HIGHLIGHTS
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: Privatization is not only about profit, it’s about control, says In the Public Interest’s Executive Director Donald Cohen. “The fact that the possibility of stranded space station residents was in the news shows that [Elon Musk] has control he shouldn’t have–that no private citizen should have–over whether and when they come back. He’s got the contract, but more importantly he’s got the spaceship–and we, the people, don’t. It’s bad enough that so many federal workers–from the National Park Service to the National Institutes of Health were at the mercy of Musk and his minions. If you were an astronaut, would you want your fate to be in the (sometimes suspiciously-saluting) hands of Elon Musk? It also raises a critical question, which I brought up in an interview I did last week with CNN International: Did the US consider the importance of redundancy when contracting for something we can’t afford to lose? In other words, is there a Plan B if the contractor fails?”
The good news is that a privatization decision can be carefully considered before a contract is signed. But even then all is not lost. as ITPI has argued for years, “as governments continue to experience problems with privatization, insourcing has served as a way to regain control and provide quality services and assets, while making better use of public funds.” There will be a lot to do in coming years as we reclaim our democracy.
2) National: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has cancelled a massive $7.2 billion privatization contract for military family moves with HomeSafe Alliance (HSA). Military.com reports that “the contract was troubled from the start, beginning with a series of bid protests that delayed its implementation and followed by complaints from moving companies that the rates they were to receive were too low to turn a profit and new contract rules appeared to require drivers to become company employees—a restriction that would transform an industry that relies on owner-operators of trucks or loading teams who work for several companies. Military families also said they were financially unable to simply do their own moves as they had in the past because reimbursement rates for personally procured moves were too low.”
But the problems with military housing don’t only have to do with moving. ABC News reported on multiple claims that the housing itself is often scandalous. “The Talaricos and nearly 200 current and former tenants in the Florida Keys are now suing Balfour Beatty, one of the largest privatized military housing providers in the United States. The lawsuit alleges Balfour Beatty ‘systematically failed to properly repair and remediate significant problems in the homes, including water damage, mold, structural defects, HVAC, plumbing issues, electrical problems and the presence of lead paint and asbestos.’ ‘We are aware of the lawsuit and intend to defend ourselves vigorously,’ Balfour Beatty Communities said in a statement to ABC News.”
3) National: If you haven’t read it yet, check out In These Times’ series on 2025 Labor Organizers of the Year. See the articles on academic workers, Starbucks workers and “The Indispensability of the Labor Organizer
Why the work of the 2025 Labor Organizers of the Year is so critical,” by Nelson Lichtenstein. Labor organizers, building on strong community links, have played key roles in battles against privatization across the country, for example in the battle against school closures in Chicago (CTU) and to resist public sector outsourcing in California (SEIU).
4) National: As much of the country roasts this week under extreme temperatures, it is worth revisiting Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian’s article in In These Times, “How Privatization Fuels Catastrophic Climate Change.” They write, “When it comes to the threat of climate change, public control over policy making is critical. Private forces guided by profit-motive, like fossil fuel companies, may seek to enrich shareholders at the risk of causing catastrophic environmental impacts. As such, privatization deals in the realm of climate hand over decision-making from the public, which stands to face the consequences of these impacts, to the profiteers who benefit from them. That’s an untenable situation if we hope to build an environmentally sustainable future where everyone is afforded the right to a healthy planet.”
5) New York: The editorial board of Newsday says don’t weaken storm forecasts. NOAA and FEMA cuts will make hurricane predictions and recovery more difficult. “Privatizing some functions of NOAA and FEMA could save money, but it’s unknown whether privatization would lead to better service. Artificial intelligence using NOAA’s data to predict weather is on the horizon. That may or may not lead to more accurate forecasts. AI still requires human scientists and experts and, of course, data.”
6) New York: Bloomberg Law reports that New York State is “leading the charge” to fill the void left by NLRB’s lack of a quorum. “New York lawmakers this week backed an increasingly popular argument that the federal National Labor Relations Board’s exclusive jurisdiction over labor matters doesn’t apply after President Donald Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox and stripped the board of the quorum it needs to fully function. The NLRB’s power stems from the US Supreme Court’s 1959 decision in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, which held that the National Labor Relations Act preempts state or local labor regulation.” Other states have similar laws.
