Blog - In the Public Interest https://inthepublicinterest.org/blog/ In the Public Interest is a national nonprofit research and policy organization that studies public goods and services. Mon, 25 Mar 2024 14:54:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://inthepublicinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/cropped-default-itpi-e1642446124373-32x32.png Blog - In the Public Interest https://inthepublicinterest.org/blog/ 32 32 Issues and Considerations for Value for Money Analyses https://inthepublicinterest.org/issues-and-considerations-for-value-for-money-analyses/ Fri, 29 Oct 2021 20:06:18 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=11296 A memo discussing important issues and considerations when designing, understanding, and evaluating VfM analyses.

The post Issues and Considerations for Value for Money Analyses appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
When a public-private partnership (P3) delivery method is being considered for an infrastructure project, governmental entities typically rely on a “value for money” (VfM) analysis to compare lifecycle costs of designing, building, financing, operating, and maintaining an asset when using various project delivery methods.

This memo discusses important issues and considerations when designing, understanding, and evaluating VfM analyses.

                                                

Photo by Arizona Department of Transportation.

The post Issues and Considerations for Value for Money Analyses appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
A Guide to Understanding and Evaluating the Use of Public-Private Partnerships for Public Buildings https://inthepublicinterest.org/a-guide-to-understanding-and-evaluating-the-use-of-public-private-partnerships-for-public-buildings/ Wed, 24 Jun 2020 20:29:32 +0000 http://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=10268 A guide for better understanding and analyzing public building (schools, etc.) public-private partnership (P3) proposals, contracts, and related legislation.

The post A Guide to Understanding and Evaluating the Use of Public-Private Partnerships for Public Buildings appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
 

This guide aims to help advocates, policymakers, and other stakeholders better understand and analyze public building (schools, etc.) public-private partnership (P3) proposals, contracts, and related legislation.

We describe critical issues and include key questions stakeholders can raise to ensure that a given project advances the public good. While this is not an exhaustive list of questions, it provides a useful framework to examine P3 deals involving public buildings.

   

The post A Guide to Understanding and Evaluating the Use of Public-Private Partnerships for Public Buildings appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
Huntington Beach City Council Ignores Broad Opposition to Library Privatization https://inthepublicinterest.org/huntington-beach-city-council-ignores-broad-opposition-to-library-privatization/ Mon, 25 Mar 2024 14:54:08 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16114 Huntington Beach citizens overwhelming oppose library; sabotaging Texas public schools; will public housing go private?

The post Huntington Beach City Council Ignores Broad Opposition to Library Privatization appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
HIGHLIGHTS

JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST

First, the Good News

1) National/California: Despite the Huntington Beach City Council’s decision to proceed with exploring the corporate privatization of the public library’s operations, there were many excellent interventions in the council’s hearings opposing the scheme. The LA Times reports that “Council members listened to three hours of public comments from 108 residents largely against the idea, and more than 600 emails submitted were almost all against privatization.” The full meeting is on YouTube and is well worth watching.

Opposition to the proposed move is overwhelming. One former 32-year veteran worker at the library wrote, “By voting to explore privatization options for our city’s beloved, award-winning public library, the tone-deaf conservatives on the Huntington Beach City Council have shown once again their true authoritarian colors. Despite receiving over 800 emails in opposition to the move and listening to 100 speakers object to privatization at the City Council meeting, the council voted 4-3 in favor of taking the next steps to outsource our library to profiteers…

“Their request-for proposal process is just a formality because the city for the past few months has been quietly exploring a proposal from private, for-profit Maryland-based Library Systems & Services, of which former Huntington Beach Mayor Mike Posey is a sales executive. If this deal is inked, Huntington Beach taxpayers would turn over their money to wealthy out-of-state investors who have no interest in our community.”

The Voice of OC reports that “a vast majority of residents who spoke during public comment were against both proposals, with the council nearly throwing multiple people out of the room for chanting ‘Shame!’ when the council majority approved the move. ‘I want the people removed now,’ said Councilman Tony Strickland right before a 5-minute recess was called after the audience outburst.”

“I don’t know what the terms of an outsourcing contract might be, but I do know that outsourced libraries are widely known for being a revolving door of workers,” Senior Youth Services Librarian Laura Jenkins told the OC Register. “Gone will be the days of the family librarian who grows with families as their children age. That to me is the biggest tragedy that will come with possible outsourcing.”

The controversy is unfolding against a backdrop of efforts to restrict the availability of library books for political and religious reasons. The Democratic Party of Orange County is opposing the measure. “The extremist majority on the Huntington Beach City Council is pushing ahead with their radical culture war instead of doing anything to actually help our community. Last night, the Council established a community review board with unchallengeable authority to decide which books are and are not ‘appropriate’ (by their standards) to be stocked in HB libraries’ children’s sections. Now, they’re actually considering privatizing public library operations altogether. Workers who have given their lives to serving the community face losing pay, benefits, even their jobs. Residents aren’t going to sit still for this. The resistance is forming including Huntington Beach Public Library supporters, labor, community groups, and Surf City residents! Protect Huntington Beach Orange Coast Huddle.”

The impact of privatization on intellectual freedom and the public interest has been an issue for decades. A quarter century ago, Patricia Glass Schuman summed it up in Library Journal: “A librarian employed by a corporation may have an ethical obligation to uphold free speech but may enjoy no legal protection when resisting censorship by his or her employer. Also, some private companies, anxious to renew their contracts, might be tempted to relax their commitment to intellectual freedom policies if it meant avoiding controversy and the possibility of nonrenewal. The potential for conflicts of interest is high. Imagine being forced to decide whether to provide badly needed—but expensive—services to homeless shelters when that will impact your employer’s profit margin, your performance appraisal, and your raise.”

2) National: An oldie but goody by Caleb Nichols: “Public-Private Partnerships Are Quietly Hollowing Out Our Public Libraries: Private companies contracted to ‘streamline’ public libraries are doing it at the cost of decent-paying union jobs.”

Nichols gets to the heart of the matter. “Instead of working toward maintaining or shrinking already miniscule budgets, local governments, armed with talking points and data from ALA-accredited librarians, should begin forcefully advocating for a significantly larger slice of the pie. Rather than selling libraries off to the highest bidder who promises to deliver more for less, let’s attack this problem at its root by taking away the weak point that LS&S is so great at exploiting—this public perception that public goods like libraries shouldn’t have large budgets. Follow the lead of public library advocacy groups like EveryLibrary and advocate for giving public libraries more money, and you take away the only real leverage LS&S has.”

There are alternative models out there in addition to adequately funding our libraries. For instance, yesterday the L.A. Report reported that “a small printer focused on Southern California stories was recently donated to the LA Public Library, a very loved and cherished institution within Los Angeles. We check in with Angel City Press a couple of months in at its new home. (…) City Librarian John Szabo says the focus will remain on telling unique LA stories. Angel City Press is both a small business, but it’s also a very loved and cherished institution within Los Angeles. Angel City was donated by its retiring co-founders, so the library did not pay for the small business, but it will receive profits from book sales. Szabo hopes sales are high enough to fund an expansion of offerings. Angel City Press has not done an e-book before, they’ve not published an e-audio book, and also they’ve never done a children’s book. The idea of doing something like that would be wonderful.” [Audio, about 13 minutes]

3) National: AFSCME President Lee Saunders joined the Axios podcast to discuss the state of public sector unionism. Saunders told Niala Boodhoo “We’ve got to talk with people and listen to what they’ve got to say and then urge them to organize so they can have that seat at the table. And we are, meaning AFSCME, because we’re organizing all over the country. We continue to organize in the public sector. We’re organizing in the cultural setting, meaning museums and zoos and libraries. We’re organizing in states where we have just gotten collective bargaining or they passed legislation to enable us to organize. That includes Colorado and Nevada.” [Audio, about 20 minutes]

4) National: Good Jobs First’s Deputy Executive Director Arlene Martínez gives us some examples of places that are practicing transparent economic development policies. “Economic development “impact reports” can be outrageous. Like when they assume people going to a basketball or hockey game will buy hotel rooms for $731 per night and parking spaces for $75. The Post’s story helped shed light on the rosy, unrealistic projections, and light is a vital part of good government ­­– especially in economic development, where puffy press releases and unsourced figures too often go unscrutinized. In honor of Sunshine Week, we’ve spent last week spotlighting the good ways places are being transparent when it comes to economic development and corporate accountability. They can do it – so can all our governments.”

5) National: “Why are we letting financial hucksters dictate our local news?” asks Jim Hightower. “Not only have hundreds of papers been eliminated, but half of the remaining dailies are now owned by Wall Street predators like Softbank, the Japanese hedge fund that controls the huge USA Today Gannett chain. Their interest is not in your town or quality journalism, but in slashing news coverage to jack up their profits. Such absentee owners have eliminated nearly 60% of America’s reporters and other newsroom staff in just 20 years. Let’s be clear. Real journalism is labor driven. (…) Are we such unimaginative clods that we can’t figure out how to finance honest, non-plutocratic news for our democracy? This is Jim Hightower saying, for ideas on how to revive local news in your town, contact rebuildlocalnews.org and give news democracy a boost.” [Video, 2 minutes]

6) Florida: Remember the major Surfside building collapse in Florida a few years ago that killed 98 people and set off an uproar about how local Florida officials were induced to ignore potentially fatal structural deficiencies in old buildings and keep them in service long after their useful life? Well state lawmakers have finally taken a step in the direction of removing legal obstacles to the replacement of old infrastructure.

7) Maryland: Union support is growing for a task force to scrutinize developer tax breaks, The Real News Network’s Stephen Janis and Taya Graham report. “AFSCME, which represents 45,000 government workers across the state, submitted written testimony supporting SB 733, Task Force to Study Transparency in Tax Incentives. The bill would authorize a state body to analyze a variety of tax incentives and subsidies that have been used extensively to lure developers to build across the state. ‘Tax incentives are a significant tool used by governments to promote economic development and attract investment. However, without proper oversight and transparency measures, there is a risk of misuse or ineffectiveness,’ the union wrote. ‘Establishing a task force will help ensure that tax incentives are administered accountability and in the best interest of the public.’”

8) Texas: The Texas Tribune’s Stephen Simpson reports that Texas’ libraries are working to bridge the state’s mental health services gap. “From the Texas State Library and Archives Commission in Austin offering a mental health resources page to the San Antonio Public Library’s mental health awareness presentation on the signs of anxiety to a private telehealth room where patrons can meet with a counselor via Zoom in North Texas town of Pottsboro, these librarians do their best to help their communities with mental health resources. The National Library of Medicine’s South Central Region gave the Pottsboro Area Library a $20,000 COVID-19 outreach grant to develop programs to improve health literacy and information access related to the pandemic. In 2021, the American Library Association awarded the Hewitt Public Library a $3,000 grant to create community conversations about mental health.”

9) Think Tanks: What does it mean and what will it take to build a feminist economy? PowerSwitch Action’s Lauren Jacobs and Cindy Weisner of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance have answers. “We’re fighting for the FARE economy: the feminist anti-racist regenerative economy. All of those words are very deliberate and specific,” says Wiesner. “We need to understand racial and gender capitalism to its full extent; that means understanding how racism and gender oppression are the pillars that function to maintain capitalism. To counter that, we need a gender justice feminist analysis and a racial justice abolitionist analysis incorporated into the economy that we want to build.”

10) New Publications: Inside Climate News has launched a series of local bureaus, called ICN Local. You can get on the mailing list of your choice by emailing them at memberships AT insideclimatenews.org. Here are the bureaus: Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Midwest, Mountain West, Southeast, Southwest, West Coast.

11) Forthcoming book: This September, Josh Cowen’s The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers will be released by Harvard Education Press. “In The Privateers, Josh Cowen lays bare the surprising history of tax-funded school choice programs in the United States and warns of the dangers of education privatization. A former evaluator of state and local school voucher programs, Cowen demonstrates how, as such programs have expanded in the United States, so too has the evidence-informed case against them.”

Education

12) National: In the Public Interest’s Executive Director Donald Cohen on Preaching—and Teaching—What They Practice: Discrimination. “What do they do with all these public dollars being bled from public schools? They preach—and practice—discrimination. Education Voters of Pennsylvania has pulled together a list of the ways voucher schools have discriminated in that state, and Illinois Families for Public Schools has done the same for Illinois—both make for bracing reading. But what’s true for Illinois and Pennsylvania is true across the country.” How so?

  • Voucher schools can—and do—discriminate against LGBTQ students.
  • Voucher schools can—and do—discriminate based on religion.
  • Voucher schools can—and do—discriminate against students requiring special education attention
  • Voucher supported schools can—and do—teach students that women should not have the same rights as men.

Jennifer Berkshire spoke with Rachel Laser of American United for the Separation of Church and State and two plaintiffs in a case challenging a religious charter school in Oklahoma. Religious Charter Schools are Coming. Be Worried. “Last year Oklahoma approved the nation’s first tax-payer funded religious charter school. It won’t be the last… As our guests explain, the school is part of a larger project to roll back the clock on civil rights, disability rights and labor protections. Now for the good news: tearing down the separation between church and state turns out to be really unpopular.” [Audio, about 40 minutes].

13) California: Authors Against Book Bans say, “while the CA state legislature took action with AB1078 last session to help ensure that school districts could not reject textbooks or school library books for discriminatory reasons, the passage of Ordinance 4318 [in Huntington Beach—ed.] shows that book bans are still alive and well in CA.” Others are weighing in. “As advocacy organizations that champion intellectual freedom, professional librarianship, & access to diverse materials without fear or favor, @EveryLibrary & @PENamerica are deeply troubled by proposed ordinance No. 4318 in Huntington Beach.”

14) Colorado: On the Unraveling Education podcast, Danielle Ford interviewed Mike DeGuire, who “was a principal in Denver, Colorado for 12 years, where he witnessed privatization agendas play out that led to half of the Denver School District being taken over by Charter Schools. As a researcher, public education advocate, and member of Advocates for Public Education Policy, he’s spent the last few years pushing for major changes to the Denver school district and the state of Colorado.” DeGuire tells Ford, ‘of those four years, I learned a ton. I became aware of the privatization agenda. I was floored by it. I went deep into researching it. As I was researching it, I was trying to inform people about it. I learned that there’s some people that know about it, but not a whole lot. It was really frustrating. As we were going, I was fighting back on everything. I would learn these are the companies that are doing X, Y, and Z, and then I would put it on the record.’” [Audio, about an hour]. Among the books discussed is Henig, Jacobsen and Reckhow’s Outside Money in School Board Elections: The Nationalization of Education Politics.

15) Florida: United Faculty of Florida (UFF) have written a powerful open letter regarding the recent removal of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) positions on behalf of UF Faculty and Graduate Assistants. “With the recent news that UF terminated 13 staff positions and halted DEI administrative assignments for another 15 faculty members, it’s clear that winning one-sided political arguments is more important to our state’s leaders than ensuring our students can benefit from a world-class higher education. UF must ensure that the staff they hired has the ability to retain employment. While Florida’s Governor seems to take a perverse joy in attacking diversity, equity and inclusion, the sentiment is not shared by your faculty or your graduate assistants, whether they are members of our union or not. We want to be clear: the action to terminate positions and halt assignments by UF goes against the core principles of United Faculty of Florida at UF, which traces its very origins to resistance against UF’s actions during the civil rights era.”

