attempt to operate a supermarket itself, but rather partner with a for-profit operator, a nonprofit operator or a co-op. In an interview with the Tribune, city policy chief S. Mayumi ‘Umi’ Grigsby said internal and external working groups will work on finalizing a proposal for a store or stores. The city would then be ready to apply for funding for such a project, including from a new $20 million state grocery initiative.”
6) Maryland/National: The Washington Post reports that “Maryland can ban assault-style weapons such as the AR-15, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, bolstering gun control efforts across the country under legal threat. (…) After dissecting how high-powered assault rifles are ineffective and inappropriate for self-defense, and recounting in some detail the horrors of mass shootings in the United States, the court endorsed the Maryland law by saying, ‘Our nation has a strong tradition of regulating excessively dangerous weapons once it becomes clear that they are exacting an inordinate toll on public safety and societal wellbeing.’ The ruling is an expected but welcome victory for gun regulation advocates, who are fighting hundreds of lawsuits spurred by a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said such restrictions must be in line with the country’s ‘history and tradition.’”
7) Massachusetts: Gov. Maura Healy (D) has signed a massive $5 billion Affordable Homes Act into law. “The legislation is the largest housing bond bill ever filed in the state, more than tripling the spending authorizations of the last housing bill passed in 2018. Calling it the ‘most ambitious legislation in Massachusetts history to tackle the state’s greatest challenge—housing costs,’ the legislation authorizes $5.16 billion in spending over the next five years and includes 49 policy initiatives aimed at addressing rising housing costs due to high demand and limited supply.”
8) New Jersey: East Orange is walking the walk on local hire and the training it requires. “The City of East Orange’s Rising Builders Program (RBP) will launch six new training programs in high-demand trade industries this fall. The Rising Builders Program, created under the administration of Mayor Ted R. Green and led by David Sharp, Coordinator of Employment and Training Programs for the Mayor’s Office of Employment and Training (MOET), is an innovative public-private partnership between the city and Triangle Equities, developer of The Crossings at Brick Church Station.”
9) Tennessee: A free diapers program is beginning in the Volunteer State. “Any TennCare or CoverKids member under the age of 2 is eligible for the benefit. If you’re unsure about your child’s eligibility, participating pharmacies can help check to see if a child is eligible. A prescription is not required, however, make sure to have your child’s OptumRx pharmacy card or Social Security number. For newborns, who may not yet have their OptumRx card, the parent’s OptumRx card or Social Security number may be used. Eligible members will be able to receive up to 100 diapers every 30 days from the list of approved brands/types of diapers.”
10) International/Canada: Well someone has finally blown the whistle on the disastrous but rarely examined process by which public pension managers cannibalize the public sector using public service workers’ own money and jobs to promote privatization. Kudos to Maude Barlow and John Cartwright for weighing in in the Toronto Star with “The Privatization of a Now Floundering Utility Cost Ontario Pensioners a Billion Dollars. It’s Also a Cautionary Tale.”
They write, “how did Thames Water go from being the darling of market fundamentalists to a financial basket case that cost Canadian pensioners a billion dollars? It is a classic case of corporate greed that stands as a stark reminder of what it means to safeguard the public interest. (…) Twenty-five years ago, the fight to keep water public was taking place at a global scale. Multinational companies were scouring the planet looking for opportunities to take over public systems. Here in Canada, citizens groups and labour unions created the national Water Watch campaign that helped defeat most efforts to outsource municipal water systems, including in Toronto. Dozens of municipalities became “Blue Communities,” committing to keep their water systems public. Through active public engagement we managed to protect an essential public service that all of us rely on. But today we can’t ignore the lessons of Thames Water for our country. It’s much more than a billion-dollar loss for one pension fund. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when politics allows greed to mix with water, and why we must never let that happen here.” Paging Pennsylvania.
