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How Politicians Are Using Taxpayer Money To Fund Their Campaign To Sell Off America’s Public Lands. The recent Cliven Bundy debacle in Nevada put a national spotlight on the long-running, and long-failing, effort by right-wing Western legislators to seize federal public lands and either turn them over to the states or sell them to the highest bidder. While the renewal of this so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion” has thus far been carried out with limited resources by part-time legislators like State Rep. Ken Ivory (R-UT), new research shows that its leaders are now using taxpayer money from at least 42 counties in nine Western states to advance an aggressive and coordinated campaign to seize America’s public lands and national forests for drilling, mining, and logging. Think Progress

Water Privatization: Coming to a Century Old System Near You? The good news is that our more than a century old, dangerously deteriorating water and wastewater systems are about to get long overdue attention. Not only did Congress give the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014 (WRRDA) a landslide vote – House (412-4) and Senate (91-7) – but on June 10, President Obama signed on. . . . Over time, we may find many controversial aspects to WRRDA, but, for now, Title V and WIFIA – the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act – seem most likely to be the most controversial because of WIFIA’s connection with privatization.  Truth-Out

IN: Indiana monitors Toll Road operators’ financial troubles. The Indiana Finance Authority continues to monitor the financial difficulties of the Indiana Toll Road, where operators who hold the 75-year lease are struggling to meet a June debt payment. . . .Cintra, a Spanish firm, and Macquarie Group, of Australia, paid the state of Indiana $3.8 billion in 2006 in exchange for the right to operate the 157-mile road and collect all tolls for 75 years. But traffic on the road has never lived up to expectations, taking a direct hit almost immediately from the recession that started at the end of 2007. . . .The Toll Road turns an operating profit on tolls, but it has struggled under a mountain of debt now calculated at $4.4 billion in the most recent annual report from Macquarie Atlas Roads. Some $3.9 billion of debt matures in 12 months and will have to be refinanced by June 2015, according to the same report. The concession agreement the state signed with the consortium formed by Cintra and Macquarie Group in 2006 allows the state to take various actions in cases where the Toll Road operator misses payments to creditors, defaults, or goes bankrupt. In a worst-case scenario for investors, that includes Indiana basically serving the Toll Road operators with an eviction notice.  nwitimes.com

LA: The Jindal Tour Of The Americas. . . He’s dialed up his devotion to privatizing almost everything in his state, which already was a profoundly poisoned well of corporate depredation. . . . But it has been in the field of education in which Jindal’s starboard floundering has been the most pronounced. His voucher program has been exposed as a fountain of misinformation — Party Of Stupid! — and the Louisiana courts set fire to what was left of it. And today, he finally went over the falls, declaring that, unilaterally, he’s going to pull Louisiana out of the Common Core program into which he signed the state four years ago. There are good reasons to be wary about Common Core; Diane Ravitch has been busy citing most of them. But one of the good reasons is no the current frenzy ginned up by people who believe the standards are the thin edge of the collectivist, One World wedge, a kind of classroom equivalent of our old pal Agenda 21, the secret UN plan to steal all our golfs. Guess which approach Jindal has chosen?  Esquire (blog)

 

 

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Indiana Toll Road Remains Contentious Infrastructure Financing Case. For Rep. Michael E. Capuano, the senior Democrat in a group of House Transportation Committee members that met with New York investment bankers Monday, the key private infrastructure investment case that needs explaining is the 2006 lease of the Indiana Toll Road by a group of investors including Macquarie Atlas Roads, created by the Macquarie Infrastructure Group, an Australian firm. As states take a keener interest in public-private partnerships to pay for infrastructure, “the first major one in the country that I remember was the Indiana Toll road and, as I sit here today, I still do not have answers” on the benefits and costs of that deal, Capuano, D-Mass., said during the discussion. Roll Call (blog)

Transurban flags toll interest in US roads. Transurban chief executive Scott Charlton has flagged interest in expanding the company’s US network by adding tolled lanes to interstate highways near Washington, DC. . . . Most US interstate highways are free but a $302 billion White House transport bill released in May wants to reverse a federal prohibition on most interstate tolling. Maryland, next to Virginia, was also passing laws to allow more private-sector involvement in roads, Mr Charlton said. WA today

PA: Bethlehem Area School Board blames charter schools for tax increase. When Bethlehem Area School District taxpayers open their property tax bills this year, they will see a letter letting them know who to blame for their almost 5 percent tax hike: Charter schools. . .When families opt to send a child to a charter school, Pennsylvania law mandates districts pay the charter tuition for that child. Charter schools are funded by local property taxes but operate independently, and the state stopped reimbursing districts for charter tuition during the 2011-12 school year. Tuition now creates “the greatest upward pressure on local property taxes,” Faccinetto wrote in the letter. The Express-Times

