HIGHLIGHTS
- Privatizing Everything advocate speaks at Yale
- Infrastructure spending left transit at the station
- Uninsured Americans pay the ultimate death tax
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: Another aviation expert warns against ATC privatization, the National Business Aviation Association reports. “Chris Metts, who has worked on aviation issues in the private sector and government for 35 years, says the reason for concern is simple: privatized systems are vulnerable to economic pressures that force cost-cutting at the expense of safety and efficiency. (…) ‘As we’ve watched other countries privatize, it would be important for us to just watch how those [air traffic] organizations are subject to the economy,’ he recently told Salt Lake City’s CBS station, KUTV.”
2) National: “We tried to get big tech to pay for wrecking journalism. It didn’t work out,” says Matt Pearce. “I took a buyout from the Times during one of several recent layoffs that have halved the newsroom, resigned my Guild presidency, and moved on to working on journalism legislation for a nonprofit. The good news from life after the newsroom: Right now, coalitions can be built everywhere to drive hundreds of millions of dollars in new public investment in community media. We can really win. I’m an optimist who’s excited about what’s possible with policy. But I don’t get too romantic about politics.”
3) National: The Partnership for Public Service has launched a new government reform initiative ahead of 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. Government should be effective, responsive and accountable, they say. “Addressing these issues to make government more effective and responsive to the public is even more pressing given recent haphazard and chaotic actions that have adversely affected federal agencies, government programs and the workforce. It’s time to chart a new path forward. To make government work better for the American people and ensure it meets 21st century needs, we must reimagine the operations that underpin federal agencies, programs and services.”
4) National/New Jersey: Friends of Liberty State Park, activists, and elected officials are protesting “a proposed three-acre, seven-story marina development that has already been panned by critics.” Hudson County View reports that “Community activist and historian Jerome Choice said he lives nearby and often visited as a child. “We cannot let this happen to the park! It’s massive!” he exclaimed. “DEP Commissioner LaTourette is ignoring 49 years of overwhelming opposition to privatization and commercialization,” Pesin declared. He called for Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) to have her administration review the plan, which should be frozen until she takes office next year.”
5) California: LAist’s Imperfect Paradise has a report on California’s new public preschool program for 4-year-olds: Exploring transitional kindergarten. “All four-year-olds in the state of California now have access to a free preschool program in their local school district. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a plan to expand the state’s transitional kindergarten, or TK, program in May 2021, as part of a broader move to create the largest free early education program in the U.S. So what does transitional kindergarten offer kids and what are the challenges in its implementation? In this episode of Imperfect Paradise, we break it down with the LAist education team: Higher Education Reporter Julia Barajas, Senior K-12 Reporter Mariana Dale and Senior Early Childhood Reporter Elly Yu.”
6) Pennsylvania/National: “Who answers the call? Volunteerism and fire departments,” Julia Frederick reports in the Daily Collegian. “My dad, brother, and sister are all responding members of Station 87 Upper Frederick Fire Company. It wasn’t until seeing their experiences that I started to think about what really goes on behind the scenes. Around 82% of the fire departments in the U.S. are all or mostly volunteer, according to a statistic quoted by the National Volunteer Fire Council. State College’s own Alpha Fire Company is all-volunteer. Though volunteer firefighters are expected to have training and respond to calls, they differ from career firefighters in that they aren’t paid.”
7) Pennsylvania: As demand surged, a struggling McKeesport food pantry got a hand from foundations. “But late last month, the program reached a breaking point. The nonprofit ran out of money to buy discount meat and vegetables for distribution — just as the number of people lining up for food at its sites was spiking. Now, Pittsburgh-area foundations are stepping in to help ease the crunch.”
8) National: The Yale Campus Republicans hosted a talk on the privatization of government services by Erik Prince, founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and brother of former education secretary and school privatization advocate Betsy DeVos. “The event, part of the organization’s speaker series, drew a small crowd of about ten. Prince was supposed to speak in person, but his work schedule prevented his in-person attendance at the event, he said. (…) Prince articulated what he called a pro-business and “America-First” philosophy that emphasized the privatization of the defense sector.” (Also see item 19.)
Yale has over the years been host to many faculty members sharply critical of public services privatization, including Susan Rose-Ackerman (a critic of corruption in government contracting), Henry B. Hansmann (The State and the Market in Higher Education), Jerry L. Mashaw (best practices in public service, what democratic accountability and administrative design), Jacquin D. Bierman (The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality), and Jacob Hacker (dangers of overdependence on private provision), Gregg Gonsalves (privatization in public health).
