HIGHLIGHTS
- The Mercury covers the Water Wars
- Under(mining) the Weather (Service)
- Putting transportation policy on track(s)
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National/Pennsylvania: The Pottstown Mercury has given extensive coverage to In the Public Interest’s new report, Water Wars in Pennsylvania: How Corporations Play the Long Game. “The report reviews the history of public water in the Keystone State and how many of those systems, with the help of a compliant state legislature, have been steadily bought up by for-profit companies,” says reporter Evan Brandt. “The primary result of all the public water and sewer system purchases in the past few decades, according to the report, is ‘an increasing number of Pennsylvania’s residents pay private companies for their water, and the rates are the costliest in the country; private water in Pennsylvania is 84 percent more expensive than public water,’ the authors wrote, citing a 2016 survey by Food & Water Watch of 500 water suppliers nationwide.”
“The key thing to remember about private water companies is they are a business and no one goes into business to lose money, says Donald Cohen, the co-author of the book, The Privatization of Everything and the executive director of In the Public Interest, which issued the Water Wars report. (…) ‘In the case of Aqua and this latest (rate) request, what’s legitimate to ask is how much of this profit is leaving the system, to go to exorbitant salaries or to pay shareholder dividends, when it could be kept in the system to maintain it, or in ratepayers pockets in terms of lower rates?’ Cohen said. ‘In other words, PUC commissioners should be asking, ‘Why should we be increasing your profit share?’”
Who benefits from these profits? Well, to take one example, the American States Water Company, a private, for-profit company operating mostly in California and on military bases, just announced an 8.3%increase in its quarterly dividend.
2) National: Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative, joined the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast to discuss the victory by prisoner families and prisoner rights advocates as the FCC capped prison phone call rates. “This advocacy organization worked on for the last several years, a policy for phone justice, prisoner phone justice, that was adopted by the Federal Communications Commission. They slashed the rates for phone calls in a manner that will benefit people in jails and prisons throughout the United States. That’s an important victory. And it’s one that is a movement victory,” says host Kevin Gosztola. And they also heard from Bianca Tylek, the executive director of Worth Rises, which said, “the new rules will more than halve the per-minute rate caps for all prison and jail calls nationwide. They’ll also regulate video call rates for the first time ever and ban sneaky fees. All told, it’s estimated to save families $500 million per year. Even better, the FCC is forcing prisons to foot the bill for all that invasive surveillance tech they’ve been using to spy on inmates.” [Audio, about 40 minutes]
In an email, Worth Rises says there’s more to come. “As part of our #EndTheException campaign to abolish prison slavery, Worth Rises has corresponded with hundreds of incarcerated workers across the country. Their letters offer the truth about the indignities of prison labor. This Labor Day, we will be releasing these letters in a digital archive for you to read.”
3) National: In the Public Interest Executive Director Donald Cohen, writing in Common Dreams, says Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a Trump administration—will metamorphose into “Project 2029, Project 2033, and so on. It’s boilerplate conservative thought, boiled down, in a nod to the efficiency they so love, to a mere 880 pages. As the saying goes, when 110 conservative organizations tell you who they are, believe them.”
“And that demolition project includes decimating and privatizing or commercializing one of the nation’s most trusted and beneficial offices, the National Weather Service (NWS), which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They’re the people who give us, among other things, severe weather warnings. That would mean that whatever data comes from the NWS to the public must come via some sort of commercial service—despite taxpayers already paying for the data—such as AccuWeather. That company’s lobbyists and campaign donations have already prevailed in keeping NWS weather warnings off of social media so that the public had to rely on warnings from private, paid-for services instead of direct contact with the NWS.” And they also want any mention of climate change kept out of NWS’ material.
AccuWeather is actually name-checked in the document, on page 675. Here is Heritage’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive board.