11) National/New Report: Vast income inequality in the U.S. is feeding the movement to hollow out public education, Sam Pizzigati reports on Inequality.org. “Public school funding ‘has become so absurd,’ says [Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT] that just four hedge fund managers on Wall Street ‘made more money last year’ than all the kindergarten teachers in America. What’s going on here? Public school teachers haven’t run into a stretch of horribly bad luck. They’ve run into a gang of billionaires who’ve been underwriting a massive drive to decouple the ‘public’ from ‘education.’ The policy movers and shakers these deep pockets are bankrolling—outfits like the DeVos Family Foundation and the Koch Foundation—are funding legislative and lobbying campaigns that are earmarking ever more public tax dollars to private schools. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s new report, By the Wealthy, for the Wealthy: The Coordinated Attacks on Public Education in the United States, chillingly exposes this carefully plotted anti-public education offensive.”
12) National: The Washington Post and Chalkbeat have given brief overviews of Democratic Party vice presidential pick Tim Walz’s record on education.
The Post: “The 2019 state budget negotiations in Minnesota were tense, with a deadline looming, when the speaker of the House offered Gov. Tim Walz a suggestion for breaking the impasse. They both knew that the Republicans’ top priority was to create a school voucher-type program that would direct tax dollars to help families pay for private schools. House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, floated an idea: What if they offered the Republicans a pared-down version of the voucher plan, some sort of ‘fig leaf,’ that could help them claim a symbolic victory in trade for big wins on the Democratic side? In the past, on other issues, Walz had been open to that kind of compromise, Hortman said. This time, it was a ‘hard no.’”
Chalkbeat: “The photos have emerged as perhaps the most iconic image of Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor and longtime high school teacher had just signed into law a bill making school breakfast and lunch free to nearly all children in the state. In the pictures from last year, Walz is surrounded by children who happily embrace him, and he beams with joy. Teachers and teachers unions have embraced Walz as the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee with similar joy. The last major party candidate to previously have led a K-12 classroom was Lyndon B. Johnson. And they say they’re excited about not just his background but his record.”
13) California: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that an Oakland charter school was ordered closed but is defiantly staying open anyway. “The school board voted to close the school in early June, citing achievement levels that fell short of required expectations based on a signed agreement between the school and the district, with closure as a consequence of failing to meet those expectations. Current school leadership say the agreement was signed by the prior administration and there had been confusion, a lack of communication and misinformation, which didn’t allow for a fair fight to keep the school open. ‘We don’t see why we need to close,’ Muhammad said. ‘We’re not crazy people that don’t want to close a school. We don’t know what happened.’” KTVU reports “the news came as a shock to the parents, students, and teachers of the tight-knit community, even though the decision came back in June to shut down the school. ”
14) Florida: Private school vouchers are soaring, and threatening public schools, The Miami Herald reports. “Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Academy is one of the expanding number of religious schools accepting taxpayer-funded vouchers. The funding for these vouchers is putting increasing pressure on public school budgets. (…) ‘It is money that may never get to the school district’s budget,’ said Norin Dollard, senior policy analyst and KIDS COUNT director at the Florida Policy Institute, who has studied the impact of vouchers on traditional public school budgets. The state sends the money directly to Step Up For Students and AAA Scholarship Foundation, which distribute the scholarships to families sending their kids to private and religious schools, paying a portion of the tuition. According to Step Up For Students, in the 2023-2024 school year, 82 percent of all students with scholarships in the state attended a religious school. Opponents of vouchers have expressed concern over taxpayer dollars being diverted to religious schools.”
15) Idaho: Does a municipal zoning decision requiring a real estate project to include housing constitute a “government burden” on the free exercise of religion? Well a Catholic Diocese is threatening to sue the city of Boise for ruling against its office block plans. “But at public hearings in February and April, when the church faced questions from neighbors about why the building was not being zoned as a religious institution, its representatives characterized the building as an office space that would not be used for worship. ‘We feel it is disingenuous to claim freedom of religious exercise at this point after arguing for months that it is not a religious project, but just an office building,’ Erik Hagen, the North End Neighborhood Association’s president, told the Statesman in an email.” The City Council “is set to decide about the church’s modified request after a public hearing at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 20, at City Hall.” [Sub required]
16) Nebraska: Help this dude and their community, folks. From Joe Pick: “Looking for help today. I spread the word about what’s going on in Nebraska, our public schools & the voucher fight – all while running for my local school board against a Moms For Liberty candidate. I’d love to connect with more – Vibes are strong – Please follow and retweet!” [H/t Jennifer Berkshire]. Here’s Joe in action.