9) National: The Trump administration is looking at privatizing the student loan portfolio. One result could be that avenues of debt cancellation could close
10) California: A heated, standing room only Sonoma Valley Unified school board meeting discussed a proposed charter school last week. Watch the meeting. [Video, about 3 hours and 42 minutes].
11) North Carolina: The News & Observer reports on how the abrupt closure of a charter school may lead to changes in state rules. “N.C. Charter Schools Review Board members said Wednesday they want to avoid a repeat of what happened with Triad International Studies Academy, which closed in Guilford County in October after less than two months of operation. The Review Board and the state Office of Charter Schools said new steps may be needed, such as ordering new charter schools to delay opening by a year if they’re not considered to be ready.”
12) Pennsylvania: Chalkbeat Philadelphia reports that “a member of the Philadelphia City Council and leaders of West Oak Lane Charter School have quietly discussed a plan for the charter school to acquire the vacant Ada H. H. Lewis Middle School building. (…) But any sale of the Lewis building to a charter school would need the school district’s approval — as Bass acknowledged — and a school board vote. There’s no sign that board members would approve any such sale.”
13) National/Think Tanks: Gabe Samuels, a researcher at the Urban Institute, has written a comprehensive report on Federal Infrastructure Spending on Transportation, Four Years after the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. “Four years later, has IIJA expanded investment in the nation’s transportation systems? We find that the law has been associated with an overall increase in ground transportation capital investment compared with previous years, but that increase is concentrated among highway projects. Meanwhile, overall public transit capital spending has flatlined, and rail projects have experienced a net decline in spending. Additionally, we find evidence that high construction cost inflation has reduced the effects of the IIJA’s investments because the ability to build projects has been limited by faster-than-inflation increases in labor and materials costs.”
14) Alaska: Alaska Public Media reports that “three tribal governments and several environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday to try to block a land trade that would allow a road to be built through a national wildlife refuge in southwestern Alaska. The land swap, approved by the U.S. Department of the Interior last month, would open up a section of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Supporters argue that the road is needed to connect the community of King Cove, home to about 750 people, with a legacy military airstrip that can accommodate jets. That would give King Cove’s residents access to safer medical evacuations if needed. Opponents say the proposed road—to run 18.9 miles in total, most of that within what is currently refuge land—would damage world-class bird habitat that is in the heart of the refuge.”
15) Indiana: City council members of all political stripes have rallied together after a utility company proposed a $193 million electricity rate hike. “You can’t squeeze blood from a stone,” Jesse Brown said in his comments to IURC, “which must approve or deny the rate hike early next year, the Indy Star reported. ‘Without drastic changes like the ones I propose, we will see hardworking Hoosiers become homeless, just for the profit of a monopoly utility company.’”
16) Rhode Island: Patrick Anderson, a reporter for the Providence Journal, reports that “In nearly 5 hours of under-oath questioning, RIDOT’s Alviti places all Washington Bridge blame on contractors; State has no capacity to evaluate inspection reports, identify problem areas or make plans. ‘It’s contractors all the way down.’” Here’s a summary of the hearings.
17) West Virginia: The Parkersburg News and Sentinel reports that the West Virginia Public Service Commission “has again made it clear that electric and telephone utility companies cannot place the responsibility of replacing aging poles on internet service providers trying to install broadband equipment. In an order released [in late October], the PSC clarified a previous order issued in August, stating that poles that are ‘red-tagged,’ poles that require replacement due to age, condition and safety issues, must be replaced by the owner of the pole.”
18) International/Canada: Privatizing drinking water could lead to big bills, bad service and dirty water, says Environmental Defence. “Water privatization is a bad idea with messy consequences. Municipalities, including Hamilton, Ontario, have tried privatization before, with disastrous environmental and financial outcomes. The province should learn from history’s mistakes and ensure this never happens again. Instead, it’s fast tracking Ontarians toward another disastrous conclusion.”
19) National: In the Public Interest Executive Director Donald Cohen warns about the privatization of ICE, “a private army with a prison apparatus.” Cohen says, “The use of teams of private bounty hunters to do the mass deportations work of ICE and the expansion of privately operated detention centers for detainees amounts to a private corporate army with its own camps waging an undeclared war against individuals living in the United States. Never has the danger of privatization been so serious, and so stark.”
The Intercept says “ICE is currently considering awarding contracts to companies interested in providing ‘skip tracing’ services that would deploy privatize investigators to track down immigrants residing inside the U.S. The plan, first reported by The Intercept, states that these bounty hunters will be tasked with conducting surveillance and ultimately pinpointing the home address of ‘aliens,’ defined by the Department of Homeland Security as ‘a person who is not a citizen or national of the United States.’ They could earn bonus payments based on how many immigrants they help the government in apprehending, and how quickly.”