4) National/Florida: Regular readers of the Privatization Report will be familiar with our running coverage of the major scandal over a corrupt deal to privatize Jacksonville’s main public utility, JEA. Well the wheels of justice, having ground slowly and finely, have come up with a result: the head of the utility has been sentenced to four years in federal prison. “As a taxpayer, you are entitled to decisions based on the public’s best interest, and we take very seriously our responsibility to investigate and aggressively pursue individuals who attempt to defraud publicly funded institutions in a selfish effort to line their own pockets,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Kristin Rehler said in a statement.
The FBI reports the particulars: “Trial evidence showed that the 100,000 PUP units were designed to increase in value from $10 to upwards of $11,500, for a potential bonus pool of $315,000,000, which would have been funded from the sale or privatization of JEA. Zahn expected to personally benefit from the PUP if JEA was sold in the amount of approximately $40 million, and Zahn expected other high level JEA executives to make approximately $10 million. The PUP was a made-up stock tethered to a public entity (JEA) that had no concept of equity. The formula was engineered to lead to the certainty of large payouts of money if JEA was sold pursuant to minimum requirements for recapitalization that Zahn created.”
5) National: The public sector is finally filling more jobs, according to a new report by the MissionSquare Research Institute. “HR managers reported that they are filling vacancies in several key government occupations, such as information technology, emergency dispatch and policing. The share of governments reporting difficulty in hiring across these 11 essential occupations decreased by at least 10 percentage points since 2022. Managers reported the largest improvements in filling jobs in government IT, transportation and transit, and building permitting and inspections. The report also found that managers saw marked progress in human and social services, nursing, and firefighting and emergency medical services. The findings are based on a survey conducted in early 2024 among 300 state and local government HR managers.”
6) Maryland: The University System of Maryland and AFSCME have signed a 3-year contract covering multiple campuses and benefit 5,700 workers at nine campuses. “It is the first consolidated contract of its kind between the system and the union, and presidents of various AFSCME locals said it ‘levels the playing field’ for workers at different campuses. ‘I feel ecstatic, so proud of our members and so proud of what they accomplished, and that they stuck with it. And they worked hard. They had a goal. And we accomplished that goal today,’ said Patrick Moran, the president of AFSCME Council 3, the Maryland chapter of the union.”
7) Hold the Date: The State Innovation Exchange will be holding its national conference in Atlanta from December 11-13, 2024.
8) National/Oklahoma: Oklahoma schools are in an uproar over the state’s efforts to mandate bible-study in the public schools, The Hill reports. ““To date, schools have been advised by legal counsel (School Board Association and State Attorney General) to not follow the guidance because it goes against current Oklahoma State Law,” said Lee Northcutt, superintendent of Caddo Public Schools, in an email. The day the guidance was released, a lawsuit was filed against Walters by Joseph Price, a resident of Mayes County. Price says in the suit he is “a concerned citizen and parent of children attending public schools in Oklahoma,” adding that the order violates the separation of church and state.”
In another church-state separation case, “a new state board continued where its predecessor left off Tuesday and refused to comply with an Oklahoma Supreme Court order to rescind the contract of what would have been the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school, but the decision doesn’t mean taxpayers will be funding a Catholic education anytime soon. (…) St. Isidore supporters—including Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt—have vowed to ‘continue to fight’ and said they plan to request a review from the U.S. Supreme Court.”
But “public schools are not Sunday schools,” says Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State “‘I’m just going to cut to the chase on that. Norman Public Schools is not going to have Bibles in our classrooms, and we are not going to require our teachers to teach from the Bible,’ Norman Public Schools Superintendent Nick Migliorino said. “We’re going to do right by our students and right by our teachers, and we’re not going to have Bibles in our classrooms.’”