ME: Locals fight to stay on the right road. . .While the push to privatize is gaining momentum in the state many districts are not successful in their efforts to actually outsource staff. Local communities, with the help of MEA, have recently stopped privatization in several communities including RSU 4 where the district wanted to outsource bus drivers. The local association was able to bring the issue to voters who overwhelmingly told the school board they wanted to keep their existing drivers. Currently, statewide, there are less than 10 districts that outsource some or all of their custodial work. Similar community rejections to outsourcing for custodial work happened in both RSU 23 (Saco/Dayton) and South Portland. In fact, while school boards claim the effort saves money for taxpayers what many fail to realize, in the initial stages, are the implications of what privatization means for those workers who may be forced out, for the community and state as a whole.  NEA

VA: Pocahontas 895 toll road under a new operator. Pocahontas 895 has a new operator, a year after an Australian company walked away from a long-term concession for the underperforming toll parkway across the James River between Henrico and Chesterfield counties. DBi Services, based in northeastern Pennsylvania, quietly assumed control of the parkway — the first road built by public-private partnership in Virginia — on May 15 and informed local government officials two weeks later. Richmond Times Dispatch

 

 

 

 

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No Simple Calculation in Comparing Public, Private Investment. . . .One reason why government officials and investors are looking at public-private partnerships is the high cost and long lead time of traditional infrastructure – Boston’s Big Dig being the notorious example. But the public infrastructure process is complex and rule-bound because of built-in checks against theft and corruption, suggested Capuano. “We got where we are because for a hundred years public and private people stole money repeatedly on massive public projects and, little by little, we threw laws in the way… to make it a little harder to steal money,” he explained, but “we end up with this crazy system” under which “we Balkanize every single step of the way.” It’s also necessary to assess whether revenues coming from the public paying tolls or fees are being used to improve public transportation — or merely to plug short-term budget holes. Roll Call (blog)

New York Financiers Weigh In on Public-Private Partnerships. When members of the House Transportation Committee trekked to this morning to Manhattan for a roundtable discussion on private financing for public projects — also known as public-private partnerships, or P3s — with financiers from J.P Morgan and other firms, they got a message of both opportunity and caution. Roll Call (blog)

What if we made transportation systems regulated public utilities?. . . David Levinson, a professor who specializes in transportation issues at the University of Minnesota, says that there’s no need for us to live with such shabby transportation or for government to continue shell out bigger and bigger subsidies. In a story recently published on the Atlantic Monthly’s CityLab website, Levinson makes the case for returning to private ownership — kind of. He would like to see our transportation systems, even the highways, operate as highly regulated public utilities.  MinnPost.com

RI: Social impact bonds legislation advances in Senate despite strong union opposition. Supporters hope the bonds can provide a way of financing social programs for the homeless and incarcerated that the state otherwise could not afford. Opponents worry that it is a risky, untested funding model that could be used as a back-door approach to privatizing social programs. “We just see this could be a back-door way to privatize the delivery of social services programs … and to most likely reward wealthy investors while you’re at it,” said Jim Cenerini, a lobbyist for Council 94, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The legislation advanced last week defines a “social impact bond” as “a contract between the public and private sectors in which a commitment is made to pay for improved financial and social outcomes that result in public sector savings.” The Providence Journal

NJ: Bill regulating privatization efforts heads to Christie’s desk. A bill that Democrats say would guard against “irresponsible” plans to outsource government services is heading to Governor Christie’s desk. The bill, which passed the Assembly 48-30 today, would forbid privatization unless real cost savings could be shown. In addition, the work environment, including wages would have to stay the same or be better than the public sector and there would also be public disclosure requirements. NorthJersey.com

 

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The VA Reform Legislation Is a “Trojan Horse” for Privatization. In the aftermath of the Veterans Affairs scandal, Democrats and Republicans are moving swiftly to pass legislation to fix the problems at the department. In their haste, though, policymakers have crafted a bill that would do more harm than good—and it comes with a hefty price tag. . . . The bills have not received much attention this week, but that could change: the Congressional Budget Office reported that allowing certain veterans to seek care at non-VA facilities would cost $35 billion over the two-year program, as The New Republic’s Brian Beutler predicted. If made permanent, CBO estimates it could cost $50 billion a year. For comparison, the VA currently spends $44 billion a year on its health care system. CBO notes that its estimate is preliminary, but it still is much higher than the expected cost. And this is only for the partial privatization part of the bill. While the potential for a new $50 billion a year program is worrisome, the bill would not even address the underlying problems at the VA. The New Republic

