HIGHLIGHTS
- The Nature of Government
- What “Parents’ Rights” gets wrong, and Community Schools get right.
- Will Montana add “corporate” to Butte 4-C’s?
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: What is the role of government in our ability to enjoy and protect nature and all of its glories? In the Public Interest’s Jeff Hagan reflected on this as he and his family spent some vacation time on Cape Cod. “Nauset is one of a half a dozen beaches that are part of the Cape Cod National Seashore, which covers 40 miles of shoreline under the care and ownership of the National Park Service—in other words, since it’s a federal agency, all Americans. The service keeps the beaches clean and safe, hires lifeguards for the summer months, and posts warnings about sharks and dangerous riptides as you enter each beach (the Severe Bleeding First Aid kit was enough of a warning for us to steer clear)…
“Our wonderful time on Cape Cod was made possible by national, state, and local governments, and thus residents and voters across the country,” Hagan says. “Citizens at every level, working through government, had the foresight and leadership to protect land and waterways and make them available to all people—the public providing for the public. From the highway we took to get there, to the water and foods we consumed (admittedly, a significant portion of it was ice cream), to the historic, recreational, and natural sites we visited, government was, as ITPI’s executive director, Donald Cohen, says, ‘ubiquitous—and invisible.’
But all of this is under threat, and is on the ballots in November. As the Sierra Club reports, “Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of the Interior—which manages most public lands and wildlife—was written by William Perry Pendley, the same person who once opined that all public land in the West should be sold off to private investors. And the orchestrators of the document include a who’s who of associates at the Heritage Foundation, the Koch-backed think tank that advocates for the expansion of oil and gas above all else. (…) Consequently, conservation groups, environmentalists, and public land advocates are appalled. Project 2025 ‘is like [an oil-lobbyist] fever dream when it comes to public lands … and it’s really a 19th-century approach,’ Athan Manuel, the director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, said. What’s most concerning to environmentalists is how a possible authoritarian presidential administration could achieve this vision.”
Let’s remember what happened the last time.
2) National: “Community schools do more for students than “parents’ rights,” says In the Public Interest Writing Fellow Jeremy Mohler. “If right-wing lawmakers really cared about what they call ‘parents’ rights,’ they would not be spreading misinformation to pit parents against teachers. They would be listening to what parents really want instead of stoking racial and social divisions to drain resources from public schools. In contrast, President Joe Biden has made historic investments in the education system in ways that truly value parent voices. Take Biden’s support for community schools, for example. These schools work with families, students and their surrounding communities to not only improve student academic performance but also solve problems beyond the classroom and campus walls. Since 2020, the Biden administration has increased federal funding for community schools five-fold. A recent report by In the Public Interestfound that schools across the country are using the community school model, which is helping students by expanding the idea of what a school can be responsible for and how it can care for its students.”
3) National: Fighting privatization is good for mental health, Elena Gormley writes in In These Times. “Following the 2020 racial justice uprisings, a coalition of organizing groups across Chicago launched the Treatment Not Trauma campaign to advocate for public mental healthcare and alternatives to police-based emergency response systems. Now, Chicago is demonstrating what is possible when neoliberal service delivery models are rejected for the public good. Working in the mental health field, I know from personal experience that access is often a barrier to treatment. The need for more accessible care is universal across Chicago. (…) Relying on private agencies is bad not only for patients, but for the dedicated clinicians who work at them. Chicago’s nonprofits offer inconsistent to downright nightmarish working conditions, largely because of the lack of unionization and a precarious funding structure — not to mention decades of the mental health profession embracing an anti-union mindset that seeks to separate care workers from the rest of the working class.”
