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FL: Interstate 4 toll lanes will be privatized. The Florida Department of Transportation on Wednesday rolled out its plans to privatize planned toll lanes on Interstate 4…. Instead of borrowing the money themselves to complete the lanes and keeping all the profit themselves, the state will have the private company come up with the last $600 million. Secretary Downs says that company will also be responsible for the maintenance of the road. MyFoxOrlando.com

PA: Bid to privatize Pa. Lottery’s management extended by a week. The British firm that is seeking to take over management of the Pennsylvania Lottery’s management for the next 20 to 30 years has agreed to extend its bid’s expiration date by a week…. The last extension was granted after state Attorney General Kathleen Kane rejected the proposed contract with Camelot on constitutional and legal grounds. The administration has said they are working on addressing those issues and plan to resubmit another contract proposal to Kane. LotteryPost.com

PA: Liquor privatization plan’s future unclear. With the state budget inked and the legislature preparing to close shop for the summer, it’s still unclear if Corbett will be able to privatize the state’s liquor business. Citizens Voice

NY: Bloomberg DOE Hurries to Privatize As Many NYC Schools As Possible. This is an alarming account of the frenzied efforts by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Department of Education to cement his “legacy” of opening privately managed charter schools while abandoning the public schools for which he is responsible… When the new school year starts, the city will open 24 new charter schools, for a total of 183, with spending on the publicly funded, privately run schools set to top $1 billion. And the city Department of Education (DOE) continues to allocate space in public school buildings to many charter schools, which use the rooms rent free.  DianeRavich’sBlog

There is nothing “innovative” about privatizing our water.  Yesterday, I participated in a meeting hosted by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency on financing water infrastructure.   Although I applaud the administration’s efforts to convene a discussion about the enormous need to invest in our nation’s aging infrastructure, I was discouraged that much of the meeting focused on promoting public-private partnerships and attracting more private financing for public water systems. Throughout the meeting, a misleading notion was continually raised that using private capital to fund water systems somehow constitutes an innovative approach to financing. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Time and again, municipalities and consumers have suffered under privatized water systems.  Food And Water Watch

Your Post Office Is Being Taken From You – video.  A powerful talk by Berkeley Geographer Gary Brechin about the sell off of our historical post office buildings  to developers and the resulting loss of American post office art – murals created by the New Deal public works program. Brechin also talks about the collusion of the US Postal Service and real estate mogals, including Richard Blum, husband of US Sen. Diane Finestein , in driving these deals.

The Privatization of War: Mercenaries, Private Military and Security Companies. Private military and security companies operate in a legal vacuum: they pose a threat to civilians and to international human rights law. The UN Human Rights Council has entrusted the UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries, principally, with the mandate: “To monitor and study the effects of the activities of private companies offering military assistance, consultancy and security services on the international market on the enjoyment of human Rights (…) and to prepare draft international basic principles that encourage respect for human rights on the part of those companies in their activities”.  Global Research

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CA: Transit Strike Shows the Dark Side of Silicon Valley’s Privatization Fetish. The kudzu-like spread of private transportation companies in San Francisco has been good for city residents who can afford to use them, and the dot-com founders that have gotten rich by replacing public-sector functions with their own services. But yesterday, when a system-wide BART strike took down the Bay Area’s best form of public transportation, we saw the dark side of Silicon Valley’s obsession with privatizing everything. Namely, it has created a two-tier transportation caste system, where the private-sector solutions flourish, often at the expense of the public infrastructure that a large part of the population still depends on to get to work and go about their lives….. Companies like Uber and Lyft didn’t cause the public sector’s problems, but they’re profiting from them. And when policy-makers begin to see these services as legitimate replacements for public infrastructure, their incentives to make public services better will disappear.   New York Magazine

PA: How Pa. legislators blew liquor privatization. The connection between liquor privatization and transportation funding had been whispered about for months, but rarely acknowledged publicly — and never in a straightforward manner. Interestingly enough, it was Senate President Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, who denounced the connection in January, telling reporters he did not want to see highway funding “held hostage” by Gov. Corbett in order to get a liquor privatization bill finished. Philly.com

PA: Pennsylvania Extends Lottery Privatization Bid — Again. A British firm is holding on while Attorney General Kathleen Kane waits for the state to submit another contract proposal. NACS Online