7) International/Canada: The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) has awarded Life Memberships to Larry Brown and Stephanie Smith. Brown’s “commitment to social justice extended far beyond labour rights. Deeply moved by global protests against systemic racism following George Floyd’s murder, Larry advocated for a stronger stance against racism within NUPGE.” Smith’s “leadership in developing influential reports like Choose Children and Closing the Circle, alongside active participation in the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, underscored her dedication to social justice and equity.”
8) Think Tanks: As we commemorate Juneteenth, it is worth reading EPI’s Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation series of reports, such as How Anti-Worker Policies, Crony Capitalism, and Privatization Keep the South Locked Out of Shared Prosperity. “According to a 2025 report, private equity firms now own about 10% of all apartment units in the U.S., and more than half of private equity-owned units are located in five states, four of which are in the South.” In present day Galveston, the home of Juneteenth, 23% of single family homes were purchased by institutional investors.
9) National: The U.S. Department of Education has reinstated some critical research and data activities cut by DOGE. “More than half of the reversals will restart 10 regional education laboratories that the Trump administration had said were engaged in ‘wasteful and ideologically driven spending,’ but had been very popular with state education leaders. The reinstatements also include an international assessment, a study of how to help struggling readers, and Datalab, a web-based data analysis tool for the public.”
10) National: “Private school choice is the wrong choice for kids with disabilities, like mine,” says Jennifer Coco
interim executive director at the Center for Learner Equity. “Private school choice is intended to empower parents to find the education that best meets their children’s unique needs and different learning styles. Yet, a school of choice was telling me that it was choosing not to serve my son.”
11) National/Think Tanks: Does Artificial Intelligence improve productivity? Alex Vacca says “MIT just completed the first brain scan study of ChatGPT users & the results are terrifying. Turns out, AI isn’t making us more productive. It’s making us cognitively bankrupt. Here’s what 4 months of data revealed: (hint: we’ve been measuring productivity all wrong).” How so? “83.3% of ChatGPT users couldn’t quote from essays they wrote minutes earlier. Let that sink in. You write something, hit save, and your brain has already forgotten it because ChatGPT did the thinking.”
Meanwhile, over the past year, state-level [LC1] public services publications like Route 50 have been virtually overrun with stories about the wonders of AI efficiency for government services.
12) Arkansas: Arkansas has put $277 million toward school vouchers for next year, the Arkansas Times reports, but it’s still not enough. “Readers of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette might be surprised to hear the voucher funding well is about to run dry, considering the newspaper ran a story this week headlined “Lawmakers approve $90 million request from reserve fund for Education Freedom Account program.” That’s technically accurate, but it gives the impression that the Legislature has directed new money to the program. In fact, the $90 million in question was set aside for vouchers in a restricted reserve fund several months earlier, during this spring’s legislative session.”
13) Ohio/Think Tanks: Policy Matters Ohio has produced an explainer on the Fair School Funding Plan in Ohio. “The Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP) is a bipartisan approach to school funding based on how much districts must spend to educate every child, including those who need different or additional support. The FSFP works because it is based on the actual cost of educating kids, sharing that cost between the state and local communities by considering communities’ ability to cover the costs through local taxes”
14) Pennsylvania: A Philadelphia charter school has announced it will stop operating next year. “The district’s process to determine whether and how to close schools has been nearly a year in the making and includes regular community engagement sessions. District officials have stressed the process will be transparent and informed by community feedback. Like other charter schools that have recently closed, Universal Vare’s decision to stop operating the school came unexpectedly.”
15) National: The sale of public lands has become a huge issue in the Mountain West, including Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming. “While we appreciate the desire to address federal land management challenges and respond to local community needs, any public land disposal must be considered within transparent, public channels and funding from sales should be reinvested back into habitat and access,” says Rob Thornberry of the nonprofit Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
16) National/Kansas: Fox 4 Kansas City reports that the federal government has signed a deal with the private prison firm CoreCivic “to reopen a 1,033-bed prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, as part of a surge of contracts from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). CoreCivic officials said ICE’s letter contracts provide initial funding to begin reopening facilities while the company negotiates a longer-term deal. The Leavenworth deal is worth $4.2 million a month to the company, it disclosed in a court filing. The City of Leavenworth has filed two lawsuits against CoreCivic. The first was filed in March, and another lawsuit was filed in May after a judge threw out the initial lawsuit.”