17) South Carolina: Statehouse Report says “critics of South Carolina’s charter school law say two bombshell lawsuits in rural Anderson County shine a light on the law’s principal deficiency—a charter school oversight system that lacks meaningful accountability for student outcomes. (…) Most recently, Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), which has been studying charter schools since 2009, reported in 2023 that Palmetto State charter school students underperform their public school peers in reading and math. This finding placed charter schools in South Carolina, which proponents hail as a model for charters, near the bottom nationally. S.C. is one of only three states where charter students aren’t overperforming on academics.”
Meanwhile, The Sun News reports that “a third private South Carolina college has registered to sponsor charter schools in the Palmetto State. Voorhees University, a small historically Black college in rural Bamberg County, last month notified the state Department of Education it would begin authorizing charter schools, joining Erskine and Limestone colleges, which together oversee 36 charter schools that serve a combined 28,000 students. The move comes as state lawmakers are contemplating a crackdown on authorizers amid growing concerns about the operations of the largely self-regulated entities that oversee many of South Carolina’s charter schools.”
18) Texas: The Denton school district, with minimal resources, faces the daunting task of serving a growing student population. ““You know it’s disappointing anytime you have a facility on the ground when you can’t open it,” Dr. Susannah Holbert-O’Bara, the new superintendent of Denton ISD, told WFAA. She is frustrated by the lack of funding from the state legislature, which forced the district to postpone the opening of its new school. ‘We won’t have an option but to open it next year. We’re not going to have facilities for all our children if we don’t because that particular part of our zone is growing,’ O’Bara explained.”
19) National/Upcoming Conference: Who is going to respond to the massive growth of energy-sucking data centers serving AI, and how will their growth be regulated and made environmentally and socially sustainable? Will responses be drive by finance or the public interest? The finance side is planning, via this S&P Global conference in DC this October.
20) National: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a public comment on the proposed “Water System Restructuring Assessment Rule” by Food & Water Watch. An excerpt: “We strongly urge the EPA in its Final Rule to better conform the rule with the statutory language under SDWA Sec. 1414(h) and to better prioritize the safety, affordability and accessibility of drinking water. The Proposed Rule goes too far in using the mandatory assessments to drive restructuring of water systems, and it lacks necessary public guardrails, leaving it open to abuse to drive the privatization of public water systems against the will of communities reliant on these systems.” [Sub required]
21) Tennessee/National: $450 an hour to promote road privatization? Nice work if you can get it. D.J. Gribbin, the former Koch Industries operative and Trump infrastructure czar, is making hay while the sun shines advising the Tennessee government on toll roads. The Tennessean reports that “This year, Tennessee appointed another Trump-connected external attorney to ‘advise’ the Tennessee Department of Transportation and its commissioner on the state’s impending toll road initiative. DJ Gribbin, a one-time top adviser dubbed Trump’s ‘infrastructure czar,’ left the White House after the president’s signature 2018 infrastructure package stalled in Congress. Gribbin and any attorneys at his Virginia firm, Madrus, will earn an hourly rate of $450 for work on Tennessee’s ‘choice lane’ program.’” [Sub required]
22) Indiana: After a 16-year saga, including an intense battle over road privatization and the cost of P3s (see, e.g. this item from a decade ago in the Privatization Report), the nation’s newest interstate highway opened last week, completing the direct route from Evansville to Indianapolis.
23) New Hampshire: How about you buy a shopping center then when you can’t make the payments on proposed improvements you hit up the taxpayers to bail you out? The Concord Monitor has the receipts. “When projects in Concord are built that require new city resources—adding new or improving existing roads, sewers, plumbing or other infrastructure—the city typically requires developers to pay for those additions. Onyx Partners, who bought the former Steeplegate Mall and Regal Cinemas properties on Loudon Road for more than $22 million last year, has told the city that it may not be able to afford those costs, according to a city report. Therefore, the developer is asking the city to help pay via a public-private partnership.”