OH: Ohio Court of Appeals Rules Against Toledo Photo Ticket Program. Ohio’s second highest court gave the green light to a red light camera lawsuit on Friday. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals agreed that Bradley L. Walker could continue his class action lawsuit against Toledo and Redflex Traffic Systems, the Australian vendor that owns and operates every aspect of the system, because the city’s camera ordinance violates the state constitution. Redflex mailed Walker a $120 ticket in February 2011, and the motorist charged that the “civil penalty” he received violated the state constitution.  TheNewspaper.com

VA: State identifies potential public-private partnership projects. Inviting public input on the proposals, the state has identified 10 high-cost highway-related projects as potential candidates for financing by public-private partnerships. “Even with the new (state transportation funding) law,” said Transportation Secretary Sean T. Connaughton, “the cost of these very large projects is so enormous that we need to look to the private sector for financing and for innovation.” Richmond Times Dispatch

KS: Broke KC charter school leaves teachers without final paycheck. The money that might have covered teacher salaries is tied up in court over a dispute between the school, the company contracted to manage the academy, and the company that issued bonds to launch the school….The academy announced last fall it would close after UMKC refused to renew its charter, citing poor management and low test scores. The school has since been overseen by an interim board. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has been named in legal action to garnish more than $2.2 million that the management company, EdisonLearning Inc., says it is owed. Kansas City Star

Charter Schools, the Invisible Hand, and Gutless Political Leadership – Opinion. Idealizing parental choice narrowly and choice broadly is the foundation upon which both political parties stand. Why is the Invisible Hand of the Free Market so appealing to political leaders? The answer is simple: Abdicating political leadership to the market absolves our leaders from making any real (or ethical) decisions, absolves them from doing anything except sitting back and watching the cards fall where they may. Truth-Out           

The privatization blues, or the ‘looting of America’ – Opinion. If you want to know how school voucher programs turn out, you don’t have to guess. We’ve been through it. It is called the 19th century. You can read about it in the works of a great writer who was put in a factory to work 12-hour days at age 12 and who was later put in miserable for-profit schools. Read Dickens. Read about Nicholas Nickleby and what happens when he wants another bowl of gruel for his school  lunch. Our private schools have not reached that point yet. And the ones for rich kids probably never will. But wait until the privatization is complete, and the corporations discover that each helpless little profit point of a kid and each non-union teacher can always be squeezed a little harder for more corporate profits.  Chippewa Herald

 

 

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Public Interest Group Challenges Privatization Of Local, State Government Services. In the Public Interest, a non-profit that tracks privatization, plans to roll out a legislative agenda on Tuesday, pushing for transparency and accountability laws where outsourcing is under consideration for services that include managing prison systems, transit systems and water authorities. “We want to go on the offense,” said Donald Cohen, the group’s chair. “We really find that when we take it out of the partisan frame — the labor [versus] business frame — these are good-government measures and we can get support from folks that just want to manage government well. That includes conservatives who don’t want to see corporations take over public control.  Huffington Post

How the 1% is privatizing the $600bn public education budget. The wealthy private-school owners receive funding from the government — via vouchers and other payments — and book for themselves the profits of the successful schools they create. Because of the prices charged for these schools, the vouchers that parents receive won’t be enough, so better incomes are needed to afford the better schools. At the same time, the lower income parents (most of the rest of the country) will either use their vouchers for the fly-by-night or less-good charter schools or they’ll have to send their children to increasingly useless public schools. Public schools will not disappear, except as a means of education. Only the poor will eventually use them, and they will become more like jails and youth rehab camps than actual schools. They will operate on a fraction of the money they have now. And the teaching profession, stripped of union rights and incomes, will be gutted of anyone but the desperate.  AMERICAblog (blog)

FL: In One Month, Florida Will Privatize Prison Health Care, Lay Off Nearly 2000 Workers. After a prolonged battle, Florida has set a date for when its prison health care system will be privatized, booting nearly 2,000 state employees out of their jobs. On August 1 of this year, Corizon Inc. — a Tennessee-based company with a sordid history of abuse — will become the major provider of health care to people in the state’s penal system.  ThinkProgress

KS: Liquor privatization, transportation funding will wait for another time. The state House was unable to collect enough votes for a transportation infrastructure package and the lack of a transportation deal undid necessary Senate Republican votes in the state Senate, dooming a liquor privatization measure. Kansas Watchdog (blog)

NY: NY State to privatize Long Island utility, freeze rates – Gov Cuomo. New York lawmakers announced a deal on Wednesday to privatize utility operations on Long Island and revamp the Long Island Power Authority, a state-owned New York utility company that was criticized for its response during last year’s Superstorm Sandy. The deal, announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo, includes a rate freeze through 2015. CNBC