9) National: The Wall Street Journal reports that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s support for school vouchers is impacting Kamala Harris’ choice of a running mate. Shapiro will be campaigning with Harris today in Pennsylvania, a key swing state, and there is speculation she might announce that he’s her choice for Veep. “Last week, more than two dozen small pro-public education groups sent a letter to Harris urging her not to choose Shapiro as a running mate. ‘He is far too supportive of school privatization to be the vice president,’ said Beth Lewis, a public school activist in Arizona, who helped organize the letter. ‘We don’t need to be soft on this issue because public education is the cornerstone of our democracy.’ Meanwhile, national teachers unions have avoided publicly criticizing Shapiro as Harris weighs whether to tap him as her No. 2. A senior labor leader, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that if Shapiro is selected, he would be expected to toe the Democratic Party platform on vouchers. A draft of the 2024 party platform viewed by the Journal explicitly opposes private-school vouchers.” [Sub required
Meanwhile Abe Asher, writing for Jacobin, says Shapiro’s support for the voucher proposal “predictably outragedteachers’ unions, and Shapiro ultimately vetoed the program after House Democrats refused to approve a budget that included any funding for vouchers. Some Democrats in Pennsylvania saw the time and energy spent on the voucher proposal as a tremendous waste, given what might have been possible in the aftermath of Shapiro’s post-I-95 popularity. Others were simply perplexed at what might have driven him to support a voucher proposal in the first place. According to reporting from Spotlight PA, Shapiro’s embrace of school vouchers was relatively newfound last year.”
10) National: A new report from the AFT “shines a spotlight on the troubling labor practices of 10 private equity funds that rake in billions in workers’ pension savings, while simultaneously angling to drive down labor standards at the companies in which they invest,” the AFT said in a press release. Managing Labor Risks in Private Equity: Empowering Pension Trustees to Navigate Workforce Risks and Drive Long-Term Value, launched at the AFT’s national convention in Houston [on July 23], will act as an investment guide for AFT trustees who must navigate increasingly troubled financial waters. It exposes the dubious labor practices of 10 private equity firms that make up the rapidly expanding $14.7 trillion industry that employs more than 12 million people. The report argues these practices generate unacceptable fiduciary risk for the workers whose retirement savings comprise a significant proportion of the private equity funds’ financial base.”
The report says (p. 24), “following the AFT’s review of both the material on private equity labor practices included in this report and existing labor standards, we have formulated a Labor Standards Platform as a model for consideration by AFT member benefit funds, their fiduciaries, staff and advisers. Our platform is designed to address recurring issues in private equity, such as violations of freedom of association and mass layoffs, and in particular issues like privatization and worker access to healthcare and education that are of particular concern to AFT member beneficiaries. This platform is offered as a template and an aid for funds. Fund fiduciaries, staff and advisers should independently assess its relevance to their individual fund needs.”
11) Florida: Keep your eye on this one. A 22 year-old teacher and candidate for Florida’s state senate (Tampa), Ben Braver, wants to do away with school privatization, raise teacher pay, and end book bans. “‘$3 billion will be taken out of the public education system, the money that these kids need to build their futures and was just given to people who can already afford a private education,’ Braver said. ‘We should not be subjugating our kids to the blight that is selling their future to the lowest bidder, that is terrible,’ he explained. (…) Florida’s Voice asked Braver if he would support further legislation to crack down on sexually explicit content. ‘God no!’ Braver said. ‘We’re supposed to be for freedom, we’re supposed to be for freedom of expression, it is ridiculous that people who say that they want to make sure that you are allowed to do what you want to do—are the ones tamping down to the people’s freedoms at every single turn,’ Braver said. Braver believes if parents are concerned that their child is ‘getting too much’ explicit content, ‘they should have a conversation with them.’”
12) Oklahoma: Here comes the Sooner Hall Monitor/Gauleiter. Ron Filipkowski reports “OK Schools Chief Ryan Walters announces that he is using Libs of TikTok to hunt down school employees who joked about Trump’s ear getting nicked so they can be fired.”