“Gov. DeSantis has created and pushed a narrative of division and hate that is anti-Black,” said Rev. Jeffrey Rumlin, pastor of The Dayspring Church in Jacksonville, where three Black people were gunned down at a Dollar General store [last August—ed.] by a white man with a swastika emblazoned on his assault rifle.”

16) Georgia: A $6,500 per pupil private school voucher bill has passed the state senate, and heads over to Gov. Kemp (R)’s desk, who is expected to sign it. “This bill is a thinly veiled effort to segregate and discriminate under the guise of choice,” said Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, a Democrat from Duluth. “Private institutions free to pick their students will inevitably leave behind those who perhaps need the most support -– our special needs students, our struggling learners.” It remains to be seen how rural Georgia schools will fare under the new law, since “more than 70 counties in the state don’t have private schools where you could send a kid to private school.”

17) Tennessee: AASA, the School Superintendents Association, says “last week, a mother with a child with disability testified against pending school voucher legislation in Tennessee. Watch this clip to see how her ability to utilize an ESA-voucher for her child turned out.”

18) Texas/National: Mimi Swartz has written a powerful in-depth piece in Texas Monthly on the right wing campaign to sabotage Texas schools. “The motivations for these attacks are myriad and sometimes opaque, but many opponents of public education share a common goal: privatizing public schools, in the same way activists have pushed, with varying results, for privatization of public utilities and the prison system. (…) In Texas, an unusual alliance of Democratic and rural Republican leaders has for decades held firm against voucher campaigns. The latter, of course, are all too aware that private schools aren’t available for most in their communities and that public schools employ many of their constituents. But the spread of far-right politics and the disruption of public schools during the pandemic created an opening for activists to sow discontent and, worse, chaos. ‘If they can make the public afraid of their public school, they will be more likely to support privatizing initiatives. Then that puts us back to where we used to be with segregation of public schools,’ says former Granbury school board member Chris Tackett, who, with his wife Mendi, has become an outspoken advocate for public education and a relentless investigator of the attempts to undermine it.”

19) Think Tanks: Legendary public school reform advocate Jonathan Kozol joined Ralph Nader on his podcast to discuss his latest book. Kozol is “a leading advocate for equality and racial justice in our nation’s schools, and he travels and lectures about educational inequality and racial injustice. Mr. Kozol is the author of nearly a dozen books about young children and their public schools, including Death at an Early Age (for which he received the National Book Award), Savage Inequalities, and The Shame of the Nation. His latest book is An End to Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America. I still give [Jonathan Kozol’s book Death at an Early Age] out to people to show them what indignant writing backed by irrefutable evidence is like. There’s too much cool writing in America today about ghastly situations.” [Audio, about a half hour].

Infrastructure

20) National/New York: What happens when public housing goes private? In an episode of NPR’s Code Switch podcast, Fanta Kaba , who covers privatization of New York City Housing Authority buildings, digs into the issues. “The New York City Housing Authority is the biggest public housing program in the country. But with limited funding to address billions of dollars of outstanding repairs, NYCHA is turning to a controversial plan to change how public housing operates. Fanta Kaba of WNYC’s Radio Rookies brings the story of how this will affect residents and the future of housing, as a resident of a NYCHA complex in the Bronx herself.” [Audio, about 40 minutes]

21) National: Can the Air Force avoid the kind of disaster that befell the last military experiment with privatized housing? To do that, they are now looking to the Navy. “Specifically, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Flosi told lawmakers March 20 that the service is tuned to the Navy’s Public Private Venture program, which Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy James Honea said has successfully housed unaccompanied sailors for more than 20 years.” Says Flosi, “We’re also learning to be more accountable through that process as well.” Time will tell, but it’s rather odd that the Navy seems to be building the plane as it’s flying it.

22) Arizona/National: Good article yesterday by guest columnist Alex Trimble Young of Arizona State University. Writing in the Arizona Republic, Trimble Young looks at a secretive group that is working on lawmakers to put public land in private hands. “To answer this question, voters need to follow the money. While the Bundy family may be the populist public face of the land transfer movement, in the years leading up to Bunkerville, the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) threw their substantial weight behind the land transfer movement, and they haven’t let up since. ALEC wants to orchestrate a privatization of public lands that would be an incalculable loss for the American people but an unparalleled windfall for multinational corporations. This organization, known for the lavish and secretive parties it throws for friendly lawmakers, has an especially extensive network within the Arizona GOP. It has provided legislators with dozens of model bills and resolutions promoting the land transfer agenda, including one that tracks quite closely to the language of HCM 2005.”

23) California: On The New York Times’ podcast The Daily, NYT reporter Conor Dougherty details what he found out about The Billionaires’ Secret Plan to Solve California’s Housing Crisis. “I mean, there’s a real irony here, which is that California forever thought that the best way to circumvent all of the normal screaming and yelling and community opposition and bureaucracy and NIMBYism of big city California was to escape to rural California and try to build a brand new model of housing and urban living there. And they ended up unleashing a different, but it sounds like no less fierce version of all those same forces just a couple hours outside the city.” [Audio, about a half hour].

24) Louisiana: Gov. Jeff Landry (R)’s Sewerage & Water Board New Orleans Task Force “appears poised to recommend a series of sweeping changes to the city’s beleaguered utility, including rate hikes on residents and businesses, as well as structural changes that could pave the way for privatization, among others. At their third and final public meeting Thursday morning, task force members offered suggestions on how to reform the S&WB, which has been under increased scrutiny regarding billing issues, outdated infrastructure and lagging pumping capabilities. (…) The Louisiana Illuminatorearlier today reported that Paul Rainwater, who works for Cornerstone Government Affairs, represents the city of New Orleans and four other agencies, including the Sewerage and Water Board, as a lobbyist before state government. Landry and S&WB executive director Ghassan Korban are reportedly not concerned about that issue.”

25) Michigan: “‘If it ain’t broke’: Does Ottawa County need to privatize well and septic inspections?” asks Mitchell Boatman of the Holland Sentinel. “Commissioners resumed discussions during a health and human services committee meeting Tuesday, March 19. During the meeting, Kevin Hoeve—a Holland realtor who serves on the West Michigan Lakeshore Association of Realtors—spoke highly of the current system. He said representatives from WMLAR and Health Officer Adeline Hambley have previously spoken about the success of the collaboration. ‘For some 40 years, Ottawa County has had a workable program that we believe is an exemplary model because it simply works,’ Hoeve said. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

26) Texas: Is Huntsville going to privatize its economic development program? “Kulhavy shared the different types of ED Organizations to the council, saying there are basically two structures—ED Corporations and Public-Private Partnerships. ‘We currently fund Economic Development through the General Fund, with the operating budget set at $288,668 and also have a Capital Improvement Project funding in the amount $200K,’ Kulhavy said. ‘We have drawn down from that a lot over the years for incentives.’ In FY 2023, Kulhavy noted that the city has the largest operating budget in its history just under $290K.”

Public Services

27) National/International: Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has a great summary and analysis, building on recent work by the Financial Times, of public pensions behemoth CalPERS’ decision to pour more of its capital into private equity and private markets. Both Smith and the FT pan the decision and call its justifications into question. “I can’t recall a time where a top financial publication has taken to lobbying, hard, against an investment strategy that has boatloads of fund managers and professional hangers-on benefitting from its largesse. Yet the Financial Times has in the space of barely more than a week, published two pieces, one a very long and extremely well done FT Alphaville overview, from the early days of private equity to the present, with emphasis on how its returns have been falling, yet there are all sorts of pretenses that that isn’t happening. Then after reporting that CalPERS is planning to greatly increase its allocation to private assets, both private equity and private debt, the pink paper releases a story that says, bluntly, that this looks like a Bad Idea.”

Two key publications are “Is Private Equity Actually Worth It?,” by FT Alphaville’s Robin Wigglesworth; and of course  Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt’s book, Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street.

28) National: Well look who’s complaining about the disgusting quality of federally contracted-for-profit food services at his lockup, the Federal Correctional Institution Miami. Why it’s the former Trump administration official who advocated “a whopping 82 percent tax break to attract private capital to infrastructure projects.” Let’s hope he’ll do better under the newly signed contract with JNS Foods LLC that begins next week. “The contract, valued at $48,852.14, was awarded on January 12, 2024 for the procurement of meals under the National Menu program at FCI Miami for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024. The details provided in the Award Notice indicate the goods or services to be delivered and the agency responsible for the contract.”

29) National: A new episode of the America Adapts podcast deals with “Life, Liberty and Climate Data: The Privatization of a Public Good.” Doug Parsons hosts Dr. Justin Mankin. “Justin is a climate scientist and associate professor at Dartmouth College. Doug and Justin discuss his provocative column in the New York Times on climate data accessibility—should tax funded climate data remain a public good. Justin also explains the intricacies of climate modeling and the ethical considerations of private sector involvement. Justin also emphasizes the significance of aligning private and public sector efforts for effective climate adaptation.” [Audio, about 53 minutes]. See Mankin’s New York Times op-ed, People Have a Right to Climate Data.”

30) National/International: Regulators need AI expertise but can’t afford it, according to Wired. “As governments spin up new AI programs, regulators around the world are urgently trying to hire AI experts. But some of the job ads are raising eyebrows and even chuckles among AI researchers and engineers for offering wages that, amid the current AI boom, look pitiful. (…) ‘There’s a brain drain happening across every government across the world,’ says Nolan Church, cofounder and CEO at FairComp, a company tracking salary data to help workers negotiate better pay. ‘Part of the reason why is that private companies not only have a better working environment, but also will offer significantly higher salaries.’ Church worries that competition between private companies will also widen the gap further between the private and public sector. ‘I personally believe the government should be attracting the best and the brightest,’ he says, ‘but how can you convince the best and the brightest to take a massive pay cut?’”

31) National: Writing in Counterpunch, Eve Ottenberg shines a light on the attack on the NLRB by major corporations. “Things are not great at Trader Joe’s either. The NLRB has accused the company of firing a pro-union worker, spreading lies to thwart organizing and illegally retaliating against its employees. According to an October 4 Fast Company reprint of a Capital & Main article, Trader Joe’s has ‘delivered threats, told people they wouldn’t get raises if they unionized.’ The article quotes the union’s communications director, Maeg Yosef: ‘Despite its progressive and folksy reputation, Yosef said, Trader Joe’s ‘has rolled out the sort of union-busting campaign you might see at Amazon or Starbucks.’ (…) Unlike SpaceX, Starbucks and Amazon, Trader Joe’s is not owned by a celebrity plutocrat. But its owner is still a billionaire, one that just hasn’t garnered as many headlines as the other three honchos”

32) National: What happened at the OSHA board meeting on Thursday? “Workers testified about the urgency of guidelines to protect people in indoor worksites from dangerous temperatures. Following testimony and protest, the members of the OSHA board approved the new standard unanimously.”

33) California/National: Who’s keeping up the pressure on ICE and the private prison companies that contract with it in detraining immigrants? La Resistencia, which held a rally on Saturday.

34) Tennessee: State lawmakers want more oversight of juvenile detention, but the Department of Children’s Services is pushing back. “Last year, an investigation by WPLN and ProPublica revealed that the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center in Knoxville was illegally locking children alone in cells and that the facility had faced few consequences even as DCS repeatedly documented violations. In response, one Democratic and two Republican state lawmakers drafted proposed legislation that would give an independent state agency the power to require changes at facilities that violate state standards, effectively forcing DCS to act.”

35) International/United Kingdom: Want to see a National Health Service doctor? Be prepared to cough up your data, TechCrunch reports. “To get a doctor’s appointment in the U.K. these days, you have to entrust more of your data to private companies—and there’s not a great deal you can do about it. In part due to growing pressure from the government to meet a two-week limit for patient appointments, family doctors—or general practitioners (GPs) as they’re known in the U.K.—are turning to third-party software to facilitate appointments and prioritize cases based on urgency, a shift that has left patients with no option but to give private companies access to their personal data.”

All the Rest

36) National: Guess who’s trying to drum up government business in the Generative AI space, for instance in the military.

37) National: Writing in Forbes, Robert Pearl, M.D., looks at Private Equity And The Monopolization Of Medical Care. “These troubling trends for doctors have spelled “opportunity” for private equity firms, which entered the healthcare picture a little over a decade ago. From 2013 to 2016, private equity firms acquired 355 physician practices (many with hundreds of doctors). In the four years that followed, private equity acquired 578 additional physician practices. Those numbers continue to grow. To doctors, PE firms offer an attractive value proposition: promising to ease physician dissatisfaction by increasing income and reducing insurance hassles. In exchange, physicians agree to relinquish significant control of their practice. Once the deal is done, PE firms leverage that control to generate sizable profits.”

The post Huntington Beach City Council Ignores Broad Opposition to Library Privatization appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
Preaching—and Teaching—What They Practice: Discrimination https://inthepublicinterest.org/preaching-and-teaching-what-they-practice-discrimination/ Fri, 22 Mar 2024 13:36:25 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16110 Voucher-funded schools can—and do—teach whatever they want to whomever they want.

The post Preaching—and Teaching—What They Practice: Discrimination appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
We already know voucher-supported schools bust budgets and it’s only getting worse. Costs for vouchers have ballooned—the impact on state education budgets has expanded, and their initial cost projections have been consistently underestimated. More states are introducing and expanding voucher programs, and they are including more and more students, eating up more and more of the funds that could be spent on public schools.

What do they do with all these public dollars being bled from public schools? They preach—and practice—discrimination. Education Voters of Pennsylvania has pulled together a list of the ways voucher schools have discriminated in that state, and Illinois Families for Public Schools has done the same for Illinois—both make for bracing reading.  But what’s true for Illinois and Pennsylvania is true across the country.

Voucher schools can—and do—discriminate against LGBTQ students. The fact that voucher-taking schools openly discriminate against LGBT students, parents, and staff members has long been established—their statements of faith reside on their school websites alongside instructions on how to apply for public funding for tuition. A 2020 analysis by the Orlando Sentinel found that Florida’s voucher program funneled more than $129 million the previous year to religious institutions. Among them were “83 schools that refuse to admit LGBTQ students or could expel them if their sexual orientation or gender identity were discovered. Some also refuse to educate students whose parents are gay or to hire staff who are gay.”

Voucher schools can—and do—discriminate based on religion. The admissions requirements for voucher-supported Fayetteville Christian School in North Carolina state, “the parent and student must regularly fellowship in a local faith based, Bible believing church. Accordingly, FCS will not admit families that belong to or express faith in non-Christian religions such as, but not limited to: Mormons (LDS Church), Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims (Islam), non-Messianic Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.” It’s not a surprise that a religion-based school wants to teach its religion—what should be alarming is that they use public money to do so.

Voucher schools can—and do—discriminate against students requiring special education attention. Unlike public schools, private schools, including those that are supported by the public through vouchers, are not required to provide educations for students with special needs. A Tennessee parent recently illustrated this in a powerful testimony to that state’s House of Representatives Government Operations Committee.

Voucher supported schools can—and do—teach students that women should not have the same rights as men.

Of the 27 Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod-associated schools, at least eight are supported with public funds through voucher programs. Among the synod’s beliefs:

Since God appointed the husband to be the head of the wife (Eph 5:23), the husband will love and care for his God-given wife (1 Pe 3:7). A wife will gladly accept the leadership of her husband as her God-appointed head (Eph 5:22-24).