17) Missouri: Public vs. private stadiums. Governor Mike Kehoe has signed legislation that would give the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals financing to support their stadium projects. “The way that we do our stadium obligations in Missouri is that they are publicly owned as compared to what you see in Kansas,” The New York Times quotes Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas as saying. “That makes a very big difference (in) tax implications long term. If you look at the economics, if you look at the plans the teams have said before, both teams will be in Kansas City, Mo., for years to come.”
18) International/Brazil: Water privatization is increasing, but privatization of large Brazilian state-owned companies is not. “‘The estimate is that private sector participation will reach 50% by the end of 2026.” The previous expectation was 30%. The private companies include Aegea, GS Inima, BRK Ambiental, Iguá Saneamento and Equatorial.
19) National: Boston University’s public health dean, Michael Stein, warns against the privatization of public services. “One hundred fifty years later in the 1980s, the popular image of the postal service was ruined by a “waste, fraud, abuse” and efficiency campaign to convince Americans that the government doesn’t work. Legislators defunded the post office and encouraged privatization. As a result, the postal service became the definition of everything wrong with the federal bureaucracy: apathetic and disgruntled workers who ignored piles of undelivered mail, and who ran the risk of “going postal,” and committing violence against their colleagues.
Over these same 150 years, public health followed nearly the same route as the postal service: a bureaucracy that was so rational and reliable we just took it for granted. ”
20) National/International. Public Services International says public services and democracy are under attack and we must prepare and fight back. “Right now we are seeing a shift from neoliberal contempt for the state towards an authoritarian weaponization of it. This is a fundamental difference in scale, purpose and danger that represents a new and existential threat to democracy, public services and unions. A shift we must understand and respond to. The attacks on public services, workers and our unions by authoritarians and billionaires around the world are unprecedented.”
21) National/Utah: In a letter to the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, Daniel Herbert-Voss of White City says, “Before we allow more of our public services to be turned over to the private sector, we need to review the lessons of history.” Herbert-Voss points to health care (HMOs and PPOs), corrections (“great concern about ethical considerations, reduced oversight, and negative impacts on inmate conditions and staff quality”) and philanthropy (“Unfortunately, our complex tax code has been targeted over the past 40 years towards the billionaires’ accumulation of wealth, and the resultant redistribution of wealth has created this structure where these benefits disproportionally favor the wealthy, resulting in loss of public revenue and greater reliance on this structure”).
22) National: The federal government is reopening discredited private prisons to fill them with migrants detained by ICE, El Paisreports. “The reopening of previously inactive centers has raised the alarm among civil rights groups, who denounce the unsanitary conditions at these facilities and the history of abuse that plagues many of them. ‘GEO Group and other private contractors are teeming over Trump’s continued expansion of ICE detention and particularly at the prospect of cashing in on their vacant prisons, like North Lake, that were recently forced to shutter,’ said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director of Detention Watch Network.”
23) National: AFSCME reports that nearly 900 elected officials oppose public service cuts to pay for billionaire tax cuts. “As government leaders, we understand the importance of rooting out fraud, waste and abuse to keep public services strong, but this plan fails to do that. Instead, it would rip the very fabric of our nation’s social safety net wide open to give the wealthiest people tax breaks they don’t need. Meanwhile, veterans, seniors, children, people with disabilities, and all working people will suffer.”
24) California: The Adelanto Detention Center, in the high desert outside Los Angeles, which is operated by the private, for profit, GEO Group, has come under intense criticism for inhumane conditions. “As federal immigration agents conduct mass raids across Southern California, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center is filling so rapidly it is reigniting longtime concerns about safety conditions inside the facility,” The Los Angeles Times reports. “In less than two months, the number of detainees in the sprawling complex about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles has surged from around 300 near the end of April to more than 1,200 as of Wednesday, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.”
25) California: State Attorney General Rob Bonta is being sued by his own staff for outsourcing a large climate case, E&ENewsreports. “The labor union that represents attorneys in Bonta’s office has filed a lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court, saying the California State Personnel Board wrongfully sided with Bonta (D) who enlisted the law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein in the state’s lawsuit against some of the world’s largest oil companies. Judge Shelleyanne Chang has scheduled a hearing in the case for June 27.” The union has questioned the practice. “‘To go hire a high-end law firm, as interesting as the litigation might be, it’s a run-of-the-mill, garden variety legal theory,’ CASE president Timothy O’Connor said in an interview. ‘Why they would need to go out to $1,600-an-hour attorneys for work that we feel is completely within the expertise of our very good and dedicated civil service attorneys is beyond me.’”
