For the two weeks following this issue, the Privatization Report will be on summer hiatus. It will return on September 9, 2024, full, as ever, with news and analysis about the corporate takeover of education, water, and other public goods—and about the people fighting back.
HIGHLIGHTS
- PPS: A vision for better government
- Library defenders renew efforts
- New College of Florida goes off book
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: The Partnership for Public Service has put out a set of proposals that outline their vision for better government. The Washington Post reports that “While numerous organizations issue campaign wish lists to candidates, the influential Partnership has long been immersed in ways to improve federal agencies, the federal workforce and federal services to the public. Annually, it publishes the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government and sponsors the Service to America Medals (a.k.a. Sammies), honoring federal employees’ accomplishments. In addition to consulting with agencies, the Partnership’s Center for Presidential Transition helps candidates prepare for a new administration, and “Rebuilding Trust in Government” is an ongoing program.”
The five-point agenda includes:
- Developing better government leaders
- Facilitating the hiring and retention of “great public servants”
- Holding poor performers accountable
- Unleashing “the power of data and tech to achieve better public outcomes”
- Providing “efficient, customer-friendly services to the people”
2) National/Think Tanks: The excellent Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) reports that Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), the giant (over $100 billion AUM) infrastructure conglomerate, has run into more headwinds on its proposed Rio Grande Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminal. “On August 6th, the D.C. Circuit Court issued a decision to vacate the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) approval of three gas projects, including Rio Grande LNG. This decision effectively stops the gas projects from moving forward, unless a future legal appeal is successful in overturning the decision. In its ruling, the court said ‘We appreciate the significant disruption vacatur may cause the projects. But that does not outweigh the seriousness of the Commission’s [FERC’s] procedural defects.’ Among the defects found by the court was a failure to ‘account for its updated environmental justice analysis.’ (…) In a press release, Juan Mancias, tribal chairman of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas said, ‘This is a victory for our ancestors and for the land.’ Jared Hockema, city manager for the City of Port Isabel said, ‘Today’s decision is a great victory in our battle to protect public safety and preserve our environment and quality of life.’”
3) California: Will the library privatizers in Huntington Beach crawl back out of the crypt after being defeated this year? Not if the people of Huntington Beach have anything to say about it. In a letter to the editor of the Daily Pilot/Los Angeles Times, Carol Daus urges Huntington Beach residents to sign two petitions to safeguard their public library.
“Fortunately,” Daus writes, “the national out-sourcer yanked its proposal in the eleventh hour, largely due to public backlash, but that doesn’t mean it won’t return. Library Systems & Services could easily approach the city again with a sole-source bid that might win over the majority. We won’t let that happen, and that’s why a petition is circulating around town to let H.B. citizens have a voice at the ballot box on how their taxpayer money is spent to manage our public library. Four council members should not be given the power to overhaul it.”
“The other petition was created to give Huntington Beach residents a voice in determining whether a volunteer review board, consisting of political appointees without professional librarians, would have ‘final’ and ‘non-appealable’ authority over what books the library buys for youths under 18. If you haven’t signed the petitions, you can find them at tables in front of the beautiful Central Library, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. Petitions are also available at other locations around town. To date, thousands of signatures have been gathered, but more are needed. By signing the petitions, you will protect our beloved library.”
4) California: An excellent report in the Wall Street Journal details how citizen activists derailed plans by a private investor to take over their town, Sonoma, piece by piece through real estate investments, leading to the fall of a “real estate empire.”
Zusha Elinson reports that “what unfolded next has been described as an ‘unbelievable Ozark-style drama.’ A band of local residents, seizing on small details, concocted a bizarre theory: The real-estate spree was part of a covert plan to infiltrate the liberal area with Christian nationalists. Mattson’s lawyer dismissed the claim as ‘specious’ and a spokesman for the firm, LeFever Mattson, called it ‘baseless and untrue.’ That wild theory was far-fetched and totally unproven. But the local activists uncorked a flood of scrutiny into the business dealings of LeFever Mattson. Their wine-country empire is now collapsing, besieged by lawsuits from angry investors, who are alleging ‘a massive investment fraud.’”
And it’s not ending there. “At a recent meeting of Wake Up Sonoma, Storment told attendees the group was broadening to community organizing and civic engagement. She said she wouldn’t be talking much about LeFever Mattson, except to explain how her group came to be. ‘I just want to say that without saying…we were right,’ Storment said.”