In church assemblies the headship principle means that only men will cast votes when such votes exercise authority over men. Only men will do work that involves authority over men (1 Co 11:3-10; 14:33-35; 1 Ti 2:11,12).

 Women are encouraged to participate in offices and activities of the public ministry except where the work involves authority over men.

“Many families are surprised to learn about the options and come to realize a private, Christian education can be a reality!” states the website for Arizona Lutheran Academy, one of the synod’s schools. “It is rewarding to walk families through the tuition assistance process and see how God provides in ways that some never knew existed.”

Well, not God, exactly. All of us are paying for it with money intended for public schools.

Donald Cohen
Executive Director

The post Preaching—and Teaching—What They Practice: Discrimination appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
Fight is on to keep Huntington Beach Public Library Public https://inthepublicinterest.org/fight-is-on-to-keep-huntington-beach-public-library-public/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 03:49:45 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16095 Texas Ed Agency paves way to privatization; Purple Line P3 problems (again); California city considers library privatization; and more.

The post Fight is on to keep Huntington Beach Public Library Public appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
HIGHLIGHTS

JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST

First, the Good News

1) National/Think Tanks: To the surprise of absolutely no one, the right wing antigovernment Cato Institute, in response to the release of the proposed federal budget, is yet again calling for the privatization of procurement of air traffic control (ATC) services and infrastructure. They invoke the usual bogus “efficiency” argument to make their case. The good news is that we no longer need to rely on such clearly biased and flawed evaluation standards for procurement. We can use adult, professional-level models. See, for example, the new report by In the Public Interest and the Local Progress Impact Lab, “Harnessing the Power of Procurement: Issues, Considerations, and Best Practices to Advance Equity in the Contracting of Public Goods and Services.”

See especially the report’s Checklist of Best Practices (p. 56):

  1. Procurement Policies and Roles
  2. Analyzing the Decision to Contract Out
  3. Public Participation
  4. Ensuring High Performance and Quality
  5. Equitable Access to Contracted Goods and Services
  6. Job Quality
  7. Contractor Diversity
  8. Workforce Equity
  9. Environmental Impacts
  10. Transparency and Public Information
  11. Accountability and Contractor Oversight
  12. Special Issues in Technology Contracts

2) National/Texas: Apart from benefitting the people of Houston, ITPI’s Donald Cohen says the victory of labor and community groups over a water privatization drive also helps the effort to resist similar moves in other states and localities. “‘The key concern with the privatization of water is that loss of local control over the projects,’ Mary Grant, of the environmental group Food and Water Watch, told Governing. ‘Companies may be offering large sums of money to entice local officials to sell assets, but that’s not free money. That’s just a debt that your constituents are going to have to pay through their water bills.’”

3) National: The Biden administration has cut the federal charter school funding budget from $440 million to $400 million, and the charter school industry is complaining. But “President Biden’s Budget raises the bar in education by investing in evidence-based strategies and partnerships that will improve outcomes from cradle to career,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. ‘With these investments, we can deliver an excellent education to all students, improve learning conditions, build pathways to college and careers, and increase postsecondary education affordability and access.”

4) National/Ohio: Route Fifty looks at how one city, Columbus, Ohio, brought tax filings online. “Today, that room smells of fresh paint as it’s being redecorated and repurposed. The tax returns of yesteryear have all been digitized and moved to the cloud, and in the place of paper returns filed in person or by mail is CRISP, the city’s one-stop portal for filing taxes, making payments and tracking refunds.”

5) California: The newly launched California Fast Food Workers Union says history has been made: “Hundreds of fast food workers from across the state are rallying after the conclusion of the first #FastFoodCouncil meeting. We know that when we fight, we win. Estamos En La Lucha!”

6) Michigan/National: A federal bankruptcy court has denied a “bad faith” bankruptcy petition by the owner of a failed Michigan dam. “Several months after the state of Michigan was awarded a nearly $120 million default judgment against the owner of a failed mid-Michigan dam, a judge has denied his bankruptcy filing. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Thursday announced the ruling against Lee Mueller, former operator of Boyce Hydro and the Edenville Dam, which failed in 2020, forcing the evacuation of more than 10,000 people and damaging thousands of homes and businesses. (…) The Edenville and Sanford dams both failed on the evening of May 19, 2020, during heavy rainfall. The subsequent flooding down the Titabawassee River caused two more dams upstream, the Smallwood and Secord dams, to also overflow. All four dams were owned by Boyce Hydro, which had its permit to generate hydro-power revoked in September 2018 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which had been preceded by more than a decade of safety and regulatory violations by the private company.”

7) Minnesota: Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect looks at the resurgence of labor-community militancy in Minnesota. “The week began with a picket line outside the high-rise office of one leading local corporation, conducted by Local 26 of SEIU—the city’s historically militant janitors’ union—in conjunction with CTUL (the Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha), an organization of immigrant workers who clean buildings, work on construction, and do other jobs in which immigrants are frequently exploited by low-road employers and contractors. When I wrote about the emerging Minneapolis table a decade ago, CTUL, in tandem with Local 26, was organizing the night crews who cleaned the city’s Target stores, a battle they won when Target told its cleaning-company contractors to treat those workers with some respect. Those crews thereby joined and were covered under a Local 26 contract, and the two organizations have worked together ever since.” Sahan Journal reports that “the majority immigrant workforce is employed by several large subcontractors, including ABM, Marsden and Harvard, to clean buildings across the metro, including many downtown Minneapolis locations.”

8) West Virginia: West Virginia Watch says Sunshine Week is a good time to look at lack of transparency in West Virginia’s government. “Recent sessions have been marked by a lack of transparency and the 2024 session was sadly no different. Bills were fast-tracked with no debate or discussion, and expert testimony was ignored and even refused in some cases. (…) This raises the specter that important debates and policy discussions are actually happening behind closed doors. Of course, when these votes happen in caucus, citizens are robbed of the opportunity to hear the debates and see where their representatives actually stand. Closed-door debates also mean citizens don’t get to see the blatant disregard for expert opinion.”

9) International/Argentina: Argentina’s Senate has rejected President Javier Milei’s sweeping emergency decree to deregulate the economy, “in a major blow to the libertarian leader and his attempt to deliver reforms for the crisis-stricken country. Senators voted 42 to 25 to reject the decree, with four abstentions. Issued in December it modifies or eliminates more than 300 regulations affecting the housing rental market, food retailers, air travel, land ownership, and more.” [Sub required]

10) Think Tanks: The Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) says All in All, Medicare Advantage Is a Scam.

  • Myth #1: Medicare Advantage Is Medicare
  • Myth #2: Medicare Advantage Saves Money
  • Myth #3: Medicare Advantage Is Necessary To Save Beneficiaries Out-of-Pocket Spending
  • Myth #4: Medicare Advantage Improves Health Outcomes
  • Myth #5: Medicare Advantage Offers Benefits That Traditional Medicare Simply Cannot Match
  • Myth #6: Medicare Advantage Is Necessary To Lower Healthcare Spending

11) Think Tanks: The National Conference of State Legislatures says “millions of American students and adults continue to be unfamiliar with how their government works at even a basic level, leading experts to sound the alarm about a crisis in civics education or, at best, to call for its revitalization.” But NCSL has stepped in to provide resources to change the picture. “Legislators, educators and civic-minded organizations are working to reverse this trend with the hope of reinvigorating American civics. This page provides resources and information not only for teachers, students and parents but for legislators and legislative staff who are interested in supporting and fostering civics education among their constituencies. Included below are specific resources provided through state legislatures, some aimed directly at children and students and also a view array of resources from organizations committed to bolstering the civic education of the American populace in general.”

Education

12) National: Trump supporter Jeffrey Yass, the billionaire devotee of school privatization, is in the mix to buy TikTok if there is a forced sale, reports Jacob Silverman in The Nation. LittleSis reports that “despite going to public schools himself for most of his education, Yass has spent tens of millions of dollars towards efforts to privatize the U.S. education system. Worth nearly six times more than the DeVos family, Yass has supercharged the long-standing DeVos family strategy of attacking public education on a state level where their millions of dollars can go farther to influence elections and therefore state policy. Since 2021, Yass has spent over $23 million on federal school privatization PACs like the Club for Growth’s School Freedom Fund and the DeVos-backed American Federation for Children’s Victory Fund and Action Fund.”

13) Arizona: The State Board for Charter Schools intends to revoke the charter contract of ARCHES Academy. “Among more than a dozen other violations, the board found ARCHES failed to submit its annual audit on time and misreported payroll taxes and compensation to the Internal Revenue Service.”

14) Florida/National: In a continuing national attack on church-state separation, the Republican-controlled legislature has approved the presence of religious chaplains in public schools. The American Civil Liberties Union says “allowing public schools to establish paid or voluntary positions for chaplains will inevitably lead to evangelizing and religious coercion of students. This violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which, along with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, safeguards the constitutional right to religious liberty. Courts have repeatedly ruled that it is unconstitutional for public schools to invite religious leaders to engage in religious activities with students or to promote religious doctrine to them. Chaplains are trained to provide spiritual guidance. They do not have the experience necessary to ensure that they adhere to public schools’ educational mandates and avoid veering into impermissible religious counseling and promotion of religion.”

15) Georgia: A school voucher bill has emerged from the legislature with more momentum than in the past. “Voucher skeptics say because public schools are funded per child, taking kids out would leave struggling schools with less money to improve. Last year, those skeptics included 16 House Republicans, who joined nearly all Democrats to scuttle a voucher bill. Jones and other Republican leaders sought to make voting for this year’s effort more enticing by adding a raft of broadly popular education measures, including codifying teacher pay raises and allowing SPLOST money [Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax—ed.] to be used for building or renovating pre-K facilities. This year’s bill adds some testing requirements—private schools would test voucher students in math and language arts and submit their scores to the state.”

16) Missouri: Voucher and charter school expansion has advanced in Missouri Senate. The legislation “would pave the way for public charter schools in Columbia, expand a state program that pays for private school expenses and raise teacher pay. The measure, which advanced on a 20-13 vote, with three Republicans joining with all 10 Democrats in opposition, still needs another vote before moving to the House for consideration. Democrats, who held up a vote on the legislation Monday, ended their blockade after Republicans unveiled revamped legislation Tuesday. The measure, if it becomes law, would require teachers to be paid at least $40,000 per year, up from the current minimum of $25,000.”

17) North Carolina: The high stakes charter school model is failing, say Donnell Cannon, Christine Hall, Sayre Man, Hayley Gearheart in EdNC. “In the last few decades, a more extreme version of the factory model has emerged in charter school networks,  commonly referred to as the “high-stakes model.” High-stakes schools primarily serve Black and brown youth, most commonly in inner-cities. The schools are characterized by efficiency and control. Every minute of the student’s day is planned and directed by adults, and every learning experience is designed to produce high scores on standardized tests. For years, this model was heralded as the answer for educating underserved communities. More recently, however, critics have raised concerns with low college graduation rates among students who attend high-stakes schools.”

18) Oklahoma: Should tax dollars funding education be used to promote the national political profile of far right school officials? Apparently when the media shine a light on possible malfeasance of this type, it produces results. “Update: One day after this story was published, FOX 25 confirmed the resignation of OSDE employee David Martin. OSDE spokesman Dan Isett said Martin’s last day is Friday. Isett noted Martin’s departure has ‘absolutely nothing’ to do with our reporting on the state’s contract with Vought Strategies, which found Martin’s name on the documents registering Vought as an Oklahoma LLC on the final day bids were accepted. Isett also said Martin’s name appearing on those documents was the result of a ‘clerical error.’” OKC’s Fox25 had reported that “A DC-based firm is pocketing tens of thousands of your tax dollars to promote State Superintendent Ryan Walters on a national stage.”

19) Texas: The Texas Education Agency proves to be just a minor grooved pavement on the highway of massive charter school misuse of public funds. “Just days after putting the state’s largest charter school network under conservatorship for misusing public funds, the Texas Education Agency agreed to let the network, IDEA Public Schools, carry out a major expansion. IDEA is allowed to increase student enrollment from 78,200 to more than 90,000 by the 2025-26 school year. The 10 new campuses will be mostly in Fort Worth and the Permian Basin, with two in Humble, near Houston.”

But Wall Street has not yet averted its eyes from the car crash. “S&P last assigned an A-minus rating and negative outlook to $45.6 million of bonds IDEA sold through the Clifton issuer in May 2022. ‘The negative outlook reflects the continued uncertainty associated with the Texas Education Agency’s ongoing investigation and any potential outcomes, although we understand there is no concern at present regarding IDEA’s charter, which extends through June 2025,’ the rating report stated. ‘In addition, while we believe IDEA’s tenured staff provides significant continuity and leadership at various tiers of the organization, the negative outlook reflects the potential impact, in our view, on the school’s demand profile, financial measures, and fundraising due to the nature of major transitions.’” [Sub required]

20) Virginia: Should school crossing guard positions be privatized? The Virginian-Pilot reports on the issue. “Adam Bryan, founder and CEO, of Connecticut-based Crossing Guard Services, has met with officials from several Hampton Roads cities to pitch a way to keep crossing guards but to reduce the administrative burden on police departments. His company privatizes the job, handling the difficult-to-staff positions. Norfolk, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach all met with Bryan to hear more about the proposal, though officials from each city said no commitments have been made. Bryan said the limited hours available and resulting lack of benefits for crossing guards means there is often limited interest in the positions. But, he said those who take the job often love it, just like Mack. ‘Recruiting is a lot of work,’ Bryan said.”

Infrastructure

21) California: Writing in CalMatters, Ben Christopher tells us what we need to know about California housing and corporate landlords. “Some of the state’s most powerful legislators want Big Landlord out of California’s single-family neighborhoods. The Legislature will consider at least three bills this year to keep so-called institutional investors from gobbling up too many of the state’s widely coveted single-family homes. Apartment buildings have long been an asset of interest for big investment companies, but the Big Money-owned single-family rental is a 21st Century invention. During the Great Recession new companies began cobbling together rental empires out of the nation’s glut of foreclosed single-family homes.”

“‘Who are we fighting for? Are we fighting for the corporate interests?’ San Diego Assemblymember Chris Ward, chair of the Assembly’s housing committee and author of one of the three bills, said on the Assembly floor last month. ‘Or are we fighting for Californians, for their dream of homeownership?’ For all the debate, open questions about the industry’s size and its effect on the state’s affordability crisis abound. That’s in part because publicly available data about rental properties is scarce—something some state lawmakers have tried, but failed, to remedy in the past.”

22) Illinois: “If the Chicago Bears were expecting their pledge to pony up $2 billion in private money for a new stadium would warm up Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s previously chilly response to their plans, they likely were disappointed when he addressed the media this morning,” reports Crain’s Chicago Business. “Though the Johnson administration has tentatively signaled a willingness to engage in a public-private partnership with the Bears under the right circumstances, Pritzker today again threw cold water on the idea of state financing—at least not based on what’s been pitched so far. ‘I haven’t heard a proposal that goes along with that $2 billion private investment that says the state should be involved in anything,’ Pritzker told reporters regarding the Bears’ latest overture.” [Sub required]

23) Iowa: Who will be left to pay for rural Iowa’s roads? asks Iowa Capital Dispatch’s Nolan Monaghan. “Privatization of road stretches that service an individual household could be a potential solution, or transitioning stretches of road that service no households or fields into a lower level of maintenance or back into farmland could also shave costs for local governments. Ultimately, most roads still service some farmers and households, and a sustainable solution seems unlikely. Roads can’t be consolidated like school districts, so costs will continue to balloon, or the maintenance of this vital infrastructure will have to slip lower on the priority scale for cash-strapped towns and counties.”

