The Privatization of Public Services, State by State
Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, sends us this.
It seems there’s no public service or piece of property that private companies are not eyeing as potential revenue streams. While funding anti-government think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), companies like Corrections Corporation of America, Waste Management, Maximus, Intuit, Laidlaw, Northrup Grumman, Koch Companies, Macquarie Capital Advisers, Pinnacle West, and UnitedHealthcare are hoping to use government as their candy store.
They want to take over our roads, bridges, parking lots, water systems, college dorms, and prisons. And they want to deliver public services like transit systems, school cafeterias, trash and recycling pick up, mental health services and many others. The following is a quick scan of just some of the proposals.
Water
The Emergency manager of Flint, Mich., is considering selling off its water and sewer systems to the highest bidder. The systems are currently generating revenues for the city.
Long Island’s Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano’s proposal is proposing to privatize the county’s sewage treatment system. Mangano also announced the privatization of Long Island Bus company to Veolia Transportation.
The Texas Lower Colorado River Authority is selling 18 retail water and wastewater systems in the Hill Country and in its southeast service area to [Canada-based] Corix Infrastructure.
Schools
School districts across the country are planning to contract out custodial, clerical, cafeteria and bus Read the rest of this entry »
Florida Seniors Speak Out Against Voter Suppression
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Laura Markwardt, senior communications associate at the Alliance for Retired Americans, sends us this.
Hundreds of Florida seniors and others turned out for a rally in Tampa Friday against voter suppression. The rally was followed by a hearing inside the courthouse about the new law chaired by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin who came to investigate whether the state law denies voters their constitutional rights. Durbin is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights.
Recent changes in Florida’s election rules will have a dramatic impact on Florida’s seniors and other voters. The new law passed in the Florida legislature cuts early voting from 14 days to seven days before the election, which hurts many seniors who vote early because they are physically unable to stand in a long line or make it to the polls on Election Day. Limiting the ability to vote early will indeed impact Florida’s seniors and will disproportionately affect African Americans, Latinos, working families and young voters.
Florida Alliance for Retired Americans President Tony Fransetta spoke at the rally about his concerns about voter suppression saying,
The law is an effort to limit voter turnout – and it shouldn’t stand.
In addition to his senior peers, who will be severely impacted by the new law, Fransetta, a retired Read the rest of this entry »
Gov. Scott Set to Hand Florida’s Prisons to Corporate America
Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, sends us this.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-controlled legislature are moving fast to privatize all 29 prison facilities in 18 counties in southern Florida.
Last year, the GOP prison privatization proposal was ruled unconstitutional because it was wrapped into a budget proposal, a violation of Florida laws that requires policy changes be in separate laws. Tallahassee Judge Jackie Fulford ruled that the lawmakers rushed the process.
The privatizers aren’t making the same mistake this time. Not only are they proposing to privatize the prisons but they are changing the law to be able to privatize any service as fast, as easily and as secretly as possible. Under the latest proposals, an agency would not have to report its privatization of a program or service until after the contract is signed. And they also would eliminate a current legal requirement to do a cost-benefit analysis before privatizing any government function.
Transport Workers Set to Protest ‘Job Cremator’ Romney
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Members of the Transport Workers (TWU), whose jobs are facing elimination by Bain & Co., will protest outside campaign offices of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the days leading up to the Florida primary election on Jan. 31. Calling Romney ”a job cremator, not a job creator,” TWU President James Little says Romney:
made a fortune snatching up companies, closing factories and laying off workers. Now, Bain & Company—which still lines Mitt Romney’s pockets with their profits—has been hired to axe workers at AMR Corporation.
Some of that fortune is on display today, as Romney’s tax returns show he amassed $45 million in the past two years alone.
State Legislatures Attack Jobless Workers Rather than Create Jobs
Andy Richards on our Field Communications staff sends us this.
Many state legislatures have gone back into session this week and some state lawmakers aren’t looking to create badly needed jobs. Instead, the first item on their agenda is to attack jobless workers and their families.
The legislature in South Carolina is among them. This week, a senate panel approved legislation that would require unemployed workers to pass drug tests to get their unemployment insurance (UI), volunteer a minimum of 16 hours a week and look for only full-time employment opportunities after a certain period. The legislation will now go before the full Senate Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee for review and could be approved as early as Thursday.
At the same time, the executive director of the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce, Abraham Turner, announced new changes to agency policies that would go into effect Thursday, including forcing jobless workers to take a job at minimum wage after receiving 20 weeks of unemployment insurance.
Gov. Nikki Haley—who has used much of 2011 attacking the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) and President Obama while she watched her approval rating hit bottom—said in October that she “so wants” drug testing for unemployed workers. Unfortunately for Haley, the claims she used to back up her arguments were debunked as exaggerations.