VA: Virginia investigating VDOT outsourcing contract. Watchdog learned this week that VDOT’s contract with Serco Inc. has come under fire from agency workers, who allege tax dollars are being squandered. The Serco contract, which handed over various VDOT functions to the Reston, Va.-based firm, was advertised last year as “net-neutral,” meaning the state would pay neither more nor less than it had previously. Though details of the Virginia investigation remain under wraps, Serco has encountered criticism elsewhere. . . . In 2012, independent researchers concluded Serco’s operation of British pathology labs led to a decline in the quality of services, including medical errors, according to news reports. Closer to home, the Georgia Department of Transportation canceled its $21 million contract with Serco after discovering a GDOT employee who helped approve the pact had secretly done side work for the company. Virginia Press Association executive director Ginger Stanley said the Inspector General’s decision to withhold the VDOT complaints is discretionary.  Watchdog.org

CA: Grand jury: Mentally ill not getting crisis care in Mendocino County. Crisis care is lacking for Mendocino County’s most severely mentally ill because of a poorly-worded contract drafted when the county privatized its mental health services, according to the Mendocino County grand jury. . . . [A]ccording to a report the grand jury recently released, “The imprecise language and provisions included in the contract for privatization results in ineffective services for clients who are diagnosed as Level 3, the most severely impaired.” The grand jury’s report, titled, “Privatization of Mental Health Delivery Services,” found “a serious oversight in the preparation of the contract.” According to the report, “The clients most in need of mental health assistance were specifically excluded from the language of the contract.” . . . The grand jury fielded several complaints that “mental health clients were confused when they went to the access centers and did not receive the service they were expecting,” the grand jury stated. Staff at the centers “did not know where to refer the clients during the transition, according to the complaints. “As of the close of this investigation, this still appears to be the case,” according to the report.  Ukiah Daily Journal

TX: Firm Proposes Building Private Toll Road Near Dallas. In an area northeast of Dallas, a company hopes to build a road unlike any other in Texas. The Texas Turnpike Corporation has proposed a toll road connecting Greenville and Wylie. The Dallas-based firm hopes to buy the land and build and operate the toll road itself. It would be the only entirely private toll road in the state and one of the only such highways in the country. Local transportation officials are keeping an open mind. “This would be a private-sector company that would 100 percent finance the project,” said Tom Shelton, a senior program manager with the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which coordinates the region’s transportation planning. “As a result, they would take 100 percent of the risk, and they would take 100 percent of the benefits.”  Texas Tribune

 

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Treasury official pushes back on idea to privatize Fannie, Freddie. Mary Miller, the under secretary for domestic finance, told the National Housing Conference that much of the recent profits at the mortgage-buying giants have come from tax-related one-time gains and legal settlements as well as income from retained portfolios, which are being wound down. “In short, adequately recapitalizing the GSEs would take longer than many realize or would admit,” Miller said. “Only legislation can protect taxpayers by responsibly winding down the GSEs and replacing them with a system where a government guarantee is transparent and explicitly priced,” she added.  MarketWatch

TX: Private Toll Road Considered to Counter Population Boom. Facing traffic congestion that is only expected to get worse, officials in North Texas are weighing a proposal to build a toll road for commuters into Dallas. The Texas Turnpike Corporation of Dallas has proposed a private toll road, the only of its kind in the state, connecting Greenville and Wylie, and local transportation officials say they are keeping an open mind. . . . Any road, however, is years away. A private road would have to be approved by the Texas Department of Transportation and comply with regional regulations, including how to set tolls, Mr. Shelton said. In addition, the corporation would need to acquire the land. The possible route of the Blacklands toll road has already drawn some opposition from rural residents. . . . Over the last decade, as state and federal transportation funding has dropped, communities across Texas have increasingly turned to tolling to fund highway projects. The state is now home to more than 20 toll facilities, with more in development. Texas has long encouraged public-private partnerships in transportation projects, most notably the southern leg of State Highway 130 from Austin to Seguin, which opened in 2012. A private consortium designed and built the road and agreed to operate and maintain it for 50 years in exchange for a cut of the revenue. The consortium, however, does not own the land.  New York Times

TX: Era of the toll is about to dawn on Dallas-area highways. Virtually every major Dallas-Fort Worth highway project includes plans for new tolls, in many cases replacing what have traditionally been free carpool lanes. By the time billions in planned construction is done, most of the area’s major corridors will either be toll roads or feature some sort of toll component. In large part, the growing network of toll highways can be attributed to living in a state with a booming population and a Legislature that dodges solving transportation funding shortfalls. Texas lawmakers haven’t raised the state gas tax, the primary revenue source for transportation funding, in decades. They also haven’t developed a meaningful, long-term alternative funding source. When inflation and fuel efficiency in vehicles are factored in, Texans effectively are paying far less to fund transportation needs than they were 20 years ago. Dallas Morning News