24) New Jersey: The Garden State has enacted a new law giving charter schools access to “low-interest loans to finance the construction, expansion, and renovation of their facilities. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) will play a crucial role in administering the new financing program as the entity that will be responsible for managing the application process, evaluating and determining program eligibility, and disbursing low-interest financing to qualified public charter and renaissance schools. (…) Charter schools and renaissance schools that are operated by a for-profit management company, or entities leveraging program funds to make loans to such entities are not eligible for the program. If an eligible borrower receives a loan under this program, it is not prohibited from simultaneously seeking or accepting private funding to support the undertaking of a school facilities project.”

25) Maryland: The poster child of P3 train wrecks just keeps on giving. “Gov. Wes Moore and the state’s chief financial officers approved nearly half a billion dollars in extra funds for the Purple Line on Wednesday, even as they condemned the embattled project’s mounting delays and escalating costs. Nearly seven years after construction began, transit authorities returned to the Board of Public Works yet again this month, this time seeking an additional $425 million for the light-rail project. It was the fourth such request since 2016 to supplement the Purple Line’s original $5.6 billion budget. Maryland Matters first reported the latest cost overrun on March 1.”

Just for laughs (not), this bombshell is hitting exactly as Maryland’s local school budget shortfalls “are in turmoil, class sizes are rising or lowering, and superintendents are under pressure to figure it out fast.” But “the legislature wasn’t going to add nearly $3.8 billion a year to education funding over a decade without ensuring that the state could account for the money. So if school systems do not adhere to spending guidelines of the Blueprint, the state can cut future spending for education to the county in question.” Gee, wonder what would happen if construction and finance companies “do not adhere to spending guidelines.”

26) Tennessee: Well, it seems that yesteryear’s major crisis in the privately financed dormitory sector has effectively disappeared in the rearview mirror. The P3s are back, complete with structured financing, Special Purpose Vehicles and lots of assurances, growth boosterism and groundbreaking ceremonies, just like last time. Let’s hope a new pandemic doesn’t break out and land those deals onto school or other public balance sheets again.

27) Texas: How bad does a corporation have to be to get sued by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton? Could racial politics have anything to do with it?  Paxton is suing the Houston-area developers of Colony Ridge, “accusing them of deceptive sales, marketing and lending practices that allowed their sprawling housing development to flourish. (…) Residents of Colony Ridge filed dozens of complaints for years about the development to state agencies, but Texas had little to show for addressing those concerns, according to a Texas Tribune and Houston Landing investigation. Paxton announced his office’s investigation last fall, after right-wing media conflated the development’s growth with high levels of illegal immigration at the Texas border.”

Public Services

28) National: The Financial Times has a major story on the corporate attack on the National Labor Relations Board, which during the Biden administration has taken an aggressive stance in the public interest on corporate violations of labor law and regulations. You can’t make this up. The corporations, which have a stranglehold on the American court system at all levels, both formal and informal, are complaining about NLRB’s “in-house judges,” which they call, don’t laugh, the “very definition of tyranny.”

“Trader Joe’s tried a novel defense against charges that the U.S. grocery chain had illegally retaliated against workers who supported its nascent labour union,” the FT reports. “Its lawyers argued to a judge that the small federal agency accusing Trader Joe’s of breaking labor laws, the National Labor Relations Board, was itself unconstitutional. Trader Joe’s is one of four large employers now challenging the structure of the NLRB, which is responsible for enforcing U.S. laws on collective bargaining and unfair labour practices. With about 1,200 staff and a budget of less than $300 million, the agency has become the Joe Biden administration’s primary tool for implementing labor policies as bills designed to strengthen protections for workers have languished in Congress.”

But the case, which is reminiscent of the right wing’s famous showdown with Franklin D. Roosevelt over labor law in the 1930s, suggests that the mega corporations are after bigger game, Cornell’s Kate Bronfenbrenner says. “If this goes in favor of these companies, it is not just the NLRB. It’s every single federal agency that uses administrative law judges.” [Sub required]

29) National: More federal business for the prison companies. The GEO Group, the second-largest U.S. private prison company after CoreCivic, has just signed a five-year contract, through its subsidiary GEO Transport, to provide air operations support services for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under ICE’s contract with CSI Aviation. “The new five-year contract is expected to generate approximately $25 million in annualized revenues for GEO.”

30) Arizona: In a letter to the editor of the Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), Jon Benda of Midtown warns of Trump’s plan to privatize Medicare. “If Trump wins in November, he plans to make Medicare Advantage plans the default program for everyone who is newly eligible. Medicare Advantage is privatized insurance; unlike traditional Medicare, it puts an insurance company between you and your health treatments. Traditional Medicare has no such “middleman”; the government pays for your healthcare. Medicare Advantage plans put profits before people, regularly denying coverage for essential treatments and services, forcing patients to forgo the care they need and putting their health and lives at risk. Meanwhile, private insurance CEOs rake in the money, at the expense of seniors and those with disabilities. (…) Voters need to tell Trump: No privatization of Medicare!”

31) California: The Huntington Beach City Council will consider privatizing its public library operations at its meeting tomorrow, March 19. “If the city does move forward with changing management of the library, it would have to meet with labor unions representing library staff. Carol Daus, a member of the nonprofit Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library, said she doesn’t expect the ‘vast majority of our 900 members’ to feel comfortable volunteering at a library run by a for-profit company. ‘You cut all the volunteers out, you are going to have a real hollowed-out library in terms of community support, books and services,’ Daus said. The Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library gives the library around $250,000 a year through sales from its used book store and gift shops inside the library, Daus said. She said she expects the Maryland-based Library Systems & Services would win a bid since it has ‘virtually no competitors.’ ‘When you get into a national company coming in and trying to use its business model for providing services for the community, it becomes quite different than what a public library is,’ Daus said.”

32) Massachusetts: Sam Seder of The Majority Report spoke with John Samuelsen, International President of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), about the dangers of privatized rail and the prospects of a commuter rail worker strike in Boston, where they’ve been without a contract for over 200 days.

33) International/Canada: The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) salutes “Auditor General Paul Martin’s investigation into the management of private agency nursing contracts in New Brunswick. This is why CUPE 1252 (representing over 9,000 healthcare workers in NB), along with the NB Council of Nursing Home Unions (over 4,400 long-term care workers) are demanding a broader inquiry into other facets of healthcare privatization. While the spotlight has been primarily on the substantial costs associated with travel nurse contracts, CUPE asserts that privatization extends far beyond this aspect. Notably, private resident attendants’ roles are also being outsourced instead of being handled in-house, leading to significant financial burdens for New Brunswick residents.”

The battle against privatization is going on all over Canda. In Ontario, rallies took place across the province to protest plans to privatize the Liquor Control Board; and in Alberta, where CUPE members and other members of the public rallied “against a plan by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo to privatize over half the city services and workforce.”

All the Rest

34) National: Can a public official block constituents on social media? “The U.S. Supreme Court brought clarity to that question on Friday in a pair of unanimous decisions that find public officials can indeed block someone on their personal social media accounts or delete their comments as long as they are not acting on behalf of the state.”

35) California: “California isn’t on track to meet its climate change mandate —and a new analysis says it’s not even close,” CalMatters reports. “After dropping during the pandemic, California’s emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other climate-warming gases increased 3.4% in 2021, when the economy rebounded. The increase puts California further away from reaching its target mandated under state law: emitting 40% less in 2030 than in 1990 — a feat that will become more expensive and more difficult as time passes, the report’s authors told CalMatters. ‘The fact that they need to increase the speed of reduction at about three times faster than they’re actually doing—that does not bode well,’ said Stafford Nichols, a researcher at Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles-based economics research firm, and a co-author of the annual California Green Innovation Index released today. ‘As we get closer to that 2030 goal, the fact that we’re further off just means that we have to decrease faster each year.’ The state is even further away from meeting a more aggressive goal set by the Air Resources Board in the state’s new climate blueprint.”

36) Idaho/National:  Lauren Necochea, chair of the Idaho Democratic Party, shares some ominous news about the fate of democracy in the Gem State and the rest of our country. The Republican platform “seeks to repeal the 17th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows the voters to elect their U.S. senators directly instead of having the state legislature appoint them. Idaho voters have been electing their senators for over 100 years. There are many more dangerous provisions, like the privatization of Social Security. We must bolster and protect seniors’ retirement security, not squander precious dollars by inserting a corporate middleman. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement would allow health insurers to again deny coverage for preexisting conditions, eliminate the tax credits that tens of thousands of Idahoans use to purchase coverage through Your Health Idaho, and take Medicaid away from 95,000 Idahoans. If you don’t want to let a patient die when a medical procedure would save them, if you want modern economic policy tools at our disposal, or if you respect the right of the people to elect their senators, Chair Dorothy Moon would say you are not qualified to hold office as a Republican. The future of our state is on the ballot this November. Voters must reject this new Idaho Republican Party that generations of Idahoans don’t recognize and elect more Democrats to restore the political balance that prevents extremism from taking root.”

Image: Courtesy Friends of Huntington Beach Public Library

The post Fight is on to keep Huntington Beach Public Library Public appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
Victory on the Water Front https://inthepublicinterest.org/victory-on-the-water-front/ Thu, 14 Mar 2024 17:41:04 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16084 Activists fend off effort to privatize operation of plant that provides water to a million Houstonians.

The post Victory on the Water Front appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
I’ve said this many times: Businesses are in business to make money.

Yes, they may sell a useful good or service, but that’s a bit beside the point of making money.

The private water industry has steadily crept across the United States, exploiting cash-poor municipalities with one-time cash infusions, promises of cost savings—or both—by buying up or managing their water departments. The companies promise to invest in infrastructure upgrades cities don’t think they can afford, and to manage the system with the oft-touted “efficiency” of private enterprise. But once these cities and towns lose control over the very water they need to sustain life, the private water company gains control over the towns and cities. The corporations have them, kind of literally, over a barrel.

“The key concern with the privatization of water is that loss of local control over the projects,” Mary Grant, of the environmental group Food and Water Watch, told Governing. “Companies may be offering large sums of money to entice local officials to sell assets, but that’s not free money. That’s just a debt that your constituents are going to have to pay through their water bills,”

About a dozen states have passed—with significant pressure from the industry—what is called “fair market value legislation,” which makes the selling off of public utilities, including water and wastewater systems, easier.

That’s why it is especially good news that a coalition of groups that included AFSCME Hope Local 123Corporate Accountability, West Street Recovery, the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience, and Bayou City Waterkeeper helped pulled the plug on a proposal to privatize the operation of a Houston water purification plant that treats 200 million gallons of water a day and provides potable water for a million Houstonians.

Activists pointed out the tainted records of the two companies being considered to run the plan. Inframark was investigated after releasing inadequately treated sewage from one of its plants into a Lake Houston tributary, and Jacob Engineering had a contract with Miami Beach, Florida that was canceled after water bills increased and cost savings for the city were lower than expected. They took their fight to public meetings, including city council, sometimes being a step ahead of even elected officials.

Earlier this year, it was announced the privatization scheme was no longer being considered.

There’s no doubt water privatization fights will continue, in Texas and nearly every other state. But the Houston example shows that a smart and dedicated coalition can beat back the privatizers. It’s a victory worth celebrating.

Donald Cohen
Executive Director

See more of In the Public Interest’s resources related to water systems.

The post Victory on the Water Front appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
Public Dollars Are Funding Christian Nationalist Schools https://inthepublicinterest.org/public-dollars-are-funding-christian-nationalist-schools/ Mon, 11 Mar 2024 15:56:39 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16078 The Privatization Report: A weekly newsletter of news and analysis about the corporate takeover of education, water, and other public goods.

The post Public Dollars Are Funding Christian Nationalist Schools appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
HIGHLIGHTS

JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST

1) National: “There should be no profiting from mass incarceration.” In the Public Interest has had a keen interest in prison privatization as part of our criminal justice work. We asked the author of the new report, “Private Prisons in the United States,” Kristen M. Budd, a research analyst at the Sentencing Project, a few questions about their new report. Here’s one.

Can you talk about why you chose to explore the use of privatized prisons vs. public prisons? Are there meaningful differences that you are curious about? 

The privatization of prisons is a hidden or lesser-known component of the American corrections landscape. Many people do not know, or are not aware, that states, and historically the federal government, contract with private prisons. These are for-profit industries. Our Private Prison fact sheet is one way The Sentencing Project hopes to increase public awareness about these companies who make money—millions of dollars in profits—to incarcerate our community members. Each year, we publicly disseminate our analysis of private prison use not only so that the public is informed—it’s their tax dollars that are paying for these companies to run private facilities—but also so that we can analyze how the private prison industry contracts or expands.

2) National: Economist Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, is calling attention to the devastating effects of private equity, the “unseen hand” in healthcare. During a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop, Appelbaum “painted a grim picture of the current landscape, where medical logic is frequently sidelined by financial strategies. Private equity firms, through debt-loaded acquisitions and relentless cost-cutting measures, have been implicated in a disturbing trend of reduced staffing levels, diminished patient care time, and compromised safety. These practices are not just numbers on a balance sheet; they represent real and profound consequences for patient well-being.”

The key is debt. “These firms buy an organization using ‘a little bit of money’ and ‘a lot of debt,’ she noted. Once the private equity firm owns the hospital or nursing home, they load that debt onto the purchase and it becomes the responsibility of that facility. The firm has no responsibility to repay the debt, Appelbaum explained. ‘And that debt is what drives a lot of the poor quality care in private equity-owned facilities,’ evidenced by staffing reductions, less time with patients, and less attention to safety, she said, noting that while most corporations are careful not to take any action that could lead a company to bankruptcy, these firms have no such fear.”

You can comment on the issue to the FTC here. The deadline is May 6, 2024.

3) California: The good news is that Walt Disney is being sued for systematically underpaying maintenance workers at its Southern California hotels under the California’s Private Attorneys General Act, “a unique law that allows workers to file lawsuits against their employers, suing for both back wages and civil penalties on behalf of themselves, other employees and the state of California. PAGA claims don’t require the same type of notification and certification of workers allegedly affected that a typical class-action suit would require.”

The bad news is that corporate interests are out to destroy PAGA. “The California Employee Civil Action Law Initiative (#21-0027) has qualified for the ballot in California as an initiated state statute on November 5, 2024. For more on this battle, see the new report by PowerSwitch Action, the UCLA Labor Center and the Center for Popular Democracy, A Shrinking Toolbox: The Corporate Efforts to Eliminate PAGA and Limit California Worker’s Rights.

4) Iowa: The state House has passed the largest teacher pay increase in state history. “Teachers aren’t the only ones getting a pay raise. Democratic State Rep. Sue Cahill of Marshalltown said, ‘Additional funds have been allocated to bring the minimum starting salary of our non-salaried employees, our paras, our bus drivers, our nutrition workers, our secretarial and administrative staff for that personnel to $15 per hour.’ The bill passed the House in what one lawmaker called a “rare Kumbaya moment” in a 93 to 1 vote.”