5) Georgia: Atlanta’s MARTA transit agency has received a credit rating boost from Fitch on the back of solid sales tax receipts, The Bond Buyer reports. “Fitch’s upgrade ‘reflects continued improvements in MARTA’s long-term liability burden as well as implementation under Fitch’s new “U.S. Public Finance Local Government Rating Criteria,”’ Fitch said. ‘Growth in the personal income tax base and MARTA’s revenues have outpaced additional debt issuance.’ The new rating is supported by ‘strong long-term revenue growth prospects for the pledged revenues’ and the revenue stream’s ‘strong resilience to modeled revenue declines at assumed leverage levels,’ Fitch said. In fiscal 2023 the pledged revenues totaled $704 million, roughly five times the debt service” [Sub required]. Here are the Fitch public finance rating criteria.
6) Indiana: The South Bend school board is fighting back against a state education department order that it transfer a high school to a charter school for $1. “South Bend School Corporation provided a statement saying they are continuing in their intentions of using the school as a Career and Technical Education program. ‘South Bend Community School Corporation remains committed to utilizing the Clay High School property to serve the needs of our students and the broader community. While our stance has not changed, and we do not intend to re-open Clay High School as a traditional high school, the building will continue to be used for Career and Technical Education (CTE) programming, along with other educational and community-focused purposes.’”
7) Missouri: Kansas City Public Schools are moving ahead to seek voter approval for a $474 million bond issuance authorization. “The district plans to devote $424 million of the bond proceeds to facilities upgrades for KCPS schools and $50 million to participating charter schools, according to Shain Bergan, public relations coordinator for the district. It also wants to use $100 million of certificate of participation financing, which does not need to be approved by voters but does require the signoff of the KCPS board of directors, for the modernization effort.” [Sub required]
8) Texas: A courageous Brownsville school board member is standing up against Greg Abbott on vouchers. “‘The truth is that they’re just trying to privatize public education without any data, without any means of knowing that this is just a special interest person that is donating so much’ money to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in an effort to get a voucher system passed in Texas, [Daniella Lopez Valdez said] over the phone on her way back to Brownsville on Tuesday. ‘Basically they’re telling us, “you don’t get money unless you pass vouchers, unless you agree to it, unless you swallow it. This is it. You don’t get anything until you pass vouchers. …” I mean, they could have met any other day in the summer, but they chose the first day of school.’”
Lopez Valdez said in her testimony, “ESAs would only benefit a few, leaving the majority with fewer educational resources. Education is essential for our communities’ future. Weakening it undermines our entire region. I urge you to oppose ESAs and to focus on strengthening our existing public schools to ensure that every child has access to a quality and safe education.”
9) Summer Reading: Last year, when the paperback version of The Privatization of Everything, the 2021 book co-written by In the Public Interest’s executive director Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian, was released, we ran a piece about why Donald wrote the book. The recent release of The Privatization of Everything as an audiobook on Spotify(included for free for premium subscribers) gives us the opportunity to revisit that newsletter to remind our readers what our work is all about. Check it out.
10) National: From his country club in Bedminster, Donald Trump has laid out the details of his proposed assault on American public education. It includes abolishing teacher tenure; “universal” access to religious schools using taxpayer dollars; setting up of a McCarthyite board of inquisition to interrogate teachers on their “patriotic” views; getting Congress to declare that there are only two genders; mandating the direct election of principals by parents; banning the study of America’s history of racial discrimination and oppression; putting prayer back in schools; and much else.
11) National: Want to find out what the school privatization and book banners have in store for us all on the legal front? The Federalist Society is holding a one day conference on the topic at its usual haunt at the swanky Mayflower Hotel in DC on September 11 (yes, call it 911 for education). While you’re at it you might want to read this interesting recent piece from Balls & Strikes on “Why Are Law Schools Outsourcing Student Services to the Federalist Society?”
12) California: The Sonoma Valley school district is facing brutal budget cuts that were discussed at a public meeting last Thursday. “Negotiations would be required for several cuts proposed by the budget committee, including a 1% pay cut for all employees (including administrators), saving $470,000; adding two furlough days for all employees ($255,356); and freezing step and column salary increases ($480,000). ‘We always hear about the importance of attracting and retaining teachers,’ said Dennis Housman, representative for the Valley of the Moon Teachers Association. ‘Freezing steps and columns (for salary increases) isn’t going to attract and retain anybody.’ Other options requiring negotiations include capping the district’s contribution for Valley of the Moon Teachers Association employees who are part of a top-tier health insurance program offered by Kaiser HMO ($160,000); cutting library technicians’ workday from eight to six hours ($27,000); and trimming the classified student supports workday from eight to six hours ($85,000).”