IL: Chicago schools trying to privatize their PE programs. The push to privatize the physical education curriculum was clear on the day the Board of Education was presented with an extensive Power Point outlining the program, which was voted on and approved at the January 2014 Board meeting. The actual policy approved by the Board was put together by stringing a bunch of clichés and nostrums, accompanied by a lengthy list of supposed partners, endorsers, and “stakeholders.” The endorsers and stakeholders supposedly really like the program. A Power Point timeline presented how the program would be rolled out during the 2014 – 2015 and 2015 – 2016 school year. How the principals and schools were to pay for it was left out, except when the presentation was challenged, briefly, by one Board of Education member. Discussionist

VT: Our Opinion: The downside of privatization. Much has been said in recent years about income inequality, the disappearing middle class and the widening gap between the super-rich and the rest of us. Some of this can be attributed to manufacturers and other companies outsourcing good-paying jobs to other countries with cheap labor. However, new studies indicate that our own local, state and federal governments are contributing to the problem by outsourcing and privatizing public services in order to save money and balance their budgets. The irony is that this practice has been shown to actually have greater financial and societal costs in the long run. “In theory, privatization is a great deal for taxpayers because it saves a few bucks in the town budget,” according to Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “In reality, taxpayers are funding the downward spiral of their own communities — and often paying far greater costs in the long run. The degradation of formerly family-supporting jobs through government outsourcing turns middle class careers into poverty-level jobs. Governments across the country are using our public dollars to fuel the low-wage economy and increasing economic inequality.” Brattleboro Reformer

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Right-Wing Billionaires To Use California Ruling to Nationally Crush Teachers’ Unions. The billionaires’ lawsuit had absolutely nothing to do with guaranteeing a quality public education to students in poor neighborhoods, and was solely about eliminating, what the supporters of Students Matter believe is, the biggest obstacle to a privatized education system; teacher unions, due process protections, and decent salaries. Anti-public education advocates have tried various methods to privatize education and destroy public schools whether it was the Koch-puppet and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker single-handedly eliminating collective bargaining arrangements for teachers or Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal shifting public school funding to private religious schools to inculcate students in the Christian religion.  PoliticusUSA

Should We Be Concerned About Privatization of the V.A.? But there is a down side to this private option. As Philip Longman argues, outsourcing V.A. medical care compromises the very thing that makes it so good: coordination. The V.A. was a pioneer in the development of electronic medical records, and its record of quality care comes in large part from the fact that it’s a unified system. If you’re a veteran who lives in Florida and you walk into an ER at a veteran’s hospital in Oregon, in seconds the doctors and nurses there will know every medication you’re on and every procedure you’ve had. . . .Nevertheless, it sure looks as though Republicans are using the V.A. scandal as an opportunity to push privatization of medical care, a key goal for them when it comes not only to the VA but also to Medicare and Medicaid. As Ed Kilgore said: “They know a camel’s nose under the tent when they see it.” And the consequences of V.A. privatization could be more serious than with Medicaid or Medicare. Those are insurance programs and not health-care programs; privatization could make them more costly and less efficient, but privatizing V.A. health care would lead more directly to worse care for the veterans everyone says they care so much about.  The American Prospect

Poultry Inspectors Union Urges Passage of DeLauro Amendment Blocking USDA Outsourcing Plan. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut has introduced an amendment to the fiscal 2015 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that would prevent the USDA from spending any money to finalize and implement its proposed poultry inspection rule. AFGE strongly supports the amendment and encourages all lawmakers to vote for it when it comes to the floor on Wednesday. “The current poultry inspection system certainly has its flaws. But the USDA’s cost-cutting plan would transform an imperfect system into a potentially lethal one,” AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said.  AFGE

MD: Residents, workers protest housing authority plan to privatize public housing. Sixty city public housing residents and union workers staged a protest Wednesday against a plan to sell the housing to private developers. Protesters fear the Housing Authority of Baltimore City’s plan would lead to lost jobs, displaced residents and less available public housing. . . .The plan, announced in March, involves the city selling 40 percent of its public housing to private developers to raise money for upgrades and maintenance. The federal government is offering tax credits to developers who buy and renovate public housing. Baltimore Sun

 

 