5) Oregon: AFSCME gets $5 million to seed retirement accounts for about 1,100 child care providers, Northwest Labor Press reports. “In February, Oregon’s Department of Early Learning and Care deposited about $4,400 into a personal retirement account she signed up for last year. ‘She says this is the first time she’s had somewhere to set money aside, after 21 years of work,’ Cinta’s granddaughter, Maria Parra, told the Labor Press in a phone interview. Parra translated for Cinta, whose first language is Spanish. ‘She feels at peace knowing there will be some money set aside for when she does retire. She won’t have to rely on family members.’” Child Care Providers Together (CCPT), also known as AFSCME Local 132, “represents almost 2,300 state-registered in-home child care providers in Oregon.”

6) Oregon: The Beaver State is one signature away from ending unlimited campaign contributions. “But a flurry of negotiations among labor unions, the business lobby, good government groups and legislators over the past few days and weeks made possible something that seemed impossible just a few days prior: The Oregon Legislature overwhelmingly voted to pass a campaign finance reform proposal. House Bill 4024 now only needs Gov. Tina Kotek’s signature to become law and cap contributions to candidates and political action committees for the first time in decades. If Kotek signs the bill, individuals and corporations would be limited to giving a candidate no more than $3,300 per election, or $6,600 for a candidate who appears in both the primary and general, beginning Jan. 1, 2027.” The governor reportedly supports the legislation.

7) Utah: Members of AFSCME Local 1004 joined with other workers to derail an anti-union bill. “HB 285 would’ve limited the amount of time union members could spend on union matters, forced members to sign cards for dues collection every year, and required public service unions to hold regular recertification elections and win 51% of the vote from the entire bargaining unit — not just those voting—or shut down. AFSCME and a coalition of unions came together to fight the bill, including those representing teachers, firefighters and police officers. The Utah Education Association, Teamsters, the American Federation of Teachers, and others were part of the coalition.”

8) Texas: Labor and community groups have successfully turned back an effort to privatize Houston’s water. “The announcement came after the collective pressure from a coalition that included members of AFSCME HOPE Local 123, West Street Recovery, The Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience, Bayou City Waterkeeper and Corporate Accountability. The coalition brought community members together to testify at Houston City Council meetings against a city proposal to privatize the Southeast Water Purification Plant, for 20 years. Roy Sanchez, a senior electrical inspector who has worked at the Houston Permitting Center for 31 years, spoke out due to his concern for the 1 million citizens that the plant serves. ‘Safe, clean water that you can actually have confidence in is one of the basic things that the city should provide,’ Sanchez said in an interview. ‘If it’s a private company running it, they’re not beholden on the citizens, they’re going to be in favor of the stockholders. They’re looking at profit over people.’ The stakes were high due to the precedent that the privatization deal would have set for Houston’s public services.”

But the fight is not over. “We’re still continuing to fight,” Sanchez said. “This privatization game never ends.”

9) Washington: Washington State Teamsters have ratified a contract with Waste Management, which contracts with many public bodies. “‘There was a time when Waste Management Teamsters from Locals 231, 117, and 174 negotiated separately instead of working together as one team. I am pleased to announce that those days are now over,’ said Rick Hicks, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 174. ‘Our combined group presented a united front that ensured the balance of power was in our favor, not Waste Management’s. This spirit of cooperation and collaboration carried us across the finish line, leading to one of the most impressive union contracts I’ve ever been a part of.’”

“The jointly negotiated contract provides some of the largest immediate wage increases ever negotiated by Teamsters at Waste Management. The contract also includes strong pension increases, maintenance of top-tier health care benefits, enhanced paid time-off policies, and Veterans Day as a paid holiday.”

10) Think Tanks: Writing in the outstanding Bucks County Beacon, Gay Ivey of the University of North Carolina–Greensboro, explains how teens benefit from being able to read ‘disturbing’ books that some want to ban. What researchers found:

  1. They became more empathetic
  2. They improved relationships
  3. They became more thoughtful
  4. They were happier
  5. Books helped students heal

Education

11) National: Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig, a founding board member of the Network for Public Education, testified to a hearing last Wednesday on charter schools by the U.S. House Committee on Education an the Workforce Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education.

“Moreover, the unchecked expansion of the charter sector poses significant risks to the public education system, diluting resources and exacerbating the challenges of delivering quality education across the board,” Vasquez Heilig said. “This problem is accentuated by the expected nationwide decline in K-12 student populations in public schools, underscoring the urgency of focusing our efforts on improving existing educational infrastructures rather than expanding the charter sector indiscriminately. Given these concerns, my stance on charter schools has evolved towards a more cautious and critical perspective. While most have heard the original ideal that charter schools would serve as laboratories for educational innovation and to provide families with diverse educational options, it is imperative that we address the profound existing issues of accountability and financial management that currently beset the charter school movement.”

12) National: Writing in Jacobin, Nora De La Cour reviews Network for Public Education research on how state legislatures are waging war on public schools. “This pattern is hardly restricted to LGBTQ issues. State-level legislation shapes the societies in which kids live and schools operate. For this reason “Public Schooling in America,” the latest data-packed national report card from the Network for Public Education (NPE), focuses on the extent to which each state legislature protects young people, both in and out of public school systems. While the previous two NPE report cards have focused primarily on school privatization, this one goes further, connecting the dots between seemingly distinct attacks on public schooling that are advancing as part of the push for Christian nationalism: charter and voucher expansion, publicly funded homeschooling, defunding of public schools, and illiberal restrictions on kids and educators.”

13) National: Amidst increasing diversity in suburban schools, a new research study by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California Los Angeles has found that charter schools contribute to the fragmentation that promotes segregation. “The Civil Rights Project found more than 43 percent of new suburban schools opening in the largest 25 metro areas from 2011-19 were charter schools. More than a quarter of these serve all or nearly all Black and Latino students. The rise of independent charter schools and the growing creation of small, breakaway districts, many of which have been created in response to demographic changes, ‘just really increases the fragmentation overall,’ Frankenberg said. ‘It’s just fundamentally different to try to change patterns of segregation when you have four entities at the table versus a metro [area] where you may have hundreds of small school districts and charter schools on top of that,’ she said. ‘It fundamentally limits what the possibilities are, and that’s one change from where we were a generation or two ago.’” [Sub required]

14) Florida: The Sarasota school board, pointing to the hopelessness of fighting the state in court, approves a for-profit charter school despite community opposition. Board member Tom Edwards who “spoke vehemently against approving the charter school, said he still had many questions regarding the school’s application. He pointed to the school’s interpretation of classical education, the unclear status of the school’s physical location and the $350,000 budget line for custodial services as causes for confusion. ‘That’s going to be the cleanest school on the planet,’ Edwards said. Edwards said the board didn’t receive any emails or public commenters speaking in support of approving the charter school. He also said he requested a special workshop to discuss the charter school further but was denied, and pushed the board to fight the charter school at the state level. ‘Sarasota has to be the best at everything,’ he said. ‘This charter school application is not the best at all.’” [Sub required]

15) Florida: In case you are wondering how low the right wing will go in destroying educational standards, the New College of Florida, now under the leadership of former school privatization legislative czar Richard Corcoran and with “designated CRT assassin” Christopher Rufo on its board—has hired the widely criticized Bruce Gilley, an open supporter of colonialism, as a Presidential Scholar in Residence.

16) Florida: The Gainesville Sun reports that “the city of Newberry announced a plan on Feb. 19 to convert its public schools—Newberry Elementary, Oak View Middle and Newberry High—to public charter schools. Since then, residents have voiced their concerns and multiple changes have been made to the plan. Since then, residents have voiced their concerns and multiple changes have been made to the plan. A new update to the plan was announced Wednesday by Education First for Newberry Inc., which sponsors the Newberry Education First Initiative and the Yes Newberry website. It includes changes to the group’s proposed governing structure for the charter schools, which a news release called ‘a move designed to better align with the diverse needs of the communities served by the three Newberry schools.’”

“One community member called Searby ‘slimy’ and said he wasn’t properly answering a lot of questions. ‘Y’all waited till the very end to spring this on everybody,’ she said. ‘Honesty would’ve been six months ago when you started talking about it and two years ago when the first people started talking about it… And then you may have gained some people’s trust. Otherwise, you’re just winging it and you want us to say yes… It’s too political. You’re too political; you’re slimy.’”

17) Illinois: How will negotiations over a new teachers contract go with former CTU organizer Brandon Johnson now serving as mayor? “While union officials acknowledge that things are different this time around, they have also emphasized that Johnson does not ‘have a magic wand’ and pushed back against the idea that the union will get everything it asks for. “I think it is ridiculous for anyone to think that the Black man on the fifth floor who comes from the progressive movement has fairy dust to sprinkle to end this quickly,” Davis Gates said in an interview with Chalkbeat last month. “There is an entire bureaucracy that has been hired and trained to tell the Chicago Teachers Union, “No.”’”

18) North Carolina: North Carolina’s public voucher dollars are funding Christian Nationalist indoctrination in schools, Justin Parmenter reports. “Daniel Academy’s mission is to ‘raise the next generation of leaders who will transform the heart of our nation’ by equipping students ‘to enter the Seven Mountains of Influence.’ The Seven Mountains of Influence (also referred to as the Seven Mountains of Dominion or the Seven Mountains Mandate) refers to seven areas of society: religion, family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment, and business. Dominionists who follow this doctrine believe that they are mandated by God to control all seven of society’s ‘mountains,’ and that doing so will trigger the end times.”

For more on Seven Mountains ideology and the movement behind it, check out Daniel Miller and Bradley Onishi’s episodes on the Straight White American Jesus podcast, and Fred Clarkson and André Gagné’s three part series on Dominionism.

19) North Carolina: Gov. Roy Cooper (D) says handing over billions of dollars to expand the state’s private school voucher program is a “reckless waste” of taxpayer money. “Cooper called for a moratorium on school vouchers until the state’s public schools are fully funded. Under the voucher program, he said, taxpayer money is spent on private schools that aren’t required to hire licensed teachers, provide meals, transportation or services for the disabled. ‘They [private schools] don’t have to tell taxpayers what they teach, how their students perform, which students they will reject or whether students even show up at all,’ Cooper said. ‘That is a reckless, reckless waste of taxpayer money.’”

PRE reports that “Cooper decried a lack of state funding for public schools by the Republican-led General Assembly. He noted that beginning teacher pay in the state has dropped to 46th in the country, and he criticized the legislature’s 4 billion dollar investment in private school vouchers over the next decade. ‘I am advocating and a lot of people, more and more people, are advocating that we put a moratorium on private school vouchers until we fully fund our public schools,’ he said.”

If you think the pro-vouchers crowd is “reckless,” wait till you see the Republican nominee for state  superintendent of public instruction. “Michele Morrow, the newly minted Republican nominee for superintendent of public instruction in North Carolina, wishes ‘death’ on Bill and Melinda Gates. She’s advocated killing people she considers ‘traitors.’ Despite seeking to oversee public education in a state of 10.5 million people, she is herself a homeschooler. She has no prior political experience. She attended the Jan. 6 rally to support Donald Trump’s quest to overturn the 2020 presidential election. She received candidate training alongside a Proud Boys member. And yet, Morrow upset incumbent Catherine Truitt in the Republican primary on Tuesday.”

20) South Carolina: The South Carolina Supreme Court will decide if the new private school voucher program is legal. “But even as the justices ponder the case, lawmakers in the House are looking to expand the program beyond the law’s provision for vouchers of up to $6,000 for up to 15,000 students a year. The case centers on the part of South Carolina’s constitution that says ‘no money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the State or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.’ Lawyers who think the program is illegal said giving the private schools public money is a direct benefit even if the program allows students to pay fees or transportation to attend a public school outside of their district.”

21) Tennessee: Dueling school voucher bills are advancing with no compromise in sight. “The House bill differs greatlyfrom its Senate counterpart. At the heart of each proposal is a program that would give about $7,000 for each student to put toward the costs of attending private school, with no income limits. But the House version packs in a laundry list of reforms to the public school system, which Democrats have characterized as an attempt to ‘buy votes.’ The Senate version, while more narrow, would also allow students to use vouchers to attend public schools outside their home district. Democrats continued voicing their opposition to the proposal, criticizing how it ties public school investments and reforms to a policy they say will undermine the system as a whole.”

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, “was the sole no vote in the Senate, arguing similar voucher programs in other states have not produced impressive results. Akbari also touted concerns about tax dollars underwriting private schools that won’t be required to have the same level of services for students with disabilities, or who could turn away LGBTQ students. ‘My mind has always been open about this, but I cannot support something that takes public dollars to private institutions we’re not holding accountable,’ Akbari said.”

Vanderbilt University Professors Claire Smrekar and Joanne Golann, writing in The Tennessean, say “at this point, the Tennessee voucher plans’ information dissemination, enrollment and participation criteria, and transportation design features are vague, unknown, or under-specified and should trigger public scrutiny and parent concern.”

22) Texas: Here come the major hits to the Lone Star State’s public school budgets. Last Tuesday, legislative opponents of Gov. Abbott’s school voucher schemes lost big in the Republican primaries. “Abbott’s victories mean that school vouchers could become a reality in Texas in 2025, when the Legislature reconvenes. And that’s something ‘school choice’ organizations across the state and country are looking forward to. Gillum Ferguson, the director of political strategy at the American Federation for Children, said on X, formerly Twitter, that Tuesday’s results can also impact elections across the country.” Nevertheless, there was a drop-off from 90% to 77% in Republican support for school vouchers between 2022 and 2024

The San Antonio Express-News reports that “the Legislature isn’t scheduled to meet again until January, at which point there will likely be enough House members to pass a voucher bill in the chamber for the first time. And with enough members on board, there won’t be the same urgency for Abbott to negotiate on important education policy proposals that he had used as bargaining chips — including teacher pay raises, elimination of the STAAR tests and billions of extra school dollars. With Tuesday’s results likely breaking the decades long blockade on vouchers, the fate of those other policies is now in flux.”

KBTX reports that “both traditional public schools and public charter schools share similar concerns for the next legislative special session. ‘We just need to stand united and make sure that the funding sources are not splintered,’ Ginger Carrabine, Bryan ISD Superintendent, said. Conger said he hopes any funding is directed to where it’s needed most. ‘There are absolute, complete, legitimate public school funding needs that we have,’ he said.”

23) Texas: The Texas Tribune reports that the state’s largest charter school network has been placed “under conservatorship by the Texas Education Agency after a years-long investigation into improper spending within the system of 143 schools. The arrangement, announced Wednesday, is part of a settlement agreement between IDEA Public Schools and the TEA. IDEA had been under investigation since 2021 following numerous allegations of financial and operational misconduct.”

IDEA isn’t the only one facing problems. A Fort Worth charter school for the arts is facing financial trouble and a possible shutdown because “one of our major funders decided not to fund our program.”