TN: Governor says state will privatize more work. A contract to have a Chicago-based company manage state office space created controversy. It was taking effect July 1 and 126 General Services Department workers are being laid off. Haslam said the administration will look at outsourcing work where practical…. Meanwhile, state employees and their representative argue that in some of the privatization, the savings promised don’t materialize. “As far as I know, state employees were doing a good job managing the buildings,” said Robert O’Connell, executive director of the Tennessee State Employees Association. TriCities.com

 

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Pushback Against Privatization Across the Country. The decades-long effort to privatize public services and assets is hitting some bumps, with state and local governments reconsidering whether for-profit companies should be allowed to indiscriminately profit off of taxpayer dollars with limited accountability. In New Jersey, legislation to ensure that public services won’t be privatized unless it will result in actual savings for taxpayers has passed both chambers of the legislature. In Texas, a bipartisan coalition is fighting against a private prison in Montgomery County, and Kentucky is rejecting private prisons altogether. And in Fresno, California, voters rejected a proposal backed by the city’s popular mayor to privatize trash collection services.  Common Dreams

A Theory: De-privatize military industries to help achieve peace. Nationalize all the military industries, and under government control achieve astronomical savings for the taxpayers while reducing the continuing TENDENCY to “find another war, start another war, wish for another war, pretend there is a war and give us more trillions in profits” syndrome that is basic to privately owned war industries. Ask Harry Truman. Ask Dwight Eisenhower. And other sound thinkers about the Military Industrial Complex.  Daily Koz

WI: Sale of state property raises controversies in other states. Gov. Scott Walker will have new power to sell state heating plants, highways and other properties, but privatization deals in other states have ranged widely in popularity and success….The provision in the state budget is wide enough to allow for the sale of the state Capitol, as Democrats have noted, but Walker said such sales, or ones for campus dormitories, are not under consideration.  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

PA: Liquor Privatization Debate Continues. The main Pennsylvania state budget bill became law with Gov. Tom Corbett’s signature on Sunday night, as he acknowledged that the wider agenda he had sought with it of overhauling public employee pension systems, privatizing wine and liquor sales and increasing transportation funding has stalled until the fall.  NBC 10 Philadelphia

PA: Backdoor attempt to outsource Pennsylvania Lottery’s management fizzles. An effort to include language in a budget-related bill granting authority to the secretary of the Department of Revenue to privatize certain aspects of the lottery has proved to be a losing ticket. House Republican spokesman Steve Miskin said on Saturday night the idea was being explored by a lobbyist for a firm seeking to get a private management deal. Patriot-News

OH: Ohio to Privatize Prison Foodservice. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections will privatize its food service for the state’s 50,000-plus prisoners beginning in the fall. The state agency on Friday selected Aramark Corp., a Philadelphia-based company to serve meals three-times-a-day at its adult facilities. The two-year deal is worth $110 million, with the option for two, two year extensions, according to the Ohio Department of Administrative Services.  Cleveland Plain Dealer

IL: Tollway says new system will improve customer service, violation processing. The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority board approved a $44 million contract with a Chicago-based company to build a new customer service and toll violation processing system that could offer those features, officials said…. Scheduled to be in place by 2015, the system will improve how transactions from the Tollway’s 1.4 million daily drivers are processed and help eliminate violation errors, said Shana Whitehead, the Tollway’s chief of business systems. The six-year contract is with the Chicago-based management consulting and technology services firm Accenture. Chicago Tribune

WA: Districts split over charter schools. Washington voters have decided they want to add charter schools to the education mix in the state, and the three largest districts are taking different approaches to the question: What should charter schools mean to our community? Seattle has decided to basically ignore the question for now; Tacoma is still learning and exploring; and Spokane has jumped in with both feet. The Seattle Times

MI: Democrats want investigation into quality of care for veterans after privatization. House Democrats say quality of care for veterans at a state-run home in Grand Rapids has suffered since nursing aides were privatized this spring. Michigan Radio

FL: Governor signs public-private partnership measure. Gov. Rick Scott has signed a measure into law despite a veto request from a Florida League of Cities official, who argued that it favored private developers’ interests over those of taxpayers.,,,The measure’s sponsor, state Rep. Greg Steube, R-Bradenton, defended it Friday, saying that it simply creates guidelines for cities and counties and other governmental entities to use in drawing up financial arrangements for partnerships between public and private bodies….The league contended it would eliminate the necessary flexibility to negotiate and contract with private entities, adding, “The public-private framework required under the bill is specificallydesigned to benefit private entities at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.”Bradenton Herald