13) Virginia: Writing for Counterpunch Plus, historian Timothy F. Messer-Kruse reports on Idiocracy in Virginia: Proof That Banning ‘Divisive Concepts’ Lobotomizes Education. “Since the first laws and executive orders banning ‘divisive concepts’, such as the idea that racism can be systemic, were implemented in 2021, critics charged that they would censor the past and force teachers to avoid uncomfortable but vital issues of history. Many accused the GOP of attempting to impose a sanitized version of America’s development that was supportive of its own political agenda. Now that the advocacy group American Oversight and the Washington Post published the first detailed internal state review of an actual African American Studies course, we can see that the damage these ‘divisive concept’ laws cause is far deeper than merely distorting our understanding of history. These mandates render the study of history or society impossible.” [Sub required]
14) National: Trump and Harris offer starkly different paths on transportation policy, Route Fifty reports. “With Biden bowing out of the race, his successor will have a chance to cement his legacy by overseeing the completion of many high-profile projects or to undermine it by veering in a different direction. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is expected to win the Democratic nomination, have offered starkly different visions for transportation policy over the years. Whoever wins this fall could decide how or whether to expand passenger rail between cities, increase or decrease the amount of greenhouse gases the federal government allows cars and trucks to spew, and oversee a new highway construction scheme once the 2021 infrastructure law largely expires. ‘I know this hasn’t been an issue in the campaign so far for maybe the eight days or whatever it’s been’ since Biden announced he wouldn’t seek reelection, said Greg Regan, the president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, ‘but it should be.’”
15) National/New York/New Jersey: The Gateway Development Commission has approved two new projects to ensure the completion of the Hudson Tunnel. “Following the receipt of $12 billion from the Biden administration in July of this year, the Gateway Development Commission is seeking to execute an additional $3.8 billion Federal State Partnership grant agreement from the Federal Railroad Administration. The additional funds will provide the GDC with a cushion with which to facilitate advance payments, as well as the construction of the newest phases of the Hudson Tunnel Project: the Palisades Tunnel and the Hudson River Ground Stabilization project. (…) Approved by GDC’s board on Thursday, the Palisades Tunnel contract marks the beginning of the tunnel boring activity on the Hudson Tunnel Project. According to Kolluri, it is the HTP’s largest and most complex contract to date. (…) The Palisades Tunnel project consists of twin 5,100 feet long tunnels with an inside diameter of 25 feet 2 inches and six cross passages. The GDC plans to excavate the tunnels with tunnel boring machines, with construction beginning at the Tonnelle Avenue construction site and progressing eastward into the Hudson County shaft.” [Sub required]
16) National: Things may be looking up for an extension of broadband access as the money runs out. “After months of negotiation, a new proposal to extend funding surfaced Wednesday. The Senate Commerce Committee voted to add $7 billion in funding for the program to the PLAN for Broadband Act, which would require a national broadband strategy to close the digital divide. The amendment would again temporarily fund the program until the money runs out, so lawmakers would then have to find a long-term funding solution or let it expire again.”
17) National: Public transport is our bulwark against climate change, says LeeAnn Hall, the executive director of Alliance for a Just Society and director of the National Campaign for Transit Justice. “The dirty secret is that the transportation sector is the largest source of U.S. climate pollution — and 80 percent of transportation emissions come from the cars and trucks on our roads. It’s one of the only major sectors where emissions are still rising. Because of this, investing in public transit is one of the most sensible and impactful things we can do to address the climate crisis on the scale that’s needed.”
18) National: Trump 2.0 would be a catastrophe for the world’s climate, says Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute. “in a second Trump term the changes won’t just be related to policy. Trump’s loyalists will aim for wholesale institutional destruction of environmental regulatory capacity, not just suspending Biden-era funding for green infrastructure. In other words, the goal won’t be to just change a policy here or there, but to fundamentally cripple the ability of environmental regulatory agencies to perform their designated functions to such an extent that if a later administration wished to impose stricter standards, officials would find it impossible to do so. The recent ruling by the Supreme Court overturning Chevron U.S.A. vs. Natural Resources Defense Council, which invalidated judicial deference to agency regulatory decisions, will only make this easier.”