Check Out Visits by Jobless Workers to Lawmakers’ Capitol Hill Offices
Jobless workers and members of the faith and labor communities visited lawmakers in Congress yesterday to urge them to extend unemployment insurance (UI) for the long-term unemployed. Hundreds gathered for a rally on Capitol Hill before fanning out to talk with individual lawmakers.
Check out these video clips of visits to lawmakers from New Hampshire, Colorado, Florida and North Carolina.
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Floridians Tell Rep. Mica: Don’t Flush Working Families, Jobs Down the Toilet
Andy Richards on our Field Communications staff highlights how Floridians are trying to clean up their state.
Before Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) heads back to Washington, D.C., next week, Floridians across the state sent him a clear message today at his five office locations: Don’t flush the rights of working families and good-paying jobs down the toilet by delaying a long-term FAA reauthorization.
To make sure he got the message, Floridians delivered toilet plungers, brooms and shovels at five of Mica’s offices in Deltona, Maitland, Ormond Beach, Palatka and St. Augustine to tell him to clean up the mess he made while in Washington.
After shutting down the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in an attempt to fulfill his extreme partisan agenda—a move that left nearly 100,000 workers without paychecks to support their families and which cost taxpayers more than $400 million in tax revenue—working families pushed back and forced Mica to temporarily extend the FAA funding through mid-September. The pressure forced Mica to lament in the Washington Post:
Florida Gov. Pays Just $360/Year for Health Care
Not that we want to skew the Transport Workers (TWU) contest for worst governor, but here’s a doozy about one of the contest’s nominees.
Seems Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a government-bashing, tea party follower is paying just $30 a month for health care—state taxpayers are covering the rest. Yet Scott easily handed over $73 million of his own cash to get elected.
According to Mother Jones, Scott has:
laid off thousands of Sunshine State employees, slashed their benefits, turned down (most of) the federal government’s health care dollars, and put extra financial pressure on Florida retirees and Medicaid recipients. But Scott and his dependents pay one-fifth what a janitor in the state Capitol pays for health insurance…and less than 3 percent of what a retired state trooper pays for life-saving coverage.
Add Scott to the list of anti-government hypocrites who decry public service unless they benefit from it.
Extreme Political Agenda, Not Jobs, Behind Budget Cuts Across Country
Andy Richards on our Field Communications staff highlights the anti-jobs agenda of Republican state and national lawmakers.
Earlier this year, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels sat down with NPR. During the interview, he was asked whether he thought pushing a partisan political agenda that includes deep budget cuts were worth it even if it cost a lot of jobs. He empathetically answered, “Yes.” This zeal for moving extreme partisan policies at all costs has taken hold across the country with anti-working family governors and their political allies. These lawmakers ran on promises of creating jobs but instead are leaving behind massive job loss after passing ideologically-driven budgets with cuts to education, health care and other vital services that hurt working families and local communities.
Take for example Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Michigan. Reports show that the punishing budget cuts and partisan agenda of Govs. Scott Walker, John Kasich, Rick Scott and Rick Snyder could cost more than 100,000 jobs. Here are the numbers, state-by-state:
- More than 21,000 jobs are likely to be lost because of Gov. Walker’s budget, according to a UW-Madison economist study.
- Innovation Ohio estimates Gov. Kasich’s budget will cause the loss of more than 51,000 jobs.
- Gov. Scott’s budget would cost well over 14,000 jobs, according to estimates from the St. Peterburg Times.
- A report released in Michigan last week shows that nearly 15,000 education jobs because of Gov. Snyder’s budget cuts.
Add the 28,000 jobs lost from the refusal of Walker, Kasich and Scott to build high-speed rail in their states to that total and you are well above 100,000.
But these four states are not the only ones facing expected job loss from painful political choices from of extreme legislators. Read the rest of this entry »
Republicans Aiming to Take Away Voting Rights in 36 States
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More evidence that Republicans are determined to grab as much power as they can at the expense of everyone but the rich. Not satisfied with attacking the rights of workers, Republicans in 36 states are going after the most sacred American right—the right to vote. The We Party reports that through a myriad of proposals, they are trying to suppress the votes of traditionally Democratic voters, including minorities, the poor, people who live in rural areas, seniors and students.
Last week, the Wisconsin Senate added another chapter to its anti-democratic record by passing a voter ID bill that the non-partisan state Legislative Fiscal Bureau says would disenfranchise 20 percent of the state’s voters, especially in rural areas. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University estimates that 11 percent of voters nationwide do not have official IDs that would pass muster for these new and proposed state laws.