FL: Editorial: Dangers of privatizing work-release. Finally, residents in a Largo neighborhood can sleep a little easier. Florida’s decision Friday to close a work-release center run by Goodwill Industries-Suncoast took longer than it should have taken. But it came less than 24 hours after Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri provided evidence that little had changed there despite nine months of high-profile scrutiny and legislative action. The entire episode should give state Republican leaders pause about the continued push to put more corrections operations in private hands and how those facilities operate. Public safety, including rehabilitation for soon-to-be-released prisoners, is more important than saving a few dollars. Tampabay.com

CA: Editorial: Will UC march down path of privatization? It should be remembered that taxpayer dollars helped build institutions such as the Anderson school. Continued public support helps ensure the school remains focused on service to California, as opposed to service to alumni and corporations that contribute to the school. It would be a vote of confidence in the state for the UC to hold back on further moves towards privatization. It also should reassess some of the revenue-generating moves it made during tight times, such aggressive recruitment of foreign students willing to pay out-of-state tuition.  Sacramento Bee

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Munching Away on the “Public Good”. The epidemic of privatization spreads way beyond Chicago, and way, way beyond parking meters. It’s seeping quickly into things like airports, health clinics and, of course, education. The corporatization of everything is squeezing the life out of crucial institutions, chewing up the concept of the “public good” and spitting it into a privatized water fountain.  Truth-Out

CA: Change in UCLA MBA program prompts privatization concerns. Concerns over privatization regularly flare up as the University of California system attempts to grow with limited state support. It is happening again, as UCLA’s nationally-recognized M.B.A. program moves to a self-supported funding model. Outgoing University of California President Mark Yudof recently approved a proposal that would cut UCLA’s prestigious Anderson School of Management full-time M.B.A program loose of state funds, UCLA announced Wednesday. Sacramento Bee

MI: Lawmakers want state to probe quality of care at Grand Rapids VA Home. Dillon and Brinks have harped on purportedly diminished care quality at the home ever since more than 140 caregiver positions there were privatized… Still, an unflattering state auditor general’s report released last month found numerous problems at the home, including the lack of an on-site, board-certified psychiatrist. The report, which largely centered on inadequate protection against financial waste, also found weak controls over inventories for pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and more.  The Grand Rapids Press

 

 

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NJ: NJ Turnpike contract drops ‘snow bonus,’ ‘productivity bonus,’ other perks. Under the threat of privatization, about 100 Turnpike toll supervisors and another 150 or so unionized maintenance and administrative employees have worked out an agreement with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority that eliminates contract perks that left the authority the target of a critical state comptroller’s report three years ago.  The Star-Ledger

CA: Financial misdeeds sinking Oakland charter school.  A high-performing charter school is one step closer to closing under the weight of an audit showing its former director broke the law by paying himself $3.8 million from school funds for construction and rental services.  San Jose Mercury News

NY: Mayor Bloomberg’s Legacy: Dismantling Our Communities’ Social Services Infrastructure.  In El Barrio/East Harlem alone, we are seeing four parcels of NYCHA land being considered for luxury development (including one where a busy community center operates), the sale of a Human Resources Administration Multi-Service Center, the closure and unclear fate of the East Harlem District Public Health Office building, and the tearing down of a school serving over-age and under-credited youth to make way for more luxury housing. These are not just buildings and parcels of land; they represent direct services to the El Barrio/East Harlem community. Mayor Bloomberg has made privatization a hallmark of his administration, which has been most salient in his administration’s rampant contracting out of municipal services. But in this final year, we are watching as this agenda goes into overdrive in an effort to have the next administration inherit as many of these projects as possible, when it might be too late to stop them. The net effect of these proposals is a dismantling of the local social service infrastructure that is so vital to low-income communities like mine.  Huffington Post

TN: A new firm is taking over Davidson County’s privatized child support enforcement. But those same officials say the track record of the previous two companies that ran the agency — Maximus, headquartered in Reston, Va., and Policy Studies Inc., which Maximus purchased in 2012 — shows why privatization remains a problematic solution to government bureaucracy. Neither company lived up to its promised potential, says Davidson County Juvenile Court Magistrate Scott Rosenberg…. Some critics even claim that federal dollars meant to spur child-support enforcement only exacerbate the problem. Why should a company work harder to collect, they argue, when the government offers money to address the problem of low collection rates? Doing the job well, theoretically, could put the company out of a job. Those are some of the issues facing the agency as YoungWilliams prepares to assume control. For critics of Maximus in particular, July 1 cannot come soon enough.  Nashville Scene