4) National/Pennsylvania: “The privatization train is slowing down considerably … and that’s a very good thing,” says Tony Bellitto, executive director of the North Penn Water Authority. “The PUC has placed a quantified limit on the purchase price of a publicly owned system, based on a limited numerical multiple of the depreciated original cost. This basically means that a private utility cannot make an inflated purchase offer that is far more than a system is actually worth in order to incentivize a sale. So the PUC will not approve any more eye-popping financial valuations that would have to get paid back through huge customer rate increases. (…)
“We at North Penn Water Authority, along with our many colleagues around the state in the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association, have been at the forefront of this fight for several years. It is very gratifying for us to see these developments. The privatization threat will never go away, but it’s encouraging to know that major obstacles are being placed in its path as a result of public opposition and a renewed attention by legislators and regulatory agencies who are finally recognizing the negative consequences of the Act 12 legislation. Municipal Authorities can all celebrate this significant victory. Although the privatization train left the station with a full head of steam a few years ago, it most surely will not arrive at its intended destination. And that’s a very good thing.”
For more on the Water Wars in Pennsylvania, see ITPI’s new report. And, if you can, get on the bus to Harrisburg for an October 9 action at 10AM to save the Chester Water Authority.
5) National/New York/New Jersey: The Bond Buyer reports that the Gateway Development Commission “expects to finalize its last grant for the Hudson Tunnel Project by the end of the month, according to its CFO, Pat McCoy. (..) The Gateway Program has run into numerous stumbling blocks. It was stalled by New Jersey’s then-Gov. Chris Christie in 2010, and then by the Trump administration, which threatened to pull all federal funding. McCoy said he’s confident that the funding is secure, but the political precarity adds an urgency to GDC’s approach to construction. ‘The president and the administration, no matter what their desire, there’s money on the table,’ McCoy said. ‘There’s money that we’re intending to spend. So our feeling is that this has gone beyond the point of no return.’” [Sub required]
6) National: Natalie Hernandez, National Organizing Coordinator for PowerSwitch Action, says in an email, “Driver organizing is working! All across the country, Uber and Lyft drivers have been fighting for safer working conditions, better pay, and protections against unfair “deactivations” that cut drivers off from their livelihoods. Yesterday, Uber announced a slew of changes that make clear it’s feeling the heat.” For more visit Activate Respect and add your name to the campaign.
7) Georgia/National: USA Today reports that STAND UP Georgia, an affiliate of PowerSwitch Action, is ramping up voter turnout efforts to push back against changes designed to disrupt the November vote count. “Nearly a dozen young men spent hours at Georgia STAND-UP one recent morning stuffing masks, mints and hand sanitizers in care packages for voters who may wait in long lines starting in October. Across town, workers at The Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda set up voter registration tables at local colleges and senior citizen buildings. At Clark Atlanta University, organizers with a group called RISE helped register students and collect pledge cards at the historically black college. To combat what they call voter suppression efforts in Georgia, grassroots organizations aim to register thousands of voters of color urging them to cast ballots early, show up in person and turn out in record numbers so there’s little doubt who the winner is on Election Day.”
8) New Hampshire: A petition is circulating opposing the potential privatization of the Dartmouth College Child Care Center. “According to di Blasi, writing the petition became “urgent” when the authors developed a ‘strong belief’ that Dartmouth would sign a contract with Bright Horizons before the end of August. This contract, according to several community members, could have had wide-reaching implications for employees of D4C and the children it serves. According to sociology professor Casey Stockstill—whose academic expertise includes childhood and education — for-profit child care chains tend to cultivate ‘hard working conditions” for teachers and ‘cut labor costs wherever possible.’ For example, she wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that the chains may employ the ‘fewest teachers allowed by legal ratios,’ send teachers home early and combine classrooms ‘when they can.’ ‘That’s the only way to profit in [the] care work industry,’ she wrote.”
9) North Carolina/Think Tanks: Here’s a good one. Whenever someone reflexively whines and moans about how your local DMV is bad and should be privatized (spoiler alert: they’re usually not that bad), you can show them this detailed new report on why NCDMV privatization would be a bad idea. Bradley George breaks it down in WUNC’s The Moth Radio Hour.
“Many government agencies, including NCDMV, have struggled to retain and hire employees since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In a series of social media posts, Goodwin said lawmakers in the General Assembly have refused his requests to add new positions. North Carolina has added three million residents in the past two decades, but he argues staffing hasn’t kept pace. The report recommends lawmakers grant the agency more flexibility to hire temporary workers and prioritize open positions at NCDMV offices with the highest wait times. In response to the report, NCDMV commissioner Wayne Goodwin issued this statement to WUNC: ‘I’d like to thank the team from ITRE and UNC Greensboro for their work. Our team is poring over the report and looks forward to discussing its recommendations with our partners at the legislature.’”