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Washington’s Cold Shoulder for Defrauded Students and Soldiers. . .$880 million is a lot more than the $80 million fine that will be shared by Navient’s shareholders and the shareholders of Sallie Mae. That’s right: we said “shareholders.” Sallie Mae has been a private corporation for quite some time. Navient, its loan servicing arm, was spun off when this for-profit corporation became a bank. It’s publicly traded too. . . . We’ve also learned that privatization, that bipartisan scourge of government at all levels, often allows greed to corrupt well-intentioned government activity. In 2010 we detailed some of the degradation in Sallie Mae’s mission, along with some of its executives’ self-serving lobbying, in a piece called “Sallie Mae’s Jets.” (Yes, they had two of them, for executive use.) Back then we said that Sallie Mae was “the poster child for the moral and operational bankruptcy of the … privatization craze.” It still is. Huffington Post (blog)

CA: California teachers unions lose big in court. A court ruling on Tuesday striking down job protections for teachers in California deals a sharp blow to unions — and will likely fuel political movements across the nation to eliminate teacher tenure. . . . Reformers also plan to take the fight to other states, hoping the strong language of the ruling will prompt Democrats elsewhere to reconsider ties to teachers unions. They’re considering similar lawsuits in Connecticut, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and elsewhere. And they plan a relentless public relations campaign, backed by millions of dollars from reform-minded philanthropists, to bring moms, dads and voters of both parties to their side.  Politico

OH: Ohio Supreme Court shoots down JobsOhio legal challenge. In a split opinion published Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court denied that Columbus-based left-leaning think tank ProgressOhio and two state legislators lack the standing to challenge the private economic development organization. The court voted 5-2 that ProgressOhio, state Sen. Michael Skindell (D-Cleveland) and state Rep. Dennis Murray (D-Sandusky) failed to establish the grounds to challenge the constitutionality of the group, founded by Republican Gov. John Kasich in 2011 to privatize job growth efforts. Dayton Business Journal

OH: FBI agents in Cleveland examining Illinois business that runs charter schools. Federal authorities in Cleveland are examining an Illinois company that manages the local Horizon Science Academy schools and several others in the Midwest, and they have seized documents from several locations in the past week, including here in Ohio. . .  Vicki Anderson, an FBI agent in Cleveland, said the search warrants involved “a white-collar matter,” but she would not specify. The search warrants are sealed. . .  The Indianapolis Business Journal quoted a spokeswoman from an Indianapolis school, who said agents requested documents that were part of an audit the U.S. Department of Education was conducting of federal “e-rate” grant programs. The Plain Dealer      

NC: House proposal for Commerce privatization better than Senate’s… barely. Privatizing job creation efforts is hardly a new idea, although it’s proven to generate more scandals than results in the sixteen states that have experimented with this approach. According to the General Assembly’s own Fiscal Research Division, the kinds of economic development public private partnerships envisioned in the House and Senate bills haven’t proven themselves any more effective at boosting job creation in the states that adopted them than in those states that simply kept their job recruiting efforts inside agencies of state government.   At the same time, FRD and other researchers have found that these privatization schemes have been marked by financial mismanagement (Wisconsin), conflicts of interest and pay-to-play incentive-granting (Texas and Florida), and the inability to raise private funds, leaving taxpayers on the hook (Missouri). The Senate bill largely ignores many of these problems. It allows partnership staff, officers, and board members to operate outside the ethics requirements of the State Ethics Act, simply requiring the new partnership to develop its own code of ethics. Thanks to a range of amendments offered during floor debate, the House version corrects this problem by covering the new partnership under the state ethics act, but is unclear whether this important provision will remain after both chambers negotiate during a conference committee.  Progressive Pulse

LA: State work force down 8000. More than 8,000 classified state employees have lost their jobs since Gov. Bobby Jindal took office, according to a state Civil Service report issued Tuesday. The bulk of the 8,278 employees were laid off as a result of Jindal administration initiatives that turned traditional state functions over to private companies. Most of the layoffs have occurred in the past two state fiscal years with privatization of the LSU hospital system.  The Advocate

LA: Letter: Where has the money gone?. . . This group of state workers — teachers and retirees — paid premiums to build up a $500 million health care trust fund. According to Legislative Auditor Daryl Pupera, this same trust fund will be gone by 2015. . . .After privatization of the Office of Group Benefits, health benefits are being cut, premiums are being raised and the $500 million trust fund has been raided. They gave a 1.5 percent pay increase to retirees that starts in July and the same month a 5 percent rate increase on insurance premiums for a loss of 3.5 percent for the year. The Jindal administration should be held accountable as to where the $500 million trust fund went. Workers worked so hard to build this up and it’s nearly gone after two years with higher rates and fewer benefits to the 250,000 families insured. This is a shame and someone needs to be held accountable. Monroe News Star