NC: Bill that revamps N.C. Commerce gets preliminary OK. SB 127 is tied to Gov. Pat McCrory’s plans to privatize the state’s economic development efforts through changes to the Commerce Department, a reorganization of the regional partnerships and, potentially, the establishment of a state venture capital fund. The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area

NC: Idiocracy comes to life in the mentality of Gov. Pat McCrory. After rejecting Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, a decision that will cost the state an estimated 26,000 health care jobs, McCrory wants to turn Medicaid administration over to private companies that will take their profits off the top. Privatization is how Mike Easley’s administration wrecked mental health care in North Carolina. But why learn from history? The Independent Weekly

Goldman Sachs Gets Into Public Education. The corporate “ed reform” movement to privatize public education is quite lucrative – public education spending runs in the billions across the country. So should anyone be surprised that Wall Street has stepped out of the shadows to get in on the action? Wall Street has already been the funding base for Michelle Rhee and other privatizers but has always presented itself merely as trying to benevolently control people not control people to exploit them. But now Goldman Sachs is creating new financial instruments to finance public education.  Firedoglake

Study: Charter schools are improving, but performance still close to public schools. Students in charter schools fared better than those in traditional public schools in some states — including New Jersey — but a majority of charters across the United States still deliver no better education than traditional public schools in reading, and 40 percent are about the same in math, according to a new study released Tuesday by researchers at Stanford University. The Star-Ledger

 

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MI: Privatization battle moves to Motown. As the fight over privatization of residential waste collections in Fresno, Calif., has come to an end, another one is likely to start in Detroit. Waste & Recycling News

TN: Gov. Bill Haslam defends building privatization contract. Gov. Bill Haslam said Tuesday that while he doesn’t know what personal investments are in his blind trust, he will not benefit from the state’s office-building privatization contract with a Chicago management company in which he invested in 2010. As a candidate for governor that year, Haslam disclosed a long list of companies in which he had investments of at least $10,000, including Jones Lang LaSalle, a real-estate management and professional services company. His administration has since awarded two major contracts to JLL, first to evaluate all state-owned office space outside of the higher education system and then to take over management of all state owned and leased space except colleges and universities. Memphis Commercial Appeal

KS: Sedgwick County discusses privatizing mental health care. Turning community mental health operations over to a non-profit agency would make Sedgwick County a smaller government, but the change would be complex and could create unnecessary anxiety among staff and clients, according to an analysis shared with commissioners Tuesday….. County Manager William Buchanan ….recommends that Comcare continue under the county. “This issue came up a couple years ago. I didn’t think it was a good idea then, and I don’t think it’s a good idea now,” he said. “Having elected officials in charge instead of a private board of directors, it’s direct democracy. Otherwise it’s diffused,” Buchanan said. “No. 2, we provide superb service, so what’s the need for change?” Kansas.com

Why We Should Give a Damn About Saving the USPS. Let me be clear: Just because Congress has turned the USPS into a model of inefficiency does not mean that I support privatization (especially considering the economic impact of potentially lost jobs, and also the reliance of private companies like UPS on the USPS for delivery of non-USPS items). What it means is that we should treat the USPS like any other company that is faced with necessary changes. Let’s remove the $5.5 billion/year roadblock to let it do its job and grow. Let’s support a Congress that values a free press; that isn’t focusing on slash-and-burn techniques to save the institution, but rather gives it room to adapt; that reinvigorates the USPS’s role in American communities, rural and urban. Folio Magazine

The Next Stage in Public School Privatization: Huge Tax Credits. Past efforts of conservative groups to privatize elementary and secondary education, like vouchers, haven’t really taken off. But now Wisconsin has a crafty new plan: just give rich people great big tax credits for sending their kids to private school. Washington Monthly

New CREDO Study Shows That Charter School Quality Is All Over the Map. Sara Mead argues the real story here continues to be the enormous variability in charter school outcomes. If you think of the idea of charter schools as being roughly “let’s let people try some different ways of running schools” variability is about what you’d expect. But there seems to be systematic state-by-state variation.   Slate