19) Kansas/Missouri: Should public bodies get into a destructive bidding war to attract supposedly income-generating multibillion dollar “public-private partnerships” in a race to see who can divert more tax revenue and cut more services to win the deal? Missouri and Kansas are locked in a contest over which model should prevail as Kansas aims to lure the Chiefs or Royals a few miles over to its side. “It could be one of the most expensive stadium deals yet, according to Victor Matheson, a researcher who studies stadium subsidies. ‘This is wildly destructive,’ he said. ‘This is in some ways significantly worse than intercity competition, because you’re just spending billions of dollars to just move economic activity from one point in the metro area to another.’ Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, watched closely in June as lawmakers in Topeka, Kansas, approved an expansion of an often-criticized tax incentive program with the aim of subsidizing a new stadium for one or both teams.”
20) New York: The Glens Falls Post-Star reports that “hundreds of locally owned bridges in New York are considered to be in poor condition including some in Warren and Washington counties.” A 260-page report from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released last week “found that one in 10 bridges owned by counties and municipalities in New York state is rated in poor condition as of 2023. This number is better than in 2017. The estimated cost for the work needed on local bridges in the state was about $29 billion as of 2023, according to information from the U.S Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. ‘Ensuring safe and reliable public infrastructure is an ongoing concern for local governments across the country,’ DiNapoli said in a statement. ‘Despite increased funding from the federal and state governments, there is a great deal more work that needs to be done in New York. Local governments need this funding to continue so sorely needed repairs and maintenance are completed.’”
21) International/United Kingdom/Canada: Think investing public pension assets in privatized utilities and infrastructure is a good bet? “One of the UK’s biggest pension funds has warned that dramatic losses on its investment in Thames Water will shape its approach to other regulated utilities, in a blow to the new Labour government’s drive to attract more institutional investment into British infrastructure. The Universities Superannuation Scheme, which manages pensions for more than 500,000 current and retired university staff, confirmed on Thursday that it had in effect written off the value of its 20 per cent stake in Britain’s largest water utility. In accounts filed for the year to March 2024, the USS said the value of its investment was ‘minimal.’ Two years ago it valued the stake at £956mn.” [Sub required]. They have company. The wizards at the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System have written off their entire 31.7 per cent stake in Thames Water.
22) National: Wall Street is already measuring the drapes for a massive cut in Medicare and turbocharging of Medicare Advantage, the Wall Street Journal reports in a story written a few days before Biden dropped out of the race. “Wall Street has started to speculate on what a Republican sweep of the executive and legislative branches could mean for health insurers. Some are betting that the $450 billion Medicare Advantage industry could be ripe for regulatory easing. That has helped the shares of Humana, a pure-play Medicare-focused business, to outperform the broader market over the past month. That stock bump gained steam in the wake of the failed Trump assassination attempt. Medicare is divided into two programs. Just over half of members are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, through which the government pays insurers a set amount to manage people’s care. The remaining beneficiaries are on traditional Medicare.” [Sub required]
23) National: Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) have produced an hour and 15-minute presentation on The Medicaid Program and its Privatization.
24) National: Last Wednesday AFSCME sent a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona who requested information on Identifying and Tracking Data Related to Early Childhood Education Providers. PSLF is a critical program for attracting and retaining public service workers. .