26) Maryland: The Trump/Musk “Department of Government Efficiency” is damaging Maryland’s economy, Route Fiftyreports. “The state comptroller’s office released a report this week that found that Maryland is home to the third most civilian federal government jobs, behind Washington, D.C., and Virginia, with those jobs representing 10% of all wages in the state. The biggest federal civilian employers in Maryland are the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services, which employed almost 90,000 people in FY 2023.”
27) Michigan: The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed concerns about a privately-owned immigration “processing center.” North Lake, owned by the GEO Group, is “located in the rural village of Baldwin, about 80 miles north of Grand Rapids. The ACLU’s Ewurama Appiagyei-Dankah says private security companies often open facilities in rural, low-income communities. ‘They try and come in and say that they’re going to help these communities develop and flourish and they do the opposite,’ Dankah said. ‘They don’t really hire people there and the jobs that they do provide are not strong ones. There’s high attrition rates and people who have worked in these facilities report that those conditions are really bad.”
28) New York: A state court ruling will force retired workers into privatized, for-profit Medicare Advantage plans. “According to Gothamist, “the court also ruled that the retirees did not have a legally binding promise from the city that their coverage would remain unchanged.” The Wednesday ruling overruled a state Supreme Court judge’s decision that had prevented the Adams administration from making the switch, though the Court of Appeals said there were still issues in the case that should be sent back down to the Supreme Court, a lower court in New York’s state system.”
29) Oklahoma: Oklahoma’s prison food service contract has been voided after fewer than four weeks. “A $74 million deal to outsource Oklahoma’s prison food service operations to the Trinity Services Group was voided after fewer than four weeks.
Aramark, a competing bidder, filed a protest with the Office of Management and Enterprise Services within 10 business days of the May 13 contract award date. The state purchasing director sided with Aramark and the contract was canceled on June 6, agency spokeswoman Christa Helfrey said.”
30) Pennsylvania: “Despite the ways we grouse about SEPTA, it’s actually efficient,” writes Alan Fisher. “SEPTA is an organization that was stitched together from multiple private bus, trolley, and railroad companies, and held together by 100 years of Band-Aid fixes. When our buses are often late or canceled, our subways are dirty, and the Regional Rail trains break down, it’s difficult to muster any appreciation for it. These scenarios are exactly how the average person could come to the conclusion that SEPTA is “wasteful” or “inefficient” with our money but, counterintuitively, this is not the case. SEPTA is the reason Philadelphia is on every Top 10 list of transit cities in North America.” Fisher is a transit, urban planning, and railroad advocate living in Philadelphia. He is the host of “The Armchair Urbanist,” which covers the complex layers of transportation and urban history.
31) Texas/National: Ready for more measles? City Cast Austin reports that federal grant cuts “will limit the number of people it can vaccinate through its clinics amid Texas’ ongoing measles outbreak. The department’s Immunization Unit lost funding late last month after the U.S. Health and Human Services Department ended COVID-19 grants. A total of 27 Austin Public Health positions were removed as a result of the federal cuts, making it harder for the department to staff its clinics and administer vaccines.” See also City Cast Austin’s “The Issues We’re Eyeing Now That the 2025 Texas Legislative Session Is Over.”
32) International/Australia: The crisis-ridden Northern Beaches Hospital is going to have its private contract terminated, but the private “partner” in the “public-private partnership” is in line for a big payout. “Any compensation paid for a hospital’s early return to public hands will likely only acknowledge the collapsed private operator’s investment rather than rewarding its failures.” Healthscope, the private partner, says, “Given the government’s policy position against further public-private partnerships in the health sector, we believe this is in the best interest of the Northern Beaches Hospital staff, patients and wider community.” No prizes for writing an essay on the perverse incentive structures of P3s.
33) International/Britain: “A senior union leader has urged the Government to do more to show it values public services and the workers who deliver them,” says Alan Jones, PA Media’s industrial correspondent. “Christina McAnea, general secretary of Unison, told her union’s annual conference in Liverpool that if the Government could change its mind on so many issues, it could change it on taxation. ‘Tax wealth and profits, and raise the money needed to fix our country. That’s the message I’ll continue to take to Government,’ she told delegates.”