Infrastructure

24) National: A familiar highly political problem over the years—how should infrastructure projects be evaluated and financed, and by whom—is rearing its head again. “As the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act nears its midpoint,” the Bond Buyer reports, “the massive uptick in discretionary grants for transportation infrastructure threatens to undermine the law’s effectiveness because of chronic delays and bureaucratic confusion. That’s what county and state representatives told lawmakers Thursday during a House Transportation & Infrastructure hearing on the rollout of the IIJA’s discretionary grants. The solution, according to one state transportation official and several Republicans, is to increase the amount of formula funding in future bills to avoid similar problems. (…) The biggest problems, witnesses said, are delays between grant announcement and actual funding; a sluggish pace of notice of funding opportunities postings; confusing criteria; and challenges facing smaller governments forced to compete with larger entities.” And yet another familiar infrastructure planning and financing problem has surfaced: a political power struggle to head up the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, a plum post that presumably comes with lots of favors to hand out. [Sub required]

25) National: Writing in WaterWorld, Paul Gifford, the director of product for Mueller Water Products, who has worked closely with municipalities and end users for years, says the time to prioritize aging infrastructure is now. “The cost of repairs/upgrades is expected to exceed $430B by 2029, yet according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, it is estimated that only $50 billion is allocated to date. That’s a significant discrepancy between reported need versus actual planned investment. Utilities are also facing changes in population size that can complicate planning and management. If populations decline, utility revenues decline, and deplete maintenance budgets. Adversely if populations increase the demand grows exponentially adding stress to the system. On average, over 90% of utility revenues come from water bills. The 2023 State of the Industry report from the American Water Works Association said that 78% of utilities were expected to increase water rates in 2023 (up from 64% in 2021). Disadvantaged communities are usually hit the hardest.”

26) National: Resurgent U.S. energy demand is sparking power grid warnings, the Financial Times reports. “Jim Robb, NERC’s chief executive, told the Financial Times that projected demand growth over the next 10 years was now nearly double what it was five years ago. ‘The explosion in data centres is very, very real . . . a lot of utilities are having issues keeping up with that demand,’ said Robb, whose organisation is focused on improving the reliability of the bulk power system in North America.” [Sub required].

So, the obvious question is, will these private mega-corporate consumers pay their fair share to keep up with electricity infrastructure investment and operations, or is the public going to be saddled with the bill? (“Wilson said the largest driver of increased electricity demand was $481bn in industrial projects that have been announced since 2021, including the manufacturing of chips and batteries.”)

27) North Carolina: The U.S. Forest Service is requesting public input to ensure the views of the community are represented in future developments of the Wild and Scenic River located in Pisgah National Forest [check it out—ed.] in Caldwell County. “‘We need to hear from our local communities and users to build better solutions to the issues that we have at Wilson Creek,’ says Lisa Jennings, Recreation and Trails Program Manager for the Grandfather Ranger District. ‘Over the next several months we will be collecting feedback, working with designers and planners, and proposing options for improvements. We want to know what changes you would like to see.’ Share your ideas! Visit [this site] and fill out the feedback survey.”

28) Pennsylvania: The Philadelphia Water Department is revamping its water system and wants to hear your thoughts. “‘[Residents who] will be in close proximity—they might see trucks. They might see work going on. So in those cases, … residents do have opportunities to shape the work that we’re doing,’ Rademaekers said. “But … in some ways, the grand scheme of things is set.” The Department will hold both in-person and virtual listening sessions, mostly on weeknight evenings, with one on a Saturday afternoon. The full schedule is posted on the Water Department website.”

29) Pennsylvania: The Department of Environmental Protection reveals water quality violations at Pennsylvania American Water’s dam project. “The reports say Pennsylvania American Water is in violation of water quality criteria, said they are not doing construction in a way that minimizes erosion and did not construct in a manner that avoids pollution of water. This also violates the Clean Streams law. (…) Lackawanna County Commissioners say responsibility must be taken and have been talking with the DA who has been also speaking with the attorney general. ‘We want to make sure that someone is held accountable,’ said Commissioner Bill Gaughan. ‘So we’re going to continue to put pressure on the district attorney and the attorney general’s office to make sure that they look into whether any criminal laws were broken.’ The reports span from the February 8 to February 29.”

30) International: A terrific report by Chris Dite in Jacobin updating us on P3 madness Down Under. Readers may recall the ardent efforts by the road privatization lobby, with the assistance of Australian privatizers, to push the foolish idea of “asset recycling” during the Trump administration. (Trump said P3’s “don’t work.”) Well, the latest example of P3 folly is laid out by Dite, the Rozelle Interchange. Read the story for the details. But Dite also says that opponents of these boondoggles also have learned some things about how best to fight them. With P3s now officially a part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, take note.

“The reality is that only a campaign that draws in broad, working-class support has any hope of being successful. The anti–East West Link campaign spent months drumming up opposition to the project in the outer suburbs and regional Victoria, signing up thousands of new people to the campaign. It predicted the developers and Liberal Party’s PR strategy and preempted it, denying them the chance to drive a wedge between inner-city and suburban residents. Secondly, the failure of the WestConnex campaign shows that moderate tactics and well-researched appeals to authority are not enough. Both major parties receive copious amounts of money from the oil and roads lobby, and there is a revolving door between federal and state governments and the big polluting companies.

“By contrast, the East West Link campaign employed a dual strategy. Activists built the campaign outward by engaging large numbers of residents, including in the suburbs, while simultaneously engaging in direct, tactical, collective confrontation with the government and big developers. As a result, it dominated the news cycle, won the battle of public opinion, applied tangible pressure—and it ultimately won.”

Public Services

31) National: ICE has produced another one of its periodic “readouts” of its meetings with private prison companies, this time with LaSalle. As usual, the release says little of relevance regarding problems with private immigration detention, which have generated headlines and lawsuits across the country. But it does leave one wondering just what ICE might have asked LaSalle about, for example, the death of Ousmane Ba a few weeks ago, who was detained at LaSalle’s Winn Correctional Center.

32) National/Washington: The GEO Group, which touts its supposedly decades-long record of corporate social responsibility, is being sued by the state of Washington for illegally preventing the state’s inspectors from entering its facility, despite the fact that “the Department of Health has received over 300 complaints from detainees about the facility’s conditions.” So where does the buck stop? According to Law360, “private prison operator GEO Group argued this week that the Washington state labor department’s lawsuit accusing GEO of unlawfully turning away inspectors from an immigrant detention facility should stay in federal court since GEO was merely following U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement instructions.”

33) Kentucky: The top leadership of a large CoreCivic prison in eastern Kentucky, the Southeast State Correctional Complex, has been removed “due to misconduct they engaged in unrelated to activities involving inmates.

34) Pennsylvania: A group of former employees of the GEO Group, which operated the George W. Hill Correctional Facility before it was brought back into the public sector, are suing the state for wrongful dismissal and other causes. “On April 6, 2022, the county reassumed control of Hill and since has allegedly terminated employees without due process. One such officer was fired for bringing headache medicine into the jail, even though it was only his first infraction in a 14-year career, the suit says. He should have simply received a 10-day suspension, the suit says. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages for alleged civil rights violations.”

35) International/United Kingdom: Private hospitals are “cannibalizing” the British National Health Service by doing 10% of elective operations, the Guardian reports. “The rise in NHS work done by private operators has prompted fears that more and more of the health service is being left weakened and patients’ access to vital care is increasingly a “two-tier system” dictated by their wealth. The unprecedented transfer of NHS patients is happening at the same time as a dramatic increase in patients using either their own savings or private medical insurance to pay for treatment in the independent sector that the NHS cannot provide fast enough.”

36) International/United Kingdom: “Privatisation has almost never had a positive effect on the quality of care,” says a new report covered in The Lancet. “The published review looked at studies made of healthcare systems in eight high-income countries, where privatisation has been taking place over the past 40 years. Studies included those from the UK, USA, Canada, South Korea, Germany, Sweden, Croatia and Italy. The review aimed to assess whether the often-stated aim of privatisation – to improve the quality of care through market competition—did indeed occur. Or, is the impact negligible, or in fact to worsen the quality of care due to the profit-driven nature of the organisations.”

37) International/United Kingdom: As we observe International Women’s Day, unions are warning that cuts to public services in England will “reverse” gender equality. “The Fawcett Society, the TUC and Women’s Aid are among those who have written to the chancellor to ‘demand that women are not hit by further government cuts to public services.’ They argue that women have already been hit hardest by 14 years of cuts to health, social care, early education and services for survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence.”

All the Rest

38) National/International: Corporations are apparently complaining that they are not getting enough public subsidies to set up internationally competitive manufacturing plants in the U.S. But not everyone’s convinced. “It’s true that the cost of materials has gone up. It’s also true that building costs and environmental standards are higher in the U.S. than some other popular manufacturing destinations,’ said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit research group that is often critical of subsidies. ‘But are companies not getting enough money to offset all that? Sounds like crocodile tears to me,’ LeRoy said.”

39) National: The federal Bureau of Prisons took a hammering at a recent Senate committee meeting. “Fourteen FCC Hazelton inmates died in BOP custody between 2014 and 2021. [Sen. Charles Grassley (R)] and his colleagues in September pressed BOP about whistleblower claims of misconduct at the West Virginia facility. Their disclosures include allegations of extensive abuse against incarcerated individuals and document falsification regarding medical assessments, prison escapes and erroneous prisoner releases. BOP still has not responded to the lawmakers. Grassley demanded to know why, as well as ‘what [BOP is] doing to straighten out the significant problems at Hazelton that we’ve brought to your attention?’”

IMAGE: From the webpage of the Daniel Christian Academy of Concord, N.C.

The post Public Dollars Are Funding Christian Nationalist Schools appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
“There should be no profiting from mass incarceration.” https://inthepublicinterest.org/no_profit_from-prisons/ Thu, 07 Mar 2024 18:52:18 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16073 A Q&A with Kristen Budd of the Sentencing Project

The post “There should be no profiting from mass incarceration.” appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
A new study released last month from the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that “advocates for effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice,” takes an important look at trends in incarceration in privatized prisons, including a breakdown by state. It points out that the number of people housed in private prisons has increased five percent since 2000; in 2022, eight percent of individuals serving a prison sentence in a state or federal prison were serving it in a private prison facility.

In the Public Interest has had a keen interest in prison privatization as part of our criminal justice work. We asked the report’s author, Kristen M. Budd, a research analyst at the Sentencing Project, a few questions about the report.


Can you talk about why you chose to explore the use of privatized prisons vs. public prisons? Are there meaningful differences that you are curious about?

The privatization of prisons is a hidden or lesser-known component of the American corrections landscape. Many people do not know, or are not aware, that states, and historically the federal government, contract with private prisons. These are for-profit industries. Our Private Prison fact sheet is one way The Sentencing Project hopes to increase public awareness about these companies who make money—millions of dollars in profits—to incarcerate our community members. Each year, we publicly disseminate our analysis of private prison use not only so that the public is informed—it’s their tax dollars that are paying for these companies to run private facilities—but also so that we can analyze how the private prison industry contracts or expands. Ultimately, private prisons are another mechanism that feed and exacerbate mass incarceration in our country. There should be no profiting from mass incarceration.

Do you have any ideas or theories about why certain states—like Montana—rely more on privatized prisons? Or about why some use them little or not at all?

While our data helps us see the scope of private prison use across the country, it does not tell us why one state is more reliant on the private prison industry versus another. With that said, private prisons could be used for various reasons by specific states. For instance, if a state contracts with a private prison, the state would offset or not incur the cost of building a state-run prison. Private companies also claim there are cost savings to the state due to their efficiency. But, based on studies done on this claim, cost savings tend to be elusive, they are not guaranteed, and some states have been shown to spend more money on private prisons versus a public state-run facility. Reducing costs for profit is also problematic—think less rehabilitative programming, decreased labor costs (e.g., low staff benefits/pay) which can lead to high staff turnover. Ultimately, these all matter in terms of facility safety and even living conditions in facilities (e.g., unsanitary conditions). In regard to some states using them on a smaller scale or not at all, states do contract with private facilities out-of-state. So, while there may be few to no private prisons active in a state, that state may be using the private prison system in other ways, such as sending an incarcerated community member out of state to a private facility to serve their sentence, which won’t be reflected in the data we have available.

What trends have we seen in the number of people housed in privatized prisons?

Since 2012, we have seen the number of our community members serving their sentence in a private facility decrease. There could be a number of reasons for this. Generally speaking, the U.S. prison population has declined 25% since reaching its peak in 2009. We know under certain administrations there has been movement to phase out and end federal government contracts with private prison facilities. For example, while more recent, the Biden administration issued an executive order to phase out the Bureau of Prison’s use of private facilities. States themselves may also decide not to renew private prison contracts.

Anything surprising in your findings?

At the federal level with the Bureau of Prisons, it was a welcome surprise to see the decrease in the number of people serving their sentence in a private facility over this 20-plus year time span. Historically, they’ve been the largest prison system relying on privatization. With that said, decarceration in private facilities should be happening at a much quicker rate, particularly given the health and safety concerns and that incarcerating people should not be for profit. We hope to see this continuation of eliminating contracts with for-profit prison companies not only at the federal-level but also at the state-level.

 

The post “There should be no profiting from mass incarceration.” appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
New state-rating report from Network for Public Education https://inthepublicinterest.org/new-state-rating-report-from-network-for-public-education/ Mon, 04 Mar 2024 18:14:15 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16069 The Privatization Report: A weekly newsletter of news and analysis about the corporate takeover of education, water, and other public goods.

The post New state-rating report from Network for Public Education appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
HIGHLIGHTS

JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST

First, the Good News

1) National: The Network for Public Education releases Public Schooling in America 2024, which rates the states on 42 factors that impact public education. [Full report]

“From book bans to teacher qualifications, our new national report examines the laws and policies that support or undermine each state’s public schools and the students who attend them.

We rate states on:

  • Privatization Laws: the guardrails and limits on charter and voucher programs to ensure that taxpayers and students are protected from discrimination, corruption, and fraud.
  • Homeschooling Laws: laws to ensure that instruction is provided safely and responsibly.
  • Financial Support for Public Schools: sufficient and equitable funding of public schools.
  • Freedom to Teach and Learn: whether state laws allow all students to feel safe and thrive at school and receive honest instruction free of political intrusion.”

2) National: Kyle Huelsman, senior director for legislative affairs at the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), says the time is now for a movement for tax justice. “The tax justice movement has arrived at a historic inflection point. One path leads toward massive cuts in government spending, divesting unprecedented levels of funding from our schools, our affordable housing stock, and our broader social safety net. The other path leads toward the ultrawealthy and corporations paying what they owe in taxes, enabling us to fund our future. The next two years will determine whether we can build together, across states and across movements, to fight for the second path, and realize a government that works for us all; or whether we will be overpowered by our opposition and become resigned to the worst possible outcome.”

3) National: Kyle Spencer, the founding editor, reports the launch of Reporting Right, “a weekly guide for local journalists covering democracy in the disinformation age, has officially launched! Tips, info, sources, data—it’s all here.” Comes out every Wednesday. “Tips, hints, data and more for local reporters covering threats to our democracy at the school board, town hall, and state leg.”