24) International/Nigeria: Proshare has produced a review of the issue of “public-private partnerships,” which have often run into serious trouble in Nigeria, for instance in the power sector. Unfortunately, the report lays most of the blame at the feet of government. P3 failure is a perennial hot potato in failed privatizations all over the world, with various interests passing the buck on who gets the blame and who should clean up the mess. For example, regarding the water privatization fiasco in Britain, Infrastructure Investor says, “That we are even using the f-word—failure—in relation to the UK’s biggest water monopoly, a paradigmatic core infrastructure asset if there ever was one, is a damning indictment. So, we don’t need to wait for an official collapse (likely) or a miraculous solution (less likely) to state the obvious: Thames Water is a public-private failure.” Well that’s a neat trick. Loot the public entities for years, then blame the public for your malfeasance and shut them up with doomerism when they complain about having to clean up your mess. As the Wall Street saying goes about future train wrecks, “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone”—or on to the next P3.
25) National: Privatization is causing Yosemite Park to deteriorate, and employees and park superfans blame the hospitality company Aramark. “It seems the public is getting what it pays for. Hundreds of pages of federal documents and interviews with more than 30 current and former employees speak to the costs, including chemical spills, a ceiling collapse, a viral outbreak, bedbugs, and food storage issues that led to the killing of three bears. The majestic Ahwahnee hotel, where President Barack Obama and the Queen of England have stayed, is in shambles. The National Park Service’s latest evaluation of Yosemite Hospitality LLC, the Aramark subsidiary that runs most of the tourist amenities, is scathing by the standards of park rangers. ‘The Service is extremely concerned that the years of neglect in maintaining assets has directly impacted visitor safety,’ says the report, which found the company to be noncompliant in several areas in 2023, including asset maintenance, environmental monitoring and hazard incident response. And: ‘The Service is particularly concerned about the state of the Wawona Hotel and The Ahwahnee Hotel, as they are historic assets and National Historic Landmarks.’”
26) National: So after the right wing privatizes the National Weather Service, what plans to they have for those left behind, the victims of the storms? Why nothing, nothing at all, the Center for American Progress reports. “In the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Debby, the Southeast is tasked with the difficult work of rebuilding homes, businesses, and lives. Initial reports indicate at least six people have died from the storm. (…) Even still, Project 2025—a far-right road map that would gut the country’s nearly 250-year-old system of checks and balances—proposes, on page 750, an ‘end to SBA direct lending,’ the only instance of which is the disaster loan program. Project 2025 suggests privatization as one potential solution and claims, without evidence, that loan availability ‘reduces individuals’ incentives to purchase disaster-related insurance.’ However, it makes no mention of the skyrocketing costs for families in these situations”
27) Michigan: The Democrats are warning that electing Republican members of Congress poses a grave threat to public services. “Chief amongst John James’ [Michigan 10th] disastrous policies is a plan to extend Donald Trump’s tax scam that benefits the ultra-rich with little to no benefit for small businesses or the middle-class. Such a tax cut would balloon the national debt by up to $2.7 trillion over the next decade. In order to pay for this handout, James would cut Social Security, privatize Medicare, and leave hundreds of thousands of Michiganders without quality, affordable health care coverage. In practice, that would mean raising the retirement age and forcing more than $1.5 trillion in cuts to Social Security. Finally, James’ agenda also includes massively increasing health insurance premiums for seniors – resulting in a shift towards higher costs for fewer benefits that would devastate the most vulnerable in Michigan.”
28) Illinois: The Chicago Tribune has a retrospective on the 50-year history of the Illinois lottery, which turns millions of dollars over to the state for public services and goods. The lottery has been through a number of problematic privatizations of its operations, though the latest private operator (Swiss-based Allwyn) claims to have solved the problems.