13) Florida: The New College of Florida, whose faculty and administration was gutted and ideologically purged by right wing Gov. DeSantis, has sent thousands of books to the garbage dump. “”There were Bibles, there were stories of Black authors, of Latin authors, female stories, there were LGBTQ+ and queer stories, or trans stories, all thrown into a dumpster,” Zander Moricz of the Social Equity Through Education Alliance (SEE) told ABC News. “It sends the message that New College of Florida wants to send stories of gender and diversity to the dump, and it was so heartbreaking and also very frustrating.”
14) Kentucky: Kelly Read, an English teacher at Boone County High School, tells Northern Kentucky News that he will be voting NO on Kentucky’s Ballot Amendment 2 in November. “This election season the voters of Kentucky will vote on Ballot Amendment 2, which will determine if we are going to allow Kentucky taxpayers to fund voucher payments for students who attend private schools. Those who want taxpayers to vote Yes on this amendment will tell you this is about “school choice” — but make no mistake — this is a school voucher program aimed at supplementing tuition for kids who already attend private schools. As a public school teacher, I worry about how passage of Ballot Amendment 2 would affect the 90 percent of students who currently attend our public schools across the Commonwealth. The students we teach every day come from various backgrounds and have various needs. As educators, we meet those needs individually and daily. Will private schools that take public tax dollars do the same?”
15) Texas: Dallas High school teacher Stu Becker says that in Ouston, back to school means back to privatization. “Before the 2023-24 school year, Houston Independent School District (ISD) was the victim of a state takeover by Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner Mike Morath, an appointee of far-right Gov. Greg Abbott. Morath removed the democratically-elected school board of Houston ISD and imposed his own ‘board of managers.’ Morath also installed former student of late-billionaire Eli Broad’s Superintendent Academy, Mike Miles, who has been under fire for allegedly redirecting public funds to out-of-state charter schools. Morath said this takeover was to address ‘failing schools,’ but it was actually part of the right-wing agenda to advance the privatization of public schools and weaken the teachers’ unions. This same reactionary platform and strategy are being pushed by billionaires and corporate CEOs all over the country.”
16) Texas: Reform Austin says a report from the Texas Education Agency showed that, when accounting for inflation, school funding has decreased since Gov. Greg Abbott took office. This has led to an intensification of a backdoor form of public wage theft—teachers are having to reach into their own pockets to cover the cost of necessary supplies. “Every year, Texas teachers spend, on average, $1,396 of their own pockets to supply their classrooms, according to a survey from CouponBirds. The state leads the nation in spending from teachers, and with rising prices, it’s more notorious that the legislature has done nothing to help them. ‘My wife is a science teacher, and the $300 tax refund for teachers who spend their own funds on school supplies is woefully short of her actual out-of-pocket expenditures every year,’ David Kelly, from Spring wrote in a letter to the Houston Chronicle. His wife, Sherry, has expressed that it is frustrating that students sometimes miss out critical lessons because she can’t buy everything.”
17) National: Why is there still lead in America’s water? Writing in Governing, Nayyirah Shariff and Jessica Dandridge-Smith say “from central Michigan to southeastern Louisiana, we’ve known for years that lead in drinking water is a public health catastrophe. It’s past time to rebuild trust between communities and their water and establish access to clean and affordable water as a human right—no matter where one lives. It’s past time for government leaders at the local, state and federal level to make this a top priority and dedicate the resources to get it right. (…) Ensuring clean water for all Americans is a necessity — not a nice-to-have. Nine out of 10 voters agree that access to safe, affordable water is a human right. The injustice of Flint a decade ago should have been a wake-up call for generations of neglect. We cannot fall into a slumber once again while millions of Americans suffer. Now is the time to get it right.”
18) National: The federal Build America Bureau is set to announce grant awards and guidelines for two public-private partnership programs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The bureau has a $40 billion project pipeline, according to its executive director, Morteza Farajian. “In March, the bureau released the first Notice of Funding Opportunity for the Innovative Finance and Asset Concession Grant program, a first-of-its-kind program 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. The NOFO will award up to $57.7 million on a competitive basis, covering fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024.” [Sub required]
19) California/National: The “clean hydrogen” infrastructure buildout has begun, but public debate about whether it is sound policy is also growing. Last month, the state of California “became the first state to win funds from the Department of Energy’s prominent program to create a series of regional hydrogen hubs to kickstart a new national energy economy.