Teach for America is a step toward privatizing public schools. In districts across the country, Teach for America “teachers” get their feet wet for a couple years before moving on to be hedge fund managers, directors of nonprofits, attorneys and CFOs with for-profit education companies, etc. The vast majority of TFA “teachers” do not go on to teach for a career, but merely use it as a steppingstone into another profession where they can make three to five times as much. Former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee may be the most notable example, who went on to found StudentsFirst, an aggressive school reform organization.  Boise Weekly

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To Toll or Not: Could the Feds Lift a Ban on Interstate Tolling? If Patrick Jones has his way, you could wind up paying a toll every time you drive on the interstate. If that sounds shocking, it should. Historically, tolling on the interstate has been prohibited, except for a few roadways — mainly on the East Coast — that were grandfathered in when the interstate system was created. But Jones, who leads the trade association representing toll owners and operators and the businesses that serve them, says it’s high time for a change. Governing

VA: Transurban Ditches Old Toll Road, New One Struggles. Australian toll road company dumps an old toll road in Virginia as a newly opened route struggles. Virginia’s transportation policy has been dominated by tolling. Both Governor Bob McDonnell (R) and his predecessor Tim Kaine (D) saw the use of public-private partnerships as a means of raising revenue for the state while claiming not to have raised taxes. The tolling push continues with the construction of tolling infrastructure on existing lanes of Interstate 95, even though similar projects in the state are struggling to stay afloat. TheNewspaper.com

MI: Detroit Institute Of Arts, Zoo Safe For Now, But Could They Be Sold. “Bidding the stuff off is completely ridiculous,” he said. “There are better ways of dealing with Detroit’s debt” than selling off an art collection piece by irreplaceable piece. But emergency manager Kevyn Orr, a bankruptcy expert hired by the state in March to steer Detroit away from insolvency, has made it clear that everything of value owned by the city could be up for grabs. A decision on whether to file for bankruptcy could come within weeks. In a letter to DIA officials, Orr gave notice that there are no sacred cows, even if bankruptcy means cutting the city’s soul to save it. Huffington Post

TN: Governor says state will privatize more work. Gov. Bill Haslam says he intends to continue privatizing some state government operations. A contract to have a Chicago-based company manage state office space created controversy. It takes effect July 1 and 126 General Services Department workers will be laid off….. A Davidson County judge is set to rule on a lawsuit by the Tennessee State Employees Association and individual workers who say the state violated its own requirement to help affected workers find other positions by removing a website that would let them look for state jobs.  WRCB-TV

IL: Guvs to pitch Illiana Expressway to investor types…It would run 46.8 miles from Interstate 65 just outside of Lowell in Indiana to Interstate 55 near Wilmington in Illinois…Both governors hope investors will pay the estimated $1.3 billion construction cost in exchange for a piece of, or all of, the tolls that will be collected once it opens to traffic. nwitimes.com

LA: Privatization of state insurance services on track, but savings could drop, auditor says. The privatization of Louisiana’s lines of insurance and loss prevention services, initiated in 2010, is on track to save the state millions of dollars over the next few years, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor says. But due to an increase in contract costs as well as a dependence on old data, he warned the total savings could drop by as much as 30 percent under current estimates. NOLA.com

LA: La. lawmakers question hiring Texas firm for prisoner care. Louisiana lawmakers are questioning a decison by the state Department of Corrections to hire a Texas company for telemedicine services for prisoners, rather than continuing to use the LSU health system. TheTownTalk.com

PA: Philadelphia: 4,000 Laid Off School Employees Working Their Last Days. Now that the district is grappling with a $304 million shortfall, 3,859 district employees are being laid off — most of them spending their last day on the job today. The district’s largest shedding of jobs in decades is wiping out entire categories, including school secretaries and nearly every assistant principal. Philadelphia Inquirer

PA: Liquor privatization bill reworked. The Senate Law & Justice Committee gutted the privatization bill that passed the House in March, replacing its provisions with a package that the committee chairman, Sen. Chuck McIlhinney, R-Bucks, unveiled last week. Instead of disbanding the state’s wholesale purchasing operation, the amended bill would require studies to assess the wholesale value of the system. Where the House bill would use a formula to shutter the state wine and spirits stores, the Senate amendment would allow the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to decide when outlets would close. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

PA: Groups Voice Opposition to Liquor Privatization Plan. Groups opposed to a bill that would privatize liquor sales in Pennsylvania held a rally at Mercy Hospital of UPMC Monday, saying the proposal would result in a rise in first responders’ workloads. 90.5 WESA