4) National: States are moving to cut grocery taxes, Route Fifty reports. “Oklahoma is just the latest in a growing number of states that have eliminated or are looking to eliminate sales taxes on groceries, according to Aidan Davis, state policy director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP. In his State of the State last week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called for the sales tax on groceries to be permanently abolished. The governor had temporarily suspended it as part of his 2022 budget. ‘If it reduces inflation for families from 4% to 3%, even if it only puts a few hundred bucks back in families’ pockets, it’s the right thing to do,’ he said. In November, Utah voters will have the option to change the state constitution, which would indirectly get rid of the grocery tax. Similarly, an effort is underway in South Dakota to get a measure on the ballot in the fall that would eliminate the 4.2% state sales tax on groceries. In recent years, Virginiaeliminated its state grocery sales tax, and Kansas OK’d a phase-out of the tax that will be complete in 2025.”

5) National: The Biden administration has announced new efforts to boost the nation’s housing supply. “The move, according to the Federal Housing Administration, will allow states and localities to build or preserve 38,000 affordable rental homes over the next decade. The National Council of State Housing Agencies praised the decision to continue the Housing Finance Agency Risk-Sharing Initiative “at a time when affordable housing is scarce for so many people who need it so much,” the group said. The program ‘is an important and effective way of helping to build and maintain apartments for low- and moderate-income families.’”

6) California: PowerSwitch Action has released a new report on corporate efforts to eliminate the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) and limit California worker’s rights.

“Key findings of A Shrinking Toolbox include:

  • PAGA is crucial to enforce labor laws where workers have signed arbitration clauses. PAGA filings have increased in direct proportion to the explosion in forced arbitration clauses since the early 2000s.
  • Between 2018 and 2021, worker whistleblowers have filed more than 4,208 PAGA notices with the LWDA in the following strategic high violation industries: agriculture, auto repair, car wash, garment, janitorial, restaurant, retail, and warehouse. This is nearly three times the number of inspections the Bureau of Field Enforcement was able to conduct during the same time period.
  • PAGA liability creates a market incentive to comply with labor laws. Corporations are incentivized to invest in compliance with labor and employment laws when noncompliance presents a significant threat to their profits.
  • PAGA penalties fund labor law outreach, public enforcement, and education. Last fiscal year, PAGA generated $209 million for the LWDA.
  • PAGA suits address wage theft and other serious violations. More than nine out of ten (91%) of PAGA claims allege wage theft, including overtime violations (79% of cases) and failure to pay for all hours worked (76% of cases).”

7) Kentucky: A Campbellsville High School custodian has received an award “from the Campbellsville Independent school board for going above and beyond his work as a coach and custodian for the district.” Tommy Allen, an alumnus of Campbellsville High School class of 2004, “now coaches football and has been the custodian at the high school for the past seven years. ‘It’s great, you know, you just don’t wake up every day wanting to be recognized for your work. You do what you do, but it feels good to be recognized,’ said Allen. The awards are based on six elements, which spell the word Eagles. The elements are the foundation of the Change Award and are strong attributes of the award recipient.”

For additional information about the role and importance of educational support professionals and the issues surrounding outsourcing, read the In the Public Interest report “School Support Services Outsourcing: The Original Privatization of Education.”

8) Ohio: The state Senate has “passed a bill that included $1.27 billion in bonds for state government agency facilities, K-12 classrooms, local subdivisions’ capital improvement projects and conservation projects. The bill, HB 27, was originally intended only to give students more information about college fees and loan repayment. And Senate Democrats voiced reservations about spending they claimed was tacked on at the last minute.” The House has also balked. “House Bill 2includes a $350 laundry list of one-time funding projects, including $1 million for a professional women’s soccer stadium in Cleveland. The Senate has reportedly objected to some of those projects.” [Sub required]

9) Think Tanks/California: LAANE has the receipts on why scaremongering about raising hotel worker minimum wages was nonsense. “The Sky Never Fell: An Analysis of the Predictions and Outcomes of the 2014 Raise LA Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance (2024). In 2014, Los Angeles City Council passed the Citywide Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance, known as Raise LA, which raised wages for hotel workers. As part of the legislative process, Council commissioned three reports to study the potential impact of the wage increase, two of which—conducted by Blue Sky Consulting Group and Beacon Economics—largely predicted negative economic outcomes for the hotel industry, workers, and the broader city economy. Industry leaders and hotel owners echoed these predictions and claimed the economic consequences would be disastrous. Analyzing the data today, it’s clear these claims did not materialize. LA’s hotel industry grew by every measure, either outperforming or on track with comparator markets in California and New York City.” [Full report]

10) International/Mexico: Iberdrola, a Spanish multinational electric utility company, has completed the sale of 13 power generation plants to the government. “The transaction was announced by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who emphasized the importance of preventing CFE from monopolizing the electricity generation sector. Iberdrola stated that the deal was closed as planned and is part of the company’s strategy to fulfill its decarbonization commitments.”

Education

11) National: Jeff Bryant, writing in The Progressive, picks up on a first by education secretary Miguel Cardona—Cardona calling out the right wing specifically for waging an assault on diversity, equity and inclusion in the nation’s schools to promote privatization. “Cardona called new laws passed by Republican state lawmakers to eliminate DEI programs ‘a deliberate attack on efforts to try to make sure schools are inclusive, welcoming places for all students—in particular, students from different backgrounds.’ But more than just defending schools for embracing DEI, Cardona went further to call out the intention behind these attacks on the programs, calling them ‘very deliberate attempts to seek division in our schools so that a private option sounds better [emphasis added] for parents.’ ‘Every year, there’s something to stoke division in an attempt to disrupt our public schools and decrease the confidence in our public schools,’ he said. ‘Four years ago were the masks. [Critical race theory] was a year after that. [Now,] DEI, [and] banning books.’”

12) Iowa: Robin Opsahl, writing in the Iowa Capital Dispatch, reports that “House lawmakers heard from Iowa teachers, school district staff and parents in a public hearing Wednesday on their proposal to make changes to Iowa’s Area Education Agencies. Some speakers remained concerned about potential privatization of special education services, while others urged more control for school districts. Legislators held the public hearing to discuss House File 2612, a bill approved by the House Education Committee last week and available for consideration by the full House.”

13) Maryland: The Maryland State Education Association (MSEA) reports on legislative action in the state capital. “MSEA, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 2250, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 500 were among the witnesses that provided testimony on Wednesday to the House Ways and Means Committee for House Bill 1175, to put guardrails around subcontracting in public schools and make such contracts more transparent and with stronger oversight and employee protections. Bus driver and AFSCME Local 2250 President Martin Diggs described subcontracts that create unequal working conditions in disregard of negotiated agreements. MSEA Treasurer Colleen Morris described times when subcontractors’ lack of familiarity with the education policy, students, and schools where they were temporarily assigned created unsafe consequences and additional staff workloads. MSEA President Cheryl Bost and lobbyist Christian Gobel emphasized the need to keep for-profit contractors from filling public school jobs and to make sure any contracts are transparent.

14) Ohio: WOSU reports that school voucher usage has exploded in suburban Columbus districts. “A 2022 lawsuit in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas argues that the EdChoice expansion is unconstitutional. Dozens of public school districts have signed on, including Columbus, Bexley, Gahanna-Jefferson, Reynoldsburg, South-Western, Westerville and Worthington. William Phillis, Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy in School Funding, which is spearheading the lawsuit, said Ohio’s constitution calls for a ‘thorough and efficient system of common schools’ and prohibits the state from funding private, and specifically religious, schools. Vouchers have, at times, been used to segregate, and Phillis argues that’s happening again. ‘Recent data is that a disproportionate percentage of the people taking the vouchers are white,’ Phillis said. ‘And so, the voucher program has a segregating effect. It segregates people along racial lines, ethnic lines, economic lines.’”

15) Texas: Rural Republicans, along with Democratic public education supporters, continue to stand in the way of Gov. Abbott’s vouchers scheme, says the Hechinger Report. “The governor worked to court support by tying the passage of his voucher plan to a $7.6 billion funding boost for public schools that included teacher pay raises. Still, a stalwart group of 21 House lawmakers, most of whom represent rural areas and fear the measure would pull resources away from their public schools, sided with state Democrats to torpedo the legislation. ‘Abbott wanted them to bend the knee and kiss the ring, and they’re just not going to do it. That ain’t Texas,’ said Rev. Charles Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, a public-school advocacy group. ‘It is Texan to vote in the interest of your community and constituents.’”

16) International/Ireland: European Parliamentarian Mick Wallace reports that the housing crisis is driving a teacher shortage in Ireland. “Ireland has a shortage of Teachers which is having a dramatic impact on students – Plenty of teachers are qualifying, but the #Housing Crisis means they struggle to find affordable accommodation. Neoliberal Policies of successive Irish Governments have been a total disaster.”

Infrastructure

17) National/Think Tanks: Lawmakers across the country are seeking to curb utility spending on politics, ads and more extras. “After a string of scandals and amid rising bills, lawmakers in statehouses across the country have been pushing legislation to curb utilities spending ratepayer money on lobbying, expert testimony in rate cases, goodwill advertising, charitable giving, trade association membership and other costs. At least a dozen states have considered bills to limit how gas, water and electric utilities can spend customers’ money, according to a tracker maintained by the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group funded by environmental and climate-focused foundations that concentrates on utilities and fossil fuel interests.”

18) National: A bill has been introduced in Congress that would allow tax-exempt bonds to be issued for space infrastructure. Spaceports would have the same access to low-cost financing as air and seaports. “The legislation calls for spaceports to be treated like airports under exempt facility bond rules, allowing for the issuance of tax-free private activity bonds that would be exempt from the state volume cap. (…) Space investment, which has gained popularity among private investors, faces high capital costs and limited revenue-generating ability. ‘This strategic policy change empowers our state and national leaders to leverage the power of financial markets to accelerate space infrastructure development and bolster the economy,’ said Rob Long, president and CEO, Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority, in a statement. In Florida, there has been more than $2.1 billion in private investment across 44 spaceport infrastructure projects since 2012, according to the group. Space Florida wrote a letter last year to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel urging the move.” [Sub required]

19) California: Disney’s proposal to privatize California streets has kicked off a protest. “We previously reported that not everyone is a fan of the plan, with a grassroots campaign named ‘Save Our Anaheim Streets from DisneylandForward’ asserting that ‘[b]uried in a 17,000-page document are plans to narrow existing streets around the Resort, back out of past deals to complete roads Disney promised, and even close some of the streets we use daily to access the freeway!’ Other Anaheim residents are beginning to raise more concerns about the privatization of California streets, according to KTLA. For example, in a recent Planning Commission workshop, a resident named Randy Lewis pushed against it, saying, ‘Magic Way is near and dear to my heart. I love Magic Way. I do not love the idea of closing Magic Way. It’s a great way for residents to bypass a lot of traffic.’”

Here’s the petition. It says, in part, “Yes, Disney is a massive corporation but, by standing together, we can make our voices heard. This petition asks Anaheim leaders to consider alternatives that benefit both tourism and taxpayers. Additionally, we call for increased truth and transparency in these dealings. ”

20) California: We don’t need to weaken environmental regulations to create more housing, say Joel Reynolds and Tom Soto. Reynolds is western director and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Santa Monica; Soto is a former alternate member of the California Coastal Commission and a Natural Resources Defense Council board member.  “If the coast of California is a state asset worth trillions of dollars—and it is—why is the state agency that has successfully protected that asset for 50 years under assault? The answer—’unnecessary permitting delays’—is unfounded. Yet California’s exceptional history of coastal protection is in greater jeopardy today in the halls of our state Capitol than it has been for generations.”

21) Florida: The Florida Times-Union’s Nate Monroe is covering the high profile JEA get-rich-quick privatization scheme in playing out in a Florida courtroom. “The alleged get-rich scheme, prosecutors have said, was tied to an effort also moving forward in the summer of 2019 to privatize JEA. Although the conspiracy and fraud charges against CEO Aaron Zahn and CFO Ryan Wannemacher are not directly tied to that potential sale effort — which was ultimately canceled shortly before Christmas in 2019—prosecutors have argued that too was the result of an elaborate effort to dupe the board into believing that a sale was the only way to save JEA from financial ruin.”

“Assistant U.S. Attorney A. Tysen Duva on Wednesday questioned former JEA board member Alan Howard in depth about the lead up to the privatization effort, including revisiting financial presentations Zahn and his team delivered the board that prosecutors believe cast JEA’s finances in an overly negative light. One of those slides, for example, had an illustration of a frog in a pot—a reference to an old parable about a frog in gradually warming water being unaware it’s slowly boiling until the point of death. The information from JEA’s executives, Howard said Wednesday, left him believing there were ‘storm clouds on the horizon’ if drastic action weren’t taken.”

22) Maryland: Pointing to staffing shortages, Baltimore officials have approved a private contracting deal at the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant. “Under the contract, signed last year by the city, the company has taken over operating certain parts of the plant previously run by city staff, said interim Director of Public Works Richard Luna. The 40 city staff members in those areas have been transferred to other places in the facility. The contract represents an expansion of private operation of the Back River facility, where corporations already have a sizable footprint. But city staffers were adamant during Wednesday’s Board of Estimates meeting that it did not represent privatization of the plant, but rather a temporary fix to staffing struggles.”

23) Massachusetts: The Boston Globe reports that “a local environmental group that serves as a steward of Franklin Park joined 15 residents in a lawsuit Tuesday to halt the redevelopment of White Stadium in the park into a home for a new professional women’s soccer team, arguing the proposal was fast-tracked without adequate community input, and would privatize public parkland. The lawsuit is the first to be filed by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy in its roughly 25-year history—an action its leadership said they took reluctantly, but seriously.”

24) Texas: Privatized segregation? Now happening down the road from Greenwood in Austin, “opponents, who filed a lawsuit seeking to block the central Capital Express project in January, warn the expansion will worsen I-35’s historic role as the city’s racial dividing line. The city of Austin has crafted a plan to try to diminish the barrier with a series of bridges and caps covering the highway, but it remains uncertain whether the city can meet the roughly $900 million price tag.” [Sub required]

Public Services

25) National: The staff shortages in nursing homes that contributed to elevated death rates during the pandemic continue. “Many Americans prefer to believe the Covid pandemic is a thing of the past. But for the nation’s nursing homes, the effects have yet to fully fade, with staffing shortages and employee burnout still at crisis levels and many facilities struggling to stay afloat, according to a new report published Thursday by federal investigators. The report, by the inspector general’s office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that the flawed infection-control procedures that contributed to the 170,000 deaths at nursing homes during the pandemic were still inadequate at many facilities. And while the uptake of Covid vaccines was initially robust when they first became available, investigators found that vaccination booster rates among staff workers and residents have been badly lagging. The findings were directed at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.”

For more see “‘They Were Traumatized’: How a Private Equity-Associated Lender Helped Precipitate a Nursing-Home Implosion.”

26) National/Oregon: How might the U.S. Postal Service’s consolidation plan affect smaller and rural communities? Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger spell out some of the issues in Counterpunch. “Through this consolidation plan, many postal processing and distribution facilities in smaller communities will be converted to Local Processing Centers with reduced functions. USPS has not yet disclosed a full list of facilities to be affected by the plan. But in numerous reported cases, consolidation will result in packages and mail traveling long distances from outlying areas to urban regional processing centers.

“How might this consolidation plan affect smaller towns and rural communities, where residents tend to rely most heavily on the public Postal Service? Unfortunately, USPS has published very little analysis to back up their claims about the expected benefits of the consolidation plan. This report uses available information to examine the potential impacts on just one facility: a postal processing and distribution center in Medford, Oregon.”