20) National: In a powerful in-depth piece, the Los Angeles Times reports on immigrant detainees’ allegations of sexual assault by a GEO Group guard who got promoted. “The broader issue isn’t one person, “but rather a system of impunity and abuse,” said Lee Ann Felder-Heim, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus. “The reports make it clear that other staff were aware of what was going on and actually were assisting in making it happen.” In addition to detailing E’s own experiences, the complaint also details abuse and harassment of five other detainees. One detainee is transgender, a fact that would play a role in how federal officials investigated the complaint.”
21) National: Jobs to Move America recommends a new report by Susan Helper, Suresh Naidu, Adam Reich, and Aaron Sojourner on The Impact of Incarcerated Labor in Hyundai’s U.S. Supply Chain. “This pioneering study from Columbia Labor Lab provides a rigorous, large-scale statistical analysis of the economic impact of prison labor in driving wage suppression in Hyundai/Kia’s supply chain. Drawing on an original survey of more than 600 workers, combined with an analysis of government data and extensive public records collected through a two-year collaboration with Jobs to Move America (JMA), it also documents the greater exposure those workers have to occupational hazards and bad employment practices, such as wage theft. ‘When companies use incarcerated workers who can’t easily leave dangerous or low-paying jobs, they can lower wages for the entire workforce,’ said Prof. Suresh Naidu, Jack Wang and Echo Ren Professor of Economics at Columbia University and co-author of the report. ‘The world’s biggest auto companies, building the cars of the future in the U.S., can, and should, provide good, safe jobs that benefit everyone.’”
22) National: Guess who skated through the government shutdown without taking an economic hit? CoreCivic. “‘You’ve got the government shutdown, and I think there’s an assumption that all that activity is shut down. That’s not the case,’ said one of the heads of CoreCivic in the report on November 5. From July to September of this year, CoreCivic announced it made around $215 million in revenue, which is much more than the same time previous where they said they made around $140 million. At the center of it all is the Diamondback facility, where there are nearly 2,200 beds that will more than likely house detained immigrants. That’s roughly the same population size as Watonga itself.”
23) Colorado: Gov. Jared Polis is trying to privatize Pinnacol, the state worker compensation entity. “From our perspective, those are important questions when moving any kind of privatization plan forward.”” But “Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association [which is funded by the property and casualty insurance companies—ed.], said lawmakers must ensure Pinnacol operates on a level playing field with other carriers if privatization proceeds. Pinnacol is currently exempt from paying premium taxes. ‘If they are truly privatizing and become a for-profit entity, what does that look like for paying premium taxes and contributing to the guaranteed fund?’ Walker said. ‘From our perspective, those are important questions when moving any kind of privatization plan forward.’” Previous efforts to privatize Pinnacol have failed.
24) International/Think Tanks: New research shows that “privatization of surgeries in England worsened inequalities and lengthened wait-times. (…) Contrast extensive privatization with Scotland, which continued to invest in public health care and was able to increase surgical rates without using the private sector while offering egalitarian access. The Ontario Health Coalition and CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospitals Unions (OCHU-CUPE) say this research offers important lessons for Ontario, where the current government has been expanding privatization of cataract, hips, and knee surgeries through private, for-profit clinics.”
25) National/Think Tanks: As America is poised to possibly end subsidies to the Affordable Care Act and see millions lose their healthcare, existing research shows that “Americans without health insurance are 40 percent more likely to die than those with private insurance. As many as 44,789 Americans of working age die each year because they lack health insurance, more than the number who die annually from kidney disease.” The study appeared in an online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
26) Minnesota: Writing in Minnesota Reformer, Cole Hanson says, “If tenants are to be protected, cities need to pay for enforcement of the rules.” Tenant protections fail without three components: Proactive enforcement; Adequate resources; Clear authority. “Without these, tenant protections exhaust tenants while leaving officials navigating claims without support.”
27) International/National: In an article on prison privatization in the Indian journal Millenium Post, Dipankar Dey provides some interesting statistics: “Governments worldwide spend hundreds of billions annually to keep more than 11.5 million people behind bars — mostly men. The exact global cost is unclear, but in the United States alone—the world’s biggest jailer—the prison budget is USD 80.7 billion per year, versus Brazil at around USD 4 billion. India, with the world’s fourth-largest prison population, spends nearly USD 1 billion, reports DW. According to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in 2022, imprisoned workers in the US produced at least USD 11 billion in goods and services annually but received just pennies an hour in wages for their prison jobs. Nearly two-thirds of all prisoners in the US have jobs in state and federal prisons. That figure amounts to roughly 8,00,000 people. The prison economy survives on forced prison labor.”