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A Modern-Day Debtors’ Prison? Judges Push Back Against the South’s Privatization Wave. . . Pushback against some of the worst practices in private probation is sporadic but growing. In September, Georgia’s Supreme Court is slated to hear an appeal of Judge Craig’s ruling that extending private probation sentences beyond their original date was against the law (as was the use of electronic monitoring in probation cases). Some believe the Supreme Court’s ruling has the potential to fundamentally shape the way in which private probation companies operate in Georgia. Elsewhere, alternative solutions have already been found—like in Athens-Clark County, Georgia, where a government probation department that operates independently of taxpayers’ coffers was brought in to replace a broken private probation system.Nevertheless, critics of private probation continue to draw parallels between problems in that industry and those associated with the broader privatization of the nation’s entire judicial system.  Truth-Out

CO: Colorado Governor Vetoes Toll Road Accountability Bill. Critics of long-term toll road contracts complain that they are often negotiated in secrecy by unaccountable bureaucrats, cutting the public out of the process entirely. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (D) is not among those who see any problem with the way things are done. On Wednesday he put his veto pen to Senate Bill 14-197, the Transportation Enterprise Transparency Act, ensuring the status quo. . . .The Colorado legislation would have required public meetings disclosing the state’s intentions at each relevant phase of the contract development process, from concept through execution. The General Assembly would have to approve any deal that contains potentially objectionable features. This includes any contract lasting longer than thirty-five years; non-compete clauses that drive up toll road usage by hobbling development of nearby general purpose roads; and any requirement that the public assume risk on behalf of the private companies involved.  TheNewspaper.com

KY: Questions raised about legality of private meetings held by University of Kentucky trustees. The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees will vote Tuesday on a proposed annual budget of more than $3 billion, but don’t expect many questions or much discussion of how the money gets spent. They already will have been briefed extensively on the budget in private meetings that administrators hold with small groups of trustees. Those behind-the-scenes meetings, however, might violate the Kentucky Open Meetings Act because they appear to be held in an effort to avoid public discussions, according to multiple attorneys familiar with the law. . . .According to the Herald-Leader archives, members of the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees had no questions or comments when taking the following votes: Oct. 14, 2012: The board voted to approve a contract with Education Realty Trust to build the first phase of privatized housing, the first major outsourcing in UK’s history. Lexington Herald Leader

TX: Dallas’ 15-year-old Trinity toll road agreement with NTTA has little protection for the city. . . For Instance, it puts the price of the toll road at a quaint $394 million. Well, we know that’s not right. The road is somewhere north of $1 billion. Well north I believe.  There is a great deal in the agreement about the city’s many responsibilities, including its pledge of $84 million to the road. That figure seemed like a substantial contribution at the time. It’s not quite a rounding error yet, but getting there.  What bugs me about this agreement is that no one at City Hall at the time appeared to look at it and say, gosh, maybe we should add some outs for ourselves in here. Maybe we should give ourselves a little legal push back in case, say, 15 years goes by and this road still isn’t built and we decide that, perhaps, there would be a better way to build our city.  Dallas Morning News (blog)

TX: American Institute of Architects (Dallas) backs off support of Trinity toll road. This morning, the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects backed away from its support for the Trinity River toll road. This is another important voice that has come to understand just how much Dallas is sacrificing in the name of this project. The AIA’s statement isn’t quite as strong as it should be, unfortunately. Specifically, its executive director, Jan Blackmon, states that the organization cannot support the road until it has a better understanding of how the major elements of the Balanced Vision Plan (lakes, parks) will be incorporated into the design of the “parkway.” (Personally, I reject the term parkway for this project.) Dallas Morning News (blog)

LA: Diane Ravitch asks if New Orleans is “The Biggest Scam in the History of Public Education?” New Orleans will soon be the first urban district in the nation that is all-charter, the first district where public education has been completely extinguished. Because so much money has been invested in the privatization of the schools in New Orleans, there is a media machine that cranks out favorable stories about it. The state board of education, the state department of education, and the Governor are determined to prove that privatization was successful. But there is another side to the story. Read it here. Read about a district that has low rankings on state measures, a district that has depended on fluctuating state standards, a district that depends on Teach for America, where charter leaders are paid handsomely.  History news Network

LA: Louisiana Resubmits Hospital Privatization Plan to Federal Agency. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration has revised its plan to privatize state-run hospitals with sovereign dollars and resubmitted it to a group that only last month rejected a proposal. The devise involves changeable a supervision of hospitals now operated by Louisiana State University in New Orleans, Lafayette, Houma, Lake Charles, Shreveport, and Monroe. It would cost a state a reported $1.1 billion this year, and relies heavily on approaching supports from a sovereign government. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) deserted a administration’s plan in May, including a ask for payment of a $260.8 million in allege franchise payments a state done to support a devise before to a approval.  Louisiana News Feed