The California Hydrogen Hub received an initial $30 million to begin planning and design phase and will eventually receive up to $1.2 billion from the program, created under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” [Sub required]
But the blend of tax incentives and federal and state support for “clean hydrogen” infrastructure has drawn both critical scrutiny and the attention of private investors. The World Resources Institute says “hydrogen has the potential to become a transformational decarbonization solution for many parts of the U.S. economy. It can be used as clean burning fuel, an energy storage medium or a feedstock for manufacturing processes. However, hydrogen’s promise to help reduce emissions depends on whether it’s ‘clean’—which means it’s produced with zero to little emissions, reducing emissions overall instead of adding to them.”
20) California/National: With the next Olympics coming to Los Angeles in 2028, decisions will need to be made on public transportation and venue infrastructure. With Mayor Karen Bass saying LA wants to have a carless Olympics, will public transport be made ready to handle the enormous crowds and operational logistics? With no new stadiums planned, how will the existing sports infrastructure deal with the events? Writing in Route Fifty, Senior Reporter Daniel C. Vock, has a primer.
21) Georgia: Sixteen miles of what are sometimes called “Lexus Lanes” are coming to Georgia 400 (connecting metro-area Atlanta to suburbs and exurbs to its north) under a $4 billion “public-private partnership”—the most expensive project the state has ever undertaken. A private company will operate the lanes for 50 years. “Unlike the Ga. 400 express lanes, the I-20/I-285 interchange will be built traditionally, without private investment. That was originally the plan for the Ga. 400 project until an initial bid in 2021 came in that far exceeded the state’s $1.7 billion budget. State officials say that by turning over operations to Peach Partners, the express lanes can be built quicker and at a significantly lower cost to taxpayers. “It’s far more than what we would have been able to do with our own funding,” Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry told the board.” [Sub required]. Sounds as if free money is involved. It isn’t. That private financing will come from tolls, a form of taxation. Peach Partners is ACS Infrastructure, Meridiam, Acciona Concesiones, Acciona Construction, Dragados, and Parsons.
22) Mississippi: ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, in partnership with the Mississippi Free Press. has produced a banger of a story based on EPA findings on how, despite ample advance warning, the Mississippi government failed to save Jackson’s water system and plunged its communities into catastrophe. “From 2006 through 2021, Jackson’s inspection score from the Mississippi State Department of Health, which oversees water systems in the state, averaged nearly 4 out of 5. The few times MSDH identified major problems in Jackson, all but one were tied to its water plants, not the distribution system. This week, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General said the state’s failure to flag ongoing problems in Jackson’s water system, including those in the pipes, contributed to the Jackson water crisis in August 2022. Over several years, the state’s inspections ‘did not reflect the conditions of Jackson’s system,’ the inspector general’s staff wrote. As a result, they wrote, problems ‘were left unresolved until the eventual catastrophic failure of the system,’ when the city’s main water plant finally buckled. It took weeks until the city could reliably pump clean water to residents.”
23) New York: A Bitcoin-mining power facility is suing the State of New York to block its ordered shutdown. “After the company ramped up its Bitcoin mining in 2020, the 106-megawatt plant dramatically increased its energy output and its greenhouse gas emissions. It continued to supply power to the grid at times, but most of the energy generated went to powering Bitcoin mining machines. Meanwhile, the state climate law enacted in 2019 required New York State to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and by 85 percent by 2050.”
24) Ohio: As the landmark Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit moves toward its November trial date, the Ohio Capital Journal’s Jan Resseger sets out the issues and their importance not just for education but for democracy. “Today the plaintiff school districts number nearly a third of Ohio’s 610 school districts. As the Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit moves toward its scheduled trial date on November 4, 2024, we should expect that attorneys for today’s large Ohio voucher constituency of relatively advantaged families and the private schools which have benefited from the increased tax support they are receiving from the state will actively argue to protect the vouchers they have now come to expect. Their protests and their arguments should not, however, mask the fact that the core principles at the heart of this case are protected in the Ohio Constitution.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that taxpayer-funded school vouchers siphoned off more than $1.5 million per Ohio school district.