PA: Pension shenanigans – letter to editor. Why is the governor in such a hurry to privatize our pensions? Answer: His millionaire friends are simply salivating at the chance to put billions of dollars into their 401(k) and 403(b) programs. Then they can mismanage it, squander it and outright steal it. Do recent events on Wall Street and in these types of retirement programs ring a bell with anyone? Pittsburgh Post Gazette

IA: State received 2 bids for sale of Iowa Communications Network. The state of Iowa received two bids for the lease or purchase of its statewide communications network – and they both came from the same company….It’ll be up to the governor on whether to pursue a contract for privatizing the network, but any deal will have to be approved by the state Legislature. The Iowa Communications Network, created by the Legislature in 1989, is a fiber-optic network that reaches all 99 Iowa counties and provides video conferencing, telephone communications, data and Internet services to government agencies, schools, libraries and hospitals. Des Moines Register

ME: Amid Turmoil, Maine Legislature Fails to Ban Privatization of Charter Schools….One veto was of a bill that would have required all charter schools in the state to be nonprofit. NPQ has been tracking this argument for a while, demonstrating that there are a number of ways in which private organizations are taking public tax dollars. This bill, which was backed by as many as 97 legislators but was still four votes short of the number required for the override, would have ensured that taxpayer dollars intended for the education of students in the state would be used for that purpose, not for the profit of a few individuals. Non Profit Quarterly

NJ: New Jersey Signs Lottery Privatization Contract. New Jersey has become the third state—after Illinois and Indiana—to privatize the management of its state lottery. Under the 15-year contact, a private manager will take over the lottery’s marketing and sales functions  in exchange for an upfront . payment of $120 million and a contractual commitment to generate over $1.42 billion in additional net income for the state, relative to in-house operation. Budget & Tax News

OP-ED: When Education Is a Business. But what is happening to higher education today, as it undergoes a corporate makeover, is considerably less amusing. The sharply reduced government funding for public universities, the replacement of full-time faculty with low-wage, rootless adjuncts, the rapid development of mass, online courses for academic credit, and the increasingly pervasive corporate presence on campus all indicate more concern for the business-defined bottom line than for intellectual growth. Future satirists of university life will be hard-pressed to stay ahead of the emerging reality. HuntingtonNews.net

 

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OK: Outgoing Okla. prisons chief warns of inmate hike…. The private prison lobby is an influential one at the state Capitol, and many lawmakers support shifting more inmates into private facilities, a concept Jones refused to endorse. “Just because something is legal doesn’t make it ethically and morally right,” Jones said after the meeting. “Sometimes it’s easy to privatize people that don’t have a voice, and it’s easy to privatize the disenfranchised of the world who don’t have a voice. Sometimes there’s a conflict of ideologies there.” Jones also warned that giving too much leverage to the private prison industry could pose problems for the state down the road.   San Francisco Chronicle

FL: State hopes to privatize more work release centers. The leaders of Florida’s prison system believe work release is one of the best ways to help inmates succeed in the outside world. But funding the nation’s third-largest prison system has been challenging in recent years given state budget woes. To save money, the state has turned a quarter of Florida’s 32 work release facilities over to private operators, such as Goodwill Industries-Suncoast. Six more could become private by year’s end — saving taxpayers $4.4 million, according to Department of Corrections Secretary Michael Crews.  Tampabay.com           

NC: Chiefs oppose ABC police outsourcing. Police Chief Jose Lopez and another local lawman have weighed in against a potential move by the county ABC Board to outsource the job of inspecting bars, restaurants and stores that sell alcohol. Durham Herald Sun

OH: Ohio prisons system announces privatization of meal services for $28 million. Ohio is turning over the feeding of its approximately 50,000 prison inmates to a private company in an attempt to save $14 million annually in the face of looming budget deficits. Daily Journal

OH: Who benefits from more, bigger development deals?…Gov. John Kasich has replaced the Ohio Department of Development with the essentially private corporation JobsOhio as the primary state agency for retaining and attracting business. The governor insists the state needs to operate “at the speed of business” to compete for its share of development activity. JobsOhio officials say — but haven’t shown — that private companies will walk away from a deal rather than be forced to reveal too much of what they consider proprietary data. So JobsOhio has largely kept taxpayers in the dark about what it’s doing with its chief source of revenue: the $125 million or so in annual profits from state government’s liquor monopoly, which back the bonds the company issues. Absurdly but effectively, the governor and General Assembly have defined these profits as private money rather than the public assets they are. That has helped keep State Auditor Dave Yost from performing a full audit of JobsOhio on taxpayers’ behalf. Ohioans still don’t know how well JobsOhio really is doing at creating jobs and recruiting employers. Toledo Blade