CA: Viewpoints: Outsourcing delays road improvements. . . For example, a Caltrans engineer – salary, benefits and overhead – costs the taxpayer $116,000 per year. Outsourcing the same job costs $237,000, primarily because contracts with private firms are awarded without competitive bidding. Yet, Caltrans outsources nearly 1,000 jobs per year at an annual waste of more than $100 million. This money could be used to fund construction, create jobs, reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality. Local agencies also outsource most of their highway engineering work using no-bid contracts. While seeking additional funding to improve our streets and highways, the governor and Legislature would be well advised to stop wasting public dollars by awarding contracts to private firms at twice the cost of having the work performed by public servants. Sacramento Bee

OR: Abandoned liquor privatization campaign spent about $2.5 million this year. When liquor privatization backers called off their ballot initiatives this week, it wasn’t for lack of spending. This year, petition committees associated with the campaign recorded about $2.5 million in cash expenditures, on everything from signature gathering efforts to inter-campaign contributions. That includes a $200,000 check on Monday — just two days before backers dropped the initiatives — to Silver Bullet, a signature gathering firm hired to help the group meet an ambitious July 3 deadline. The Oregonian

 

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Study findings: TVA should not be sold; analysts reject Obama’s call to privatize utility. Selling TVA wouldn’t yield much for American taxpayers, but it could prove costly for Tennessee Valley residents and the region’s economy and environment, according to an outside financial review of America’s biggest government utility. In $1 million study prepared for White House budget planners, Lazard Freres & Co. said if TVA had to earn the financial returns of private utilities, electricity rates would jump by 13 percent. At the same time, dismantling its power and nonpower programs could hurt TVA’s recreation, economic development and environmental programs. . . . The Obama administration has suggested in two budget proposals that TVA might be sold, privatized or transferred to state or local governments to help cut its associated federal debt. . . . But, spurred by a slowdown in power demand, TVA has tightened its belt, scrapped aging coal plants and suspended work on the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant. The utility cut capital spending plans by $13 billion and annual operating costs by $500 million. Chattanooga Times Free Press

FL: Public-private transit projects planned. The first major project to be accomplished through a public-private partnership could be the proposed rail line from Miami to Miami Beach, said Mr. Scurr, the trust’s executive director. With high ridership on the line practically a given, he said, it shouldn’t be hard to attract interest from the private sector. And the partnership could go beyond a normal construction and operating agreement to one that also offers a private partner the opportunity to develop property along the route.  Miami Today

TX: Toll road opponents planning so-called funeral for Trinity Parkway. Organizers of a tongue-in-cheek, New Orleans-style jazz processional through the Bishop Arts District admit that the planned $1.5 billion toll road is far from officially dead. But they say the project’s costs and potential impacts have grown so dramatically since voters last approved the riverside road that it’s time to shelve plans. . . .  “You have an equal and opposite reaction to the ridiculousness that is this project,” said Jason Roberts, a long-time community activist who is helping organize the event. The parkway is perhaps the most contentious piece of the city’s long-held but frequently embattled plans for the Trinity River Corridor Project. The ambitious venture aims to turn the vacant floodway into a massive urban park filled with lakes, recreational areas and trails.  Dallas Morning News

OR: Oregon grocers abandon liquor-privatization effort. Grocers who sponsored ballot measures to end Oregon’s state liquor monopoly have given up for this year, saying Wednesday that there’s not enough time left for them to round up signatures. The grocers prepared two versions of their proposed initiative with slightly different language, but they still haven’t received approval to begin collecting signatures for the one they prefer. They would need 87,000 valid signatures on that measure by July 3 to qualify for the November ballot. Initiative proponents said they will continue seeking privatization of liquor sales through the Legislature or the 2016 ballot. KPIC News

IL: Illiana gets push from Quinn. Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration wants lawmakers to make the proposed Illiana Expressway more attractive to private investors by guaranteeing toll revenue shortfalls will be covered by dipping into the state’s road fund ahead of other projects. The 47-mile tollway between Indiana and Illinois would be placed at the top of the funding list under draft legislation backed by the Illinois Department of Transportation. That’s intended to sweeten a potential deal for the $1.5 billion project that some lawmakers and regional planners contend is not a critical need, will spur little economic development and threatens to become a painful financial drain on a state buried in debt. Critics of the proposal also question the legislation’s timing — Quinn faces a tough re-election campaign this year against Republican venture capitalist Bruce Rauner. The expressway would serve an area in the southern Chicago suburbs, and Quinn has for years used the project to talk up job creation.  Agri News