25) Texas: St. Louis Lambert International Airport is not the only publicly-owned airport that has been doing just fine, thank you, after citizens and elected leaders beat back a privatization effort, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is doing fine also. It will head to the municipal bond market this week, “with a $750 million deal boosted by a rating upgrade and an outlook revision to positive. S&P Global Ratings raised its rating to AA-minus from A-plus, citing the airport’s ‘relatively’ strong enplanements, history of financial resiliency, and stable debt service coverage. The rating outlook, positive before the upgrade, is now stable at the higher rating. ‘The upgrade is based on DFW’s improved financial performance that we expect will be sustained over the forecast period (2025-2029) as the airport funds its large, but manageable, capital plan based on the recently renegotiated airline use-and-lease agreement and projected financial results,’ S&P analyst Ken Biddison said in a statement.” [Sub required]
26) National: Investigators wanted to close an abusive ICE facility, but the Biden administration extended its contract, The Appeal reports. “At the Winn Correctional Center, operated by the private prison company LaSalle Corrections, it’s not out of the ordinary for guards to pepper-spray people. According to records and reports reviewed by The Appeal, Winn guards have used chemical agents at least 10 times since December 2019. (…) In a statement to The Appeal, ICE said it still needs beds at the Winn Correctional Center and intends to renew its deal. ‘ICE is in the final process of renewing the contract for a five-year term,’ an ICE spokesperson said. Huey Fischer García, a staff attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, told The Appeal he worries about the consequences of extending the agreement. ‘A contract extension would result in more deaths, more medical abuse, more neglect, more detained labor,’ García said. ‘It would be a continuation of both Trump and Biden-era policies that have harmed migrants.’”
Meanwhile, on Friday ICE issued another bland press release defending for-profit detention facilities and saying it “met with leaders from LaSalle Corrections this week to discuss detention operations and the agency’s commitment to providing healthy, safe and humane environments for those in custody.”
27) Alaska: How does privatization affect indigenous people? Pulitzer-funded journalist has explored the impacts of privatized fishing rights in Alaska and an important related lawsuit. “The Pulitzer Center, a non-profit journalism organization, is funding a project to investigate the privatization of fishing rights in Alaska and its impacts on coastal communities. Nat Herz, an independent reporter with the Northern Journal, is doing the investigative work. He has been traveling to communities across the state where the impacts of these policies have been playing out. Herz was in Metlakatla for Founders’ Day and sat down with KRBD’s Jack Darrell to talk about the project and how Metlakatla fits into it.” [Audio, about 11 minutes].
28) New Hampshire/National: Garry Rayno of InDepthNH.org says healthcare privatization leads to disaster. “Private enterprise and free markets may not be the answer to everything as some would have you believe. There are some things that perform better when the bottom line is not the driving reason for corporate decisions. Do you want air traffic controllers competing to see which company can attain the cheapest operation or private police forces seeing who can bring in the most revenue? Likewise, hospitals and health care in general are not something you want in the hands of private equity firms or for profit conglomerates. The largest for-profit hospital operator in the country is seeking to expand its footprint in New Hampshire with its announced purchase of Catholic Medical Center.”
29) North Carolina: Nurses at the privatized Mission Hospital in Asheville picketed its new corporate owners recently. “The nurses are also advocating for fairer compensation. Improved pay is essential not only to retain experienced nurses but also to attract new graduates. However, the hospital administration has been reluctant to budge on wage levels. ‘We’re losing everybody. Everyone goes somewhere else,’ Zenker explained, underscoring the high turnover rate and the reliance on temporary staff as a short-term solution. Zenker also shed light on the exploitation of new graduates. Many are lured by sign-on bonuses only to find themselves bound by contractual obligations that make them feel forced to stay despite the challenging working conditions. ‘They’re definitely taking advantage of people who want to just come to work and don’t expect to be exploited,’ she said.”
30) New York: The possible privatization of The Bricks, a major public housing location in Poughkeepsie, is causing concern. “Housing advocates consider public housing to be the safety net that keeps people from becoming homeless. Those living in public housing pay 30% of their income toward rent. New York’s Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program provides households with vouchers to seek housing in private developments.
The PHA sent out a request for qualifications in 2022 seeking developers to partner with the housing authority through the RAD program. The proposal could redesign and redevelop the city’s largest public housing development into a voucher-based, mixed-income housing development.” However, “while those who work with the housing authority say tenants will not lose housing in the process and they will continue to pay 30% of their income, advocates fear the change could mean a loss of rights, displacement for some tenants, more restrictions on how rent is collected and less transparency and oversight with privatization.” [Sub required]