NJ: Lottery privatization deal reached in NJ. New Jersey has signed a contract to outsource part of its lottery operation and has collected $120 million from the vendor as part of the deal, state officials announced Friday. Vineland Daily Journal

LA: Legislators questions impact of privatization on women’s health care. Much of the women’s health care provided at LSU’s hospital in Bogalusa will continue after its takeover by a Catholic-affiliated group, but no birth control services or abortions will be done, hospital executives said Friday. The exceptions based on religious reasons caught the attention of some members of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget as the legislators reviewed the agreement allowing the private group to take over the public hospital.  The Advocate

LA: Texas firm hired for Louisiana prisoner telemedicine care. Gov. Bobby Jindal’s push to privatize the university-run hospitals and clinics includes contracting with a Texas company for telemedicine for Louisiana prisoners.Telemedicine lets doctors give remote checkups through a video hookup and other electronic communications. That can shrink the costs of prisoner transportation and lower safety risks.  Shreveport Times

NE: NU regents reject health center privatization plan. The University of Nebraska Board of Regents rejected a 36-year contract Friday with Bryan Health to operate and build a new home for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s student health center…. On Friday, five of the eight regents voted against the proposal, as well as all four student regents, whose votes don’t count toward the vote total.  Journal Star

Bill Moyers: The United States of ALEC: Privatizing America One Statehouse At A Time. In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who’s behind it. Using interviews, documents, and field reporting, “United States of ALEC — A Follow-Up” explores ALEC’s self-serving machine at work, acting in a way one Wisconsin politician describes as “a corporate dating service for lonely legislators and corporate special interests.  OurFuture.org

Robert Kennedy Criticizes Privatization of Water at World Environment Forum. Privatization is currently the most troubling issue we face in relation to water. That is the opinion of Robert F. Kennedy Jr…”Water ought to be a right for all human beings,” asserts Kennedy. He believes that free market capitalism is the best solution, but it must be managed with a social interest, otherwise future generations will have to pay for our mistakes and excesses. And he insists: “We should encourage a more rational use of water, but we cannot restrict the use of water by the poorest people through pricing.”   PR Newswire

Fighting more forest fires will come back to burn us. “Privatization has changed firefighting, and not for the better,” says Rich Fairbanks, a former fire planner for the U.S. Forest Service and one-time foreman of an elite “hot shot” crew. Private companies supply everything from helicopters and bulldozers to caterers and mobile shower facilities for the fire camps. Most don’t get paid if they’re not actively fighting a fire; consequently, they lobby at the local, regional, and national level to fight as many blazes as they can. “There’s a lot of money to be made in fire suppression,” says Crystal Kolden, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Idaho who focuses on wildfire. “Contractors are very good at playing on the public’s fear of large wildfires. Those private entities … have an incredibly powerful lobby in Washington, D.C.” Salon

News

How Privatizing Leads to Crony Corruption. The intelligence brouhaha and Snowden fiasco — how could this guy have been hired, given his high-level classification, paid $122,000 a year, and gain access to areas expressly off-limits for someone at his level? — should make us focus on the bigger issue, and bigger problem, here. We have vastly over-privatized, and in the process lost control over swaths of important policy areas while allowing unaccountable and even outlaw behavior to expand. And we have created areas where crony capitalism can meet crony government to create crony corruption that cheats all taxpayers. The Atlantic

Driving declines could challenge toll roads. Americans are driving less, and that means less revenue for toll road operators such as SH130 Concession Co., according to a study by Fitch Ratings. The conclusion could mean trouble for toll routes — including Central Texas’ State Highway 130 — which was built by Spanish company SH130 Concession and its parent company Cintra. The road reportedly cost $1.3 billion, and the company will maintain and operate it for the next 50 years to recoup the cost. Austin Business Journal

NE: City looks to privatize parking. For now, the job of writing parking tickets, running parking garages and emptying coins from meters belongs to city employees. But by September, at least some of those operations will likely be in the hands of a private company. Omaha World-Herald

LA: Questions continue over deals to privatize public hospitals. Four LSU hospitals, including those in New Orleans and Lafayette, change from public to private partner operations Monday, but details of those and other hospital agreements remain under question. Members of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget on Thursday pressed for information about budget commitments amid their complaints about incomplete documents and a sketchy bullet point presentation of “significant” changes to the New Orleans and Lafayette agreements.  The Advocate