10) California: The Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) Board of Trustees has renewed operating permission to two charter schools, but with conditions. “The conflict of interest involved Cassandra Jennings, who served both as the St. Hope Public Schools Board Chair and the CEO of St. Hope Academy, a nonprofit providing services to the charter school through contracts. Jennings says St. Hope’s attorney’s agree she can do both jobs if proper procedures are followed, but she decided to step down as the board chair. SHPS says Jennings will resign her position as board chair effective Sept. 30.”
11) Colorado: Will unaccountable private school vouchers be entrenched in the state constitution come November? The initiative was animated by “efforts last April by three Colorado legislators to enact a charter school accountability act, a bill supported by the Colorado Education Association (CEA) and other pro-public education groups. In their report on why they initiated Amendment 80, Advance Colorado stated that the proposed charter bill would have ‘destroyed school choice for charters.’”
12) Florida: WJCT reports that “on the Deeper Dive with Dara Kam podcast from the News Service of Florida, South Florida Sun Sentinel Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet discussed how school board races have evolved and what voters might decide in the fall.” [Audio, about 40 minutes]
13) Florida: School privatization efforts have driven a deep rift in Newberry (just west of Gainesville). “In the 17 years she’s lived in Newberry, Jessica Mrozinske Baker said people have been passionate about many community issues. When a popular off-road motocross track was going to be moved to a new location in 2017, she recalled 150 people showing up to a City Hall meeting room meant to hold 90. And when Newberry proposed last year to convert 1,300 acres of agriculture into a 4,500-home development, City Hall brought in a second police officer to manage the unusually large crowd at the commission meeting. But Mrozinske Baker, a mother of two school-aged children, said no topic has been quite as contentious as the ongoing conversion of Newberry Elementary School into a charter school. ‘This really has—and continues to—divide people in the community,’ she said. ‘There are definitely people who felt that they were being treated with hostility.’”
14) New Hampshire: A whodunit in New England. The Concord Monitor asks and answers “Who is the mysterious Florida-based landlord and philanthropist of a charter school under scrutiny in Peterborough?” Jeremy Margolis reports that “Ophir Sternberg, a Miami-based real estate mogul who immigrated to the United States from Israel in 1993, proudly touts in his corporate biography that he founded and generously contributes to a charter school in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Sternberg is less open about the fact that he also serves as Lionheart Classical Academy’s landlord, to the tune of over $50,000 per month in rent this year, according to lease documents. The dual relationship as both landlord and founder traces back to the summer of 2021, when Sternberg pledged $1 million – $100,000 annually for 10 years – in exchange for a 15-year lease on his building and naming rights to the new school, which teaches a ‘classical’ curriculum created by a conservative college in Michigan. (Sternberg’s investment firm is called Lionheart Capital.) But while Sternberg has reaped at least $700,000 in rent and as the school board has put in millions of dollars of work to transform the building from offices and unfinished space to classrooms, the Florida investor has failed to uphold his end of the agreement.”
15) North Carolina: Gov. Roy Cooper, as expected, has vetoed House Bill 10, which would have increased private school voucher funding and required sheriffs to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Blue Ridge Public Radio reports. “The measure’s private school voucher provisions would have sent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund Opportunity Scholarships for non-public school students. In a news release, Cooper called the vouchers ‘the biggest threat to public schools in decades.’ But while much of the response to the veto focused on vouchers, activists in Asheville zeroed in on the provision in HB-10 that would have required all North Carolina sheriffs to cooperate with ICE. The bill would require sheriffs to honor ICE requests to detain—for at least 48 hours—individuals suspected of being in the country illegally. (…) HB10 also included funding for K-12 public schools, Medicaid and broadband high speed internet expansion. The General Assembly has a Republican supermajority and could vote to override the governor’s veto.”