NC: NC lawmakers likely to consider plan to privatize part of economic development effort. The bill would shift the state’s corporate recruiting from the Commerce Department to a private nonprofit that can raise money from private donors to pursue companies considering new factories or expansions. Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker says the new arrangement will put the state’s recruiting efforts more on par with how the corporate world operates. Critics say similar efforts elsewhere have been marred by ethics scandals and a lack of transparency about how the money is spent. A similar bill cleared a Senate committee later Wednesday and heads to another panel Thursday.  The Republic

OH: Charter school dream turns to nightmare. . . For the first time, the state is cracking down on charter school sponsors – the nonprofit entities in charge of overseeing the schools. Sponsors are now on notice they are not to take on risky schools, a move that could lead to a wave of closures like VLT. . . . Critics of charter schools say it’s about time. They said the lack of oversight has cost millions in public dollars and has led to fraud, corruption and sometimes criminal charges. “Until recently the state never saw a charter school it didn’t like,” said William Phillis, author of the blog Ohio Coalition for Equity and Advocacy of school funding. “Recently because of audits and because people are awakening to the egregious nature of the charter school industry, the state has become embarrassed with the tragic waste of money on these charter schools. So the state officials have become more aggressive in recent months in monitoring these schools.”  Cincinnati.com

 

 

 

 

 

News

The High Cost of Low-Wage Public Service Outsourcing. In the late 1990s, as part of a rush to save money by privatizing government services, many school districts in New Jersey turned over their school lunch programs to private contractors. For the school districts, the results were what they expected – costs dropped. But a study set for release this afternoon suggests that the overall cost to New Jersey may have been higher than the amount saved by individual school districts – a warning that could apply to states, municipalities, and the federal government alike.  The study, “Race to the Bottom: How Outsourcing Public Services Rewards Corporations and Punishes the Middle Class,” was produced by In the Public Interest, a watchdog group that monitors privatization of government contracts. Its central finding is that when the government outsources its services, “local communities suffer the consequences of lower quality services and middle class jobs being replaced with poverty-level wages” while “far-away corporate executives benefit from lucrative government contracts.”  The Fiscal Times

Democrats have a VA bill, Republicans trying to slap lipstick on a privatization pig. While Democrats push Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bill to allow the Veterans Affairs Department to lease 27 new medical facilities and hire more doctors and nurses to reduce wait times for veterans seeking medical care, Republicans are preparing to unveil their own plan. Sens. John McCain, Richard Burr, and Tom Coburn are teaming up on this one, and it’s a safe bet it will involve privatized care: “The solution to this problem is flexibility to the veteran to choose their health care, just like other people under other health care plans are able to do,” McCain said June 1 on “Face the Nation.”   Daily Kos

IL: Why Chicago’s Botched Parking Meter Privatization is Also Bad for the Environment. To find out how Chicago’s parking meter lease impacts street-level planning, Professor Stephanie Farmer interviewed Chicago-area transportation planners. She found that the deal is tying the hands of transportation planners in their efforts to construct environmentally sustainable transportation modes on the city streets for the remaining 69 years of the lease. Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is planning a network of 20 Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines. The CTA found replacement parking meters for its initial BRT routes, but planners fear that spaces for replacement meters will soon dry up. In that case, either the cost for implementing future BRT lines will increase significantly as the city must compensate Morgan Stanley for the number of parking meters they remove, or the city may trim down their plans for 20 routes altogether. . . . The Chicago deal isn’t the only contract that has clauses working against sustainability goals. A P3 that created HOV lanes on the Washington Beltway in Northern Virginia forces taxpayers to reimburse the investment consortium (comprised of Australia-based Transurban and Texas’ Fluor Corporation) when “too many” commuters carpool.The unintended consequences of these contract clauses create hidden costs for cash-strapped cities, neglect the changing urban lifestyle patterns of millennials and empty-nesters, and more significantly hinder the increasingly urgent need to redesign our cities to address climate change and reduce our carbon footprint. Next City

OR: State Land Board should find alternative to selling the Elliott: Opinion. . . . But while Oregonians treasure our parks and public lands, our State Land Board is not acting on those values. The board recently took the first steps towards privatizing the 93,000-acre Elliott State Forest in order to generate funding for state education budgets. Three parcels totaling 1,453 acres were auctioned, and Seneca Jones Timber Company, one of the winning bidders, has already said “…we will be clearcutting.” All Oregonians have a stake in the fight to save the Elliott State Forest.  The Elliott is unique among our system of state parks and public lands because it is home to our largest remaining stand of old-growth.  Some 41,000 acres of the forest contains trees over a century old.  This old-growth in turn sustains some of the cleanest rivers in the Oregon Coast Range, valuable runs of wild salmon and steelhead and vital habitat for rare wildlife.  Because the Elliott is public land — for now — all Oregonians enjoy the right to use it for activities like hiking, fishing, hunting and camping.  The Oregonian