29) Ohio/National: WOSU’s Anna Staver hosted a panel discussion on the pros and cons of privatizing Section 8 housing—the federal public housing program. “The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority will end its contract next year with the company that manages its Section 8 voucher program. That will affect about 13,000 households in central Ohio. Nationally, more cities are taking similar steps. But the results don’t always benefit residents.” [Audio, about 50 minutes]
30) Virginia: WTOP reports that Fairfax police want to privatize the crossing guards system. “Tasking the school division with using a private vendor could cost between $700,000 and $1 million, according to a county presentation. The City of Alexandria started using a private vendor to cover crossings in the fall of 2023, Blakley said. The city does still have some of its own school crossing guards, he explained, and the approach has yielded promising results.”
31) Virginia: Another unit of Alexandria public service workers can file for union representation, AFSCME reports. “‘This is such an important day for everyone in Alexandria, not just city employees,’ said 27-year veteran Teresa Smith-Ross. ‘We give of ourselves and make personal sacrifices to do our jobs. That’s why we must advocate for ourselves to ensure that our voices are heard and our concerns are addressed. We are here because we care for the city and each other.’ She also said this day has been years in the making: ‘A lot of hard work has gone into making this happen. People have been working towards this for a long time.’ In 2020, public service workers all over Virginia came together and successfully organized to overturn a 44-year-old law that banned public sector collective bargaining in the commonwealth.”
32) International/Canada: Healthcare privatization is “galloping” in New Brunswick, writes Gary Heathcote, an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at St. Thomas University, in Fredericton. “Health care privatization’s most ardent facilitator has been the current Progressive Conservative administration of Premier Blaine Higgs, in power since 2018. A man of his (prognostic) word, Higgs forewarned us of this likely outcome in 2022. This year, Higgs and company have stepped up the pace of health care giveaways under the veil of ‘public-private partnerships.’ The latest two P3s have seen the management of a pilot program for the treatment of a major depressive disorder awarded to a for-profit health management company, and a purportedly enhanced prescription drug-monitoring program awarded to a for-profit health care technology firm. The latter deal, announced with some fanfare, was not critically interrogated by the corporate media, albeit with some exceptions.”
Heathcote calls for adequate funding and de-privatization. “In advance of the next election, what is needed is an integrated educational campaign about the fundamental reasons as to why our system is failing us: chronic underfunding of public health care together with giveaways of health services to private capital by previous and current provincial governments. The message needs to be communicated clearly and effectively as to why and how they are linked. For decades, our public health system has been dying from a thousand paper cuts, and we’re mad as hell. Alarmingly, many among us have concluded that privatizers can somehow lead us out of our current morass. Focus must be concentrated on disabusing those who are ‘reachable’—as many of them as possible—of this fantasy.”
33) National: Slashing workforce costs as a tactic for politicians to balance budgets is not going to work as well in the future, says Josh Goodman, who works on The Pew Charitable Trusts’ state fiscal policy project. “Employee compensation is a natural place to look for cuts because it is such a big part of state budgets. However, U.S. Census Bureau data shows that state spending on salaries and wages has been in long-term decline as a percentage of overall direct expenditures. Spending in this category fell by 40% in the median state from fiscal 1993 to fiscal 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. With states spending less on salaries and wages, cuts in this category in future downturns will be less effective at closing budget shortfalls or have to be proportionally larger to close significant budget gaps.”
34) National: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit (seven midwestern states) has cleared the way for Iowa to begin banning books again. Lambda Legal, the ACLU of Iowa, and Jenner & Block issued the following joint statement about the ruling:
“Iowa families, and especially LGBTQ+ students who will again face bullying, intimidation, and censorship as they return for a new school year, are deeply frustrated and disappointed by this delay. Denying LGBTQ+ youth the chance to see themselves represented in classrooms and books sends a harmful message of shame and stigma that should not exist in schools. We are, however, encouraged by the Eighth Circuit’s complete rejection of the State’s most dangerous arguments, and we look forward to renewing our request for relief from this law’s damaging and unconstitutional effects on LGBTQ+ students. The appeals court acknowledged that our student clients have been harmed by the law and have the right to bring suit. The court also rejected the State’s claim that banning books in libraries is a form of protected government speech. We will ask the district court to block the law again at the earliest opportunity.”