16) Ohio: Two parents are suing the city of Columbus for not busing their child to a private charter school. “Over the last month, the district has denied its actions are contrary to law. In Ohio, a school district can deem a student impractical to transport based on several factors including the number of students being transported, the time and distance required to provide transport and whether other reimbursable types of transportation are available. Earlier this month, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sued the district. His lawsuit seeks to charge CCS’s refusal to transport. Charter school leaders believe the Ellis’ lawsuit will be the first of many.” CCS Superintendent Dr. Angela Chapman “did admit that the district’s outreach to parents before the school year regarding impracticality could have been more intentional but said CCS had to use their resources properly.”
17) National: The Wall Street Journal reports that “BlackRock, Microsoft and United Arab Emirates state-backed investor MGX are partnering on a new artificial-intelligence infrastructure fund that aims to raise $30 billion to invest in data centers and related power infrastructure. After raising the private-equity capital from investors, the partnership could deploy up to $100 billion in total capital when including debt financing, the parties said Tuesday. Most of the infrastructure investments will be made in the U.S. The systems powering new AI products are highly energy intensive. The recent frenzy to build data centers to serve the exploding demand for AI is causing a shortage of the parts, property and power that the sprawling warehouses of supercomputers require. (…) It will finance projects across the AI infrastructure ecosystem, including energy infrastructure. By 2030, data centers alone could increase U.S. power demand by 8%, researchers say.” [Sub required]
18) National: The Biden infrastructure law has opened the door, a crack, to P3 “asset recycling,” and the assets are now being scanned, The Bond Buyer reports. “Dozens of local and state governments won grants under a new program that encourages them to inventory their assets with an eye toward potential monetization. The Innovative Finance and Asset Concession Grant program is a closely watched program in the public-private partnership program and a centerpiece of federal P3 policy. Established in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the program’s first round of funding, announced Tuesday, sends just under $50 million to 45 local, regional and state public entities. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Build America Bureau oversees the program, which is aimed at helping states and cities create an inventory of their assets and consider P3s, including asset concessions, for projects that could ‘reasonably’ be considered eligible for Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loans.” [Sub required]
19) National: Midwest states are struggling to fund dam safety projects even though federal money is on its way, Inside Climate News reports. “About $3 billion was dedicated to dam projects under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Congress passed in 2021. A chunk of those allocated funds has been awarded to states this year through several federal grant programs aimed at improving dam safety and upgrading the nation’s hydropower infrastructure. (…) But Midwestern states are largely missing out on that historic pool of money when compared to other U.S. regions, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal data. Eleven Midwest states will receive a total of $30 million in FEMA dam safety grants this year, just half of the roughly $60 million that 13 states in the South will receive. Another $60 million will go to 11 states in the Northeast. In the West, 11 states will receive about $45 million.”
20) National: The National Governors Association is highlighting the fact that the Biden infrastructure bill is investing in workforce development. For example, “Last week, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs issued an executive order designed to coordinate the state’s workforce development strategy and deliver the talent Arizona needs to meet this unique moment. As detailed in the executive order, Arizona will need to fill at least 400,000 jobs by 2030, including 6,000 new manufacturing jobs, 20,000 new construction jobs, 12,000 new green energy jobs, and 16,000 new broadband and IT jobs. To meet this demand, Governor Hobbs is directing state agencies receiving relevant federal dollars to allocate at least 1% of allowable program funds for on-the-job training and other workforce development activities in these key industries. To coordinate these efforts, the executive order creates the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet – a new entity that will execute the Governor’s workforce development policy agenda and lead stakeholder engagement across state government.”
21) National: Ross Fowler, an analyst from Bank of America Securities, has initiated a new Sell rating on American Water (AWK), Business Insider reports. “Fowler has given his Sell rating due to a combination of factors relating to American Water Works’ (AWK) valuation in comparison to its peers in the electric and gas utility sectors. Despite AWK’s historically strong performance aided by low interest rates, the company’s shares have been trading at a significant premium that is difficult to justify given the current financial landscape. Fowler notes that this premium has narrowed from the extreme levels observed in 2020, but still remains at about 45% relative to regulated electric and gas utilities. The convergence of AWK’s earnings per share (EPS) growth with that of its peers, alongside rising interest rates, has led to a reevaluation of the company’s stock value.”