“Dear Secretary Cardona: The American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is pleased to respond to the Department of Education (the Department) on its request for information related to operational issues associated with verifying Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) eligibility for the child care workforce. AFSCME members provide the vital services that make America happen. With 1.4 million members in communities across the nation, serving in hundreds of different occupations—from nurses to corrections officers, child care providers to sanitation workers—AFSCME advocates for fairness in the workplace, excellence in public services and freedom and opportunity for all working families. AFSCME child care providers work in a variety of settings, including tens of thousands who are family child care providers operating out of their own homes. The Department has long held that only employees of governments and non-profit entities are eligible for PSLF. However, as we explain in our 2022 comments, the PSLF statute delineates child care employees as eligible with no such distinction on employer tax status.” There follows a number of suggestions by AFSCME for collecting the relevant data. [Sub required]
25) National: Priya Pal, an instructor within the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine, says the experiment of Medicare privatization has failed.
“For its 59th birthday this year, let’s protect Medicare from the corporate raiders. It may seem like it’s always been a part of America, but Tuesday is Medicare’s 59th birthday. We should pause, celebrate its success and commit to stopping the corporations who are pilfering it for their own profits. Health care by nature cannot be a free market good. It isn’t like purchasing a cell phone where you can identify prices, compare specs of different models, read reviews and ultimately choose to walk away if you don’t like the options. Patients don’t wake up in the morning and choose to take medications because they want to, but because they need to. Health care emergencies like heart attacks and strokes don’t afford patients or their families the luxury to price shop, compare facilities or reviews. Health care can only turn a profit at the expense of quality care. This is exactly what so-called Medicare Advantage (‘MA’) plans have demonstrated every year since their creation in 2003.”
26) North Carolina: “If this is privatization, give us more government bureaucracy,” says Rob Schofield, writing in NC Newsline. “Mismanagement at [a] nonprofit led by Lt. Gov. Robinson’s wife raises important questions about the delivery of public services. If there’s a most persistent and destructive myth that’s permeated American public policy debates in recent decades, it is the fable of privatization. (…) Now, it is true that there are plenty of situations in which it can make sense for public agencies to make use of private contractors to perform important, typically time-limited, public functions – be it road construction or the installation of a new IT system.
But when it comes to basic human services and core functions like recordkeeping and the management of people and funding streams, the use of private contractors looking to pad their bank accounts rather than public employees looking simply to do the job for a fair salary is an invitation to abuse.”
Schofield continues, “A few years’ back in their fine book, “The Privatization of Everything,” authors Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian documented numerous examples in which federal, state and local officials succumbed to the siren song of privatization and thereby gave rise to waste, fraud, and expense that mushroomed well beyond anything imaginable in the public sector. In case studies involving prisons, toll roads, parking meters, charter schools, and many other core public structures and services, Cohen and Mikaelian documented how politicians have repeatedly fallen prey to the sales pitches of skillful lobbyists hawking the ‘genius of the market’ and ultimately ended up getting fleeced.”
27) California/National: Who is SP Plus? Why it’s that little old parking violations contractor that Orange County just hired, you know the one with “over 20,000 team members located throughout North America and Europe,” the one bought by Metropolis for $1.8 billion, which advertises itself as “artificial intelligence for the real world.”
28) Illinois: The Chicago Tribune reports that “civil rights lawyers representing people incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center filed a court motion on Wednesday requesting that the state transfer or release them no later than Sept. 20, citing the aging prison’s ‘degradation and deterioration.’ The state has announced plans to tear down the sprawling facility in Crest Hill, near Joliet, and build a new prison on the Stateville site as part of a nearly $1 billion project that would also include demolishing Logan Correctional Center in downstate Lincoln, a women’s prison, and possibly rebuilding it on the Stateville grounds. Lawyers for the Stateville inmates are trying to force the state to move ahead on the plan quickly, arguing the living conditions for people incarcerated at the nearly century-old prison are appalling.” Have a look at this monstrous Dickensian panopticon.
30) National: How should anticompetitive practices be regulated in the public interest? This question has been fought over since the days of the Robber Barons and Teddy Roosevelt, when it sharply divided the Democratic Party. A newer version of this controversy involves the future of FTC Chair Lina Khan. Here’s an interview with the latest anti-monopoly crusader.