22) California: Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch reports that “The Kern River, which flows out of the Sierra Nevada in southern California, has dried up outside of Bakersfield this summer, leading to the deaths of at least 3000 fish. The river flows have been steadily dwindling since a court ruling allowed more of its water to be impounded and diverted into industrial farmlands. Bonnie Compton, who has lived along the Kern for the last ten years, told the LA Times: ‘This place had actually started to become beautiful again, and now it’s turning into the desert. It’s horrible. They’re killing the fish. They’re killing our wildlife. Everything’s dying. This is public ground, and they’re taking the water away from the public. We want the water back.’”
23) Think Tanks: What’s the right balance between infrastructure development and environmental health and safety? Reporting in Vanderbilt Research News, Jenna Somers discusses the work of Ashley Carse. “What happens to communities and environments when waterways are dredged to accommodate global shipping vessels? How does built infrastructure affect city temperatures and who is most affected? As a cultural anthropologist, Ashley Carse tries to answer these questions by investigating the local impacts of large infrastructure projects like transportation systems, shipping ports, and canals, with a focus on how the burdens and benefits of societal and economic development are distributed.”
“In two of Carse’s current projects, The Age of Mitigation: Global Shipping and a River on Life Support and a new project on urban heat and equity, he seeks to unearth some of the key assumptions, values, and priorities embedded in large-scale structural engineering projects, especially considering that the consequences of some decisions about infrastructure may not be fully understood for years to come.”
24) National/Vermont: Writing in the Stowe Reporter, Walt Amses of Calais, Vermont, says the privatization myth is costing us more. “While it’s disturbing that Acadia Healthcare, a chain of mental health facilities, has been holding patients against their will, according to a New York Times report, it’s even more troubling that there are chains of such institutions scattered across 19 states — a string of psychological Walmarts, essentially incarcerating patients for such things as not finishing a meal. Although the why is transparent—$2,200 per day—how it works is much more under the radar: Scores of people in America have been held against their will until their insurance is maxed out.” (…)
“In The Privatization of Everything, Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian take on and “completely demolish” the mythology surrounding the privatizer’s worldview that shifting public entities to profit-seeking private management will lead to cost-cutting and greater attention to customer satisfaction, reduce taxes and shrink the size of government. Citing numerous examples, the pair demonstrate how private-sector managers have adopted profit-making strategies that can make essential services unaffordable or unavailable to large segments of the population. Profit-seeking operations can conceivably choose not to provide health care to the indigent, extend education to poor or learning-disabled children or deliver packages to remote locations.” (…)
“As capitalism takes over so many aspects of our lives, we can take comfort in the words of Michael Corleone, a staunch advocate of privatization: ‘It’s nothing personal. It’s strictly business.’”
25) California: KPBS has an update on the trash wars in San Diego. “Nearly two years after voters allowed the city of San Diego to charge them for trash pickup, officials have wrapped up the first round of community meetings intended to collect feedback from residents and help shape the future of waste management. These meetings are part of nearly $1.7 million that the city plans to spend on just community engagement. But controversy has surrounded the city’s hefty contract for a consultant to study the issue and conduct outreach, and residents who attended the meetings gave mixed reviews about their usefulness.” (…)
“More details on the potential trash fee are expected to be discussed at future sessions. The meetings may be formatted in “in alternative forms,” according to the contract, so they may not be an open-house style for the next rounds. The firm is slated to summarize feedback from the meetings and present to the city’s Executive Oversight Committee and at City Council or council committee meetings by August, according to the contract.”
26) Montana: The privatization of public services is bad for Montana, says Rocko Mulcahy, board chair of Butte 4C’s. “No matter how someone tries to spin this, whoever the middle man is that has been given the task to explain this policy, privatization of public services to out of state for-profit organizations is bad for Montana, bad for our communities, and devastating to the employees who have dedicated their lives to building the very programs that will now be dismantled. Unfortunately, when asked what can be done to stop this, there is only one word that can be said: ‘vote.’ This brings no short-term comfort to those who will lose their livelihood, and to the children and families that will be affected. The same good people who have worked with shoestring budgets, low pay, and scarce resources in the name of helping those in need for decades, now will answer to an ‘out of stater’ who I would guess does not share Montana values.” (…)
“On behalf of the Board, I sincerely want to thank the staff at the Butte 4C’s for their dedication and hard work as they try and grapple with this terrible outcome. I would be remised not to mention one more comment about the good people who are dedicated to helping others- when asked how everyone was holding up with this unfortunate outcome, the answer was expected and came as no surprise to me. Everyone has pledged to continue working and do the best they can to find a way forward; of course they said that. I am once again humbled by the good people in this community.”
27) International/Canada: In a letter to the editor of the Nanaimo News Bulletin (B.C.), B. Zargarian takes on the frequently-heard faulty logic that privatization is free money.
“Apparently, by allowing private contractors to provide basic municipal services (like garbage collection, water main maintenance, snow removal, and road works) these services will no longer have costs: the letter-writer claims the city won’t be paying for wages, vehicles, gas, equipment, or anything else. Seriously: privatizing basic services never works. It drives costs up because the city still pays for the project plus a little extra on top so the owner can maintain a healthy profit margin, drives down the quality of the work down as firms bid to do worse jobs at lower prices, and destroys secure and well-paying union jobs in favour of lower-paid and more precarious work. The only people who win are the owners of contracting firms; the rest of us end up paying more for less. Government-provided services aren’t perfect but the notion that the market will do a better job is plainly a myth.”
28) International/India: Writing in The Wire, Samriddhi Sakunia offers an in-depth report on how contracted-out vs. permanently staffed positions compare. “Thousands like Narayan have left their contractual government jobs. For instance, back in 2013, the number of instructors in Uttar Pradesh was over 42,000 which has now reduced to only 25,000. The ones who stay have to do multiple jobs such as running a vegetable stall and driving a rickshaw, to meet their families’ needs. And if this was not enough, they also continue their protests at intervals reminding the system that they exist and must be heard.”
29) National/Think Tanks: The Private Equity Stakeholder Project has “released a comprehensive new report that exposes the expansive and growing involvement of private equity firms in the U.S. medical debt crisis. The report, “Private Equity’s Revenue Cycle: Creating and Collecting U.S. Medical Debt,” sheds light on how private equity’s aggressive practices in debt collection and revenue cycle management (RCM) are fueling the financial struggles of millions of Americans.”
30) California: Calmatters has an rather clear and succinct report on what California lawmakers did to regulate artificial intelligence, which has been in the news lately.
“Introduced by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, the bill addresses huge potential threats posed by AI, requiring developers of advanced AI models to test them for their ability to enable attacks on digital and physical infrastructure and help non-experts make chemical, biological, radioactive, and nuclear weapons. It also protects whistleblowers who want to report such threats from inside tech companies.
“But what if the most concerning harms from AI are commonplace rather than apocalyptic? That’s the view of people like Alex Hanna, head of research at Distributed AI Research, a nonprofit organization created by former Google ethical AI researchers based in California. Hanna said 1047 shows how California lawmakers focused too much on existential risk and not enough on preventing specific forms of discrimination. She would much rather lawmakers consider banning the use of facial recognition in criminal investigations since that application of AI has already been shown to lead to racial discrimination. She would also like to see government standards around potentially discriminatory technology adopted by contractors. ‘I think 1047 got the most noise for God knows what reason but they’re certainly not leading the world or trying to match what Europe has in this legislation,’ she said of California’s legislators.”
31) Wisconsin: How did Wisconsin score on ASCE’s new infrastructure report card? TMJ4 in Milwaukee provides a rundown. “The state scored an overall C-plus on the ASCE’s 2024 state infrastructure report card, with scores in some categories as low as a D-plus and others as high as a B. ‘The state of Wisconsin is meeting the current needs overall, but there is room for improvement across all infrastructure categories,’ said Ken Mika, director of the ASCE Wisconsin Society. According to Mika, Wisconsin was one of just three states to score a C-plus— =the highest overall score in the country this year.” Here are some more state report cards.