27) National: More than 17 million low-income households will experience service disruptions if internet subsidy ends, Route Fifty reports. “Funding for the ACP, which provides a $30-a-month subsidy to eligible low-income households for internet access, is set to run out at the end of April unless Congress provides more money to continue it. The FCC, which surveyed ACP households in December, also found that more than two-thirds of respondents had inconsistent or zero connectivity prior to enrolling in the program. Of that group, 80% cited affordability as the reason.”

28) Florida: The state Senate is seeking to level up salaries of private prison workers to bring them in line with state levels. “Florida has offered bonuses and raises to corrections officers, but only those directly employed by the state. Corrections officers at state prisons received raises years ago. Now the Senate wants $8.5 million to keep pay commensurate at private prisons. The Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee in its latest offer continues to seek $8.5 million for private prison operations. Senate President Kathleen Passidomos Office said that’s money entirely intended for officer pay, and to create parity with salaries at the Department of Corrections (DOC). (…) But to date, the House Justice Appropriations Subcommittee has not agreed to dedicating any money to private prison salaries. For the last few years, the Legislature has passed wage increases for public corrections officers, which is all facilitated through the DOC.”

29) Montana/ Arizona: Montana prisons are still overcrowded even after a transfer of inmates to a private (CoreCivic) Arizona prison. “The transfer of 120 male inmates to CoreCivic’s Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona last year—the result of an almost $4 million annual appropriation that Republican lawmakers slipped into a prison infrastructure bill in the latter days of the 2023 Legislature—did allow for 212 state inmates previously housed in county jails to be placed at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Department of Corrections Director Brian Gootkin said Tuesday. But, according to department data, about 345 state inmates are still being held in county facilities while they await placement elsewhere, including 103 who are in jail pending free space at the state prison.”

30) North Carolina: Republican lawmakers have opened a crusade to privatize the DMV, and roasted its leader on Thursday. “Goodwin told lawmakers that agency leaders have taken a variety of steps as they’ve dealt with the challenge of losing “over half of our staff during the pandemic.” He noted the DMV has filled more than 250 vacancies but still has a challenge filling contractor position[s], as they don’t qualify for state benefits. The DMV set up an appointment system for customers. But, after seeing about 25 percent of those appointments ended up being no-shows, they moved all appointments to morning hours and left the afternoons for walk-in services. It can be challenging to make appointments as some offices have no availability for the next three months. ‘While we’ve made a host of changes and improvements over the last two years, we recognize that this agency is not perfect. None of us are. And, we have a lot to learn and a lot to do,’ said Goodwin. He said the agency has entered into an agreement with the state of Arizona with the goal of modernizing ‘aging mainframe systems.’”

31) International/Canada: Last Tuesday, the Registered Nurses’ Union of Newfoundland and Labrador and allies took their message to Confederation Hill “to demand the provincial government reduce its spending on private agency nurses as a stopgap measure to address the province’s nursing shortage. ‘We’re here today because when health care is under attack, we fight back!’ said Registered Nurses’ Union Newfoundland and Labrador President Yvette Coffey. (…) The rally comes less than two weeks after a Globe and Mail investigation into the provincial government’s contract with a private, for-profit company based in Toronto and public money spent on private travel nurses. The investigation found that public spending on private nurses has drastically increased since the pandemic. Between April and August of 2023, the province spent $35.6 million on agency nurses, a considerable rise from the pre-pandemic annual average of just over $1 million. The Globe also reports that Canadian Health Labs, contracted by the Andrew Furey government, was in some cases paid the hourly wage equivalent of more than $300 per nurse, an amount exponentially higher than the average rate of pay for nurses in the province.”

32) International/United Kingdom: A new study, led by University of Oxford researchers and published in The Lancet“has concluded that hospitals that are privatized typically deliver worse quality care after converting from public ownership.” Lead author Dr. Benjamin Goodair says “this review challenges the justifications for health care privatization and concludes that the scientific support for health care privatization is weak. Overall, hospital privatization may reduce costs, but does so at expense of quality of care. (…) Increases in privatization generally corresponded with worse quality of care, with no studies included in the review finding unequivocally positive effects on health outcomes. Additionally, hospitals converting from public to private ownership status tended to make higher profits. This was mainly achieved by reducing staff levels and reducing the proportion of patients with limited health insurance coverage.”

All the Rest

33) National: Corporate giants are aiming to hobble the National Labor Relations Board, Taylor Giorno and Julia Shapero report in The Hill. “Amazon, Starbucks, SpaceX and Trader Joe’s are all facing complaints from the NLRB over their alleged harassment, intimidation and illegal firings of unionizing employees. The companies have responded by challenging the constitutionality of the NLRB in federal court, which could upend the structure of the New Deal-era agency. The NLRB is at the center President Biden’s mission to be the most ‘pro-union’ president ever and a bulwark for a rising tide of union activity. But the organization could suffer a serious blow to its power if the companies challenging its legality succeed. ‘This energy in the labor movement is at least in part fueled by the knowledge that workers have that they are protected when they undertake these kinds of activities,’ said Sharon Block, a former NLRB member who now works as a professor and executive director for the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.”

This is not the first time that corporate behemoths have tried to strangle the NLRB by getting courts to decare it unconstitutional. Leading right wing organizations in the 1930s, such as the American Liberty League (p. 26) and the National Association of Manufacturers (now headed by, among others, Johnson & Johnson, Rockwell, ExxonMobil, Dow Inc., General Motors, Caterpillar, Pfizer, and Toyota) also tried to kill it off but were defeated.

34) National: Cheap jail and prison food is making people sick. It doesn’t have to, says the Vera Institute. “Maneuvering around constraints imposed by the ubiquitous Keefe Group—which supplies food and other services to correctional facilities nationwide—Matthew worked to make eating behind bars tolerable, even enjoyable. He resisted serving food he considered substandard and, whenever possible, heeded his peers’ requests and preferences. ‘[Food is] a sense of relief; when you can go to the kitchen and get a good meal [it’s uplifting],’ he said. ‘I always tried to produce that for people.’ Still, despite Matthew’s ingenuity, his efforts were ultimately that of an individual person attempting to alleviate and make up for institutional failures to provide adequate, healthy food—a misconceived cost-saving measure that’s lucrative for corporations.”

35) National: Republican lawmakers are butting heads against service chiefs who want to upgrade the military’s skills at things like HVAC repair and maintenance, Stars & Stripes reports.  Despite privatization disasters such as the privatized military housing program, the efficiency arguments have now given way to warfighting arguments.

The post New state-rating report from Network for Public Education appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
The Millions Versus the Millionaires https://inthepublicinterest.org/the-millions-versus-the-millionaires/ Fri, 01 Mar 2024 18:23:15 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16061 The public supports public education. It’s time the politicians supported the public.

The post The Millions Versus the Millionaires appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
A new study from University of Southern California Center for Applied Research in Education at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences should give hope to those who believe in the value of public education—in other words, according to the study, most Americans.

Despite the current political climate, the survey revealed surprising areas of agreement among Americans regarding education.

For example, Americans across the political spectrum overwhelmingly agree on the importance of a free, public education for every child; its core functions of teaching basic literacy, numeracy and civics; and positioning children to have a financially secure future.

The researchers also discovered that 58% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans believe protecting democracy is a very important goal of education, while 36% of adults with other affiliations agree. The survey also showed widespread agreement that parents should play an important role in their children’s education.

“In an election year, when the partisan stakes seem so high, we were heartened to find such high levels of agreement around core purposes of education, including both teaching the basics and also strengthening our fragile democracy,” said Morgan Polikoff, co-author of the study and associate professor of education at USC Rossier.

The study mirrors findings over the years, including a 2021 study commissioned by the National School Boards Action Center that found a solid majority of respondents valued what their public schools are doing in their community. That study also found 59 percent of voters think funding for public schools should be increased. Among those who believe it should be increased, 86 percent would support an increase in funding even if it meant they would pay more in taxes. What’s more, three-quarters of respondents to a more recent NPR poll say teachers are “asked to do too much work for the pay they receive.”

More than nine out of ten K-12 students attend public schools. That’s more than just voting with your feet—that’s voting with your precious children’s education.

These number add up to a lot of children, parents, and grandparents who could make up a nearly unstoppable political force that should shield public education budgets from getting gutted by money-guzzling projects like voucher programs and charter schools. But they are up against some of the best-funded political organizations, like those supported by anti-public education zealots Betsy DeVos and the Cleveland Browns football team owner Jimmy Haslam and his wife, Dee.

As conservatives look for more ways to undermine public education funding across the states, let’s hope millions of families are able to defeat a handful of millionaires.

The post The Millions Versus the Millionaires appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
Republicans and Corporate Dems Aim to End LA Left Turn https://inthepublicinterest.org/labor-community-organizers-help-la-turn-left/ Mon, 26 Feb 2024 16:37:15 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16053 The Privatization Report: A weekly newsletter of news and analysis about the corporate takeover of education, water, and other public goods.

The post Republicans and Corporate Dems Aim to End LA Left Turn appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
HIGHLIGHTS

JUMP TO: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST

First, the Good News

1) National: Writing in Common Dreams, In the Public Interest Executive Director Donald Cohen says the new direct file tax filing pilot program, which will be available to some next year, shows it doesn’t have to be hard to do your taxes. “So, what’s the hold up? Well, listen to Times editorial board writer Binya Appelbaum’s explanation, also in the Times video. ‘There is a company that dominates the tax preparation industry in the United States. It makes billions of dollars by charging Americans to help them complete their taxes. It makes a product called TurboTax, which, for most Americans, is practically synonymous with doing your taxes. And it has made an industry out of something that ought to be a public service.’ That company is Intuit, and for decades it has hired the best lobbyists to block the Internal Revenue Service from offering a free tax filing tool. In a rare and unfortunate moment of bipartisanship, the company has been able to influence Republicans and Democrats alike with its fundraising prowess.”

The Wall Street Journal road tested the new program, and listed some of the pluses and minuses of the new program, with the biggest plus being the cost—it’s free. “Once it is live, a chat function will let users get help from IRS employees. The IRS won’t charge for assistance. Employees won’t try to upsell you. Taxpayers spent an average of $150 to prepare returns last year, according to the Treasury Department. IRS employees available through live chat are trained on the Direct File tool, so they should be able to guide you through any problems. That said, they aren’t there to give you customized personal financial advice. It may end up feeling more like an interactive IRS publication. Users will be able to toggle between English and Spanish. Officials say Direct File will work on desktops and smartphones.” [Sub required]

2) National: Is there a way out of the collapse of local journalism, which provides some of the leading coverage of privatization in the country? Alissa Quart, executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project has some suggestions. “On the first count, we should look to civic media models like the one proposed by communications scholar Robert McChesney. Drawing from participatory budgeting and inspired by economist Dean Baker, McChesney’s idea for reform is a local government process where citizens vote on how their county or city’s government media budget should be directed. McChesney proposes a news media voucher program—the Citizenship News Voucher—which, as he wrote in 2010, would make it so that ‘every American adult gets a $200 voucher she can use to donate government money to any nonprofit news medium of her choice. She will indicate her choice on her tax return. . . . A government agency, possibly operating out of the Internal Revenue Service, can be set up to allocate the funds and to determine eligibility.’ As for whether this reform could happen in real life—it’s already being considered. Washington, DC has started looking at a media voucher plan after a council member introduced a novel bill, which would offer government-funded vouchers to DC residents that they can donate to local journalism venues that they select.”

3) National: The federal Office of Personnel Management will be conducting a survey to analyze “artificial intelligence” in government jobs. “Last July, OPM completed the first step of its work, identifying 43 general and 14 technical competencies required for work with AI. And in a memo last week, Veronica Hinton, OPM’s associate director for workforce policy and innovation, announced the HR agency’s next task: surveying current federal employees who are already working with AI to confirm OPM’s initial list of skills. “The OPM artificial intelligence job analysis survey represents the next phase of the study and will be used to validate the AI competencies identified by technical and human resources subject matter experts as needed for performing AI work governmentwide,” Hinton wrote. ‘OPM plans to issue the OPM AI Job Analysis Survey today, the results of which will be used to develop an AI competency model.’”

4) Maryland: Maximillian Alvarez reports that “Baltimore’s co-ops show the power of a ‘solidarity economy.’ (…) “At a recent event hosted by the Baltimore Museum of Industry titled ‘Work Matters: Building a Worker-Owned Co-op,” Max moderated a panel including workers and representatives from Common Ground Bakery Café, Taharka Bros Ice Cream, A Few Cool Hardware Stores, and the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy (BRED). He talked to them about how they came to work at these different co-ops, how their businesses transitioned to more cooperative models, and they dig into the nitty gritty of what working at a co-op looks like, what it takes for workers to democratically run a business, and the real challenges, limitations, and rewards that come with this kind of work. Panelists include: Vince Green (Taharka Bros Ice Cream); David Evans (A Few Cool Hardware Stores); Craig Smith (A Few Cool Hardware Stores); Sierra Allen (Common Ground Bakery Café); Christa Daring (BRED).

5) New York: New York State has awarded $1.8 million in grants for Hudson River projects. “The Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson River Estuary Grants Program implements priorities outlined in the Hudson River Estuary Action Agenda 2021-2025. Over its 21 years, the program has awarded 643 grants totaling more than $28 million. Funding is provided by New York’s Environmental Protection Fund, which enables land acquisition, farmland protection, invasive species prevention and eradication, recreation access, water quality improvement, and environmental justice projects, according to a DEC statement. ‘These grants build upon local conservation efforts and priorities to sustainably improve water quality and protect the Hudson River,’ DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said in a statement.”

6) Iowa: In a letter to the editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Martha Huffman of Williamsburg has come to the defense of public accountability for public business and records. “Senate File 2311 is a bill that should concern every Iowa voter. The bill considers the legislature should hire private CPAs and auditing companies to audit state business transactions that our state elected employees have made. Our taxpaying citizens in Iowa should not pay for private CPAs or accounting firms. the cost for this procedure would be astronomical and political. Rob Sand is our state [auditor]. He was elected by the majority of the people to do the accounting for all the state house business and records. Legislature, let Rob proceed!”

7) International: The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), which represents 8 million public service workers across Europe, and Public Services International (PSI), a Global Union Federation of more than 700 trade unions representing 30 million workers in 154 countries, have announced the launch of “a new online training tool to support affiliates to understand the concepts, opportunities, challenges, and processes around remunicipalisation and insourcing. The toolkit is the outcome of the EPSU-PSI European Commission-funded project on insourcing and remunicipalisation—INQPS. The project development has lasted over a year of development and has involved many EPSU and PSI affiliates, who took part and contributed to six Project Steering Committees.” Online launches are scheduled for March 14 and 18.

“The toolkit features three-levels of knowledge depth, beginning with introductory videos, moving into text and infographics and ends with Q&A tests and checklists to enable trade unionists to grasp and command the key concepts of remunicipalisation/insourcing and apply it to their trade union work in a national and local environments. The toolkit also provides extensive information, resources, and case studies from the basic to the detailed, depending on the needs of the user. It will be made available on the PSI website and will continue to be developed on an ongoing basis after its launch.”

Education

8) National: The good news out of USC Dornsife is that “despite partisan divides on topics like LGBTQ+ inclusion and racial justice in K-12 curricula, Americans overwhelmingly agree on the value of public education.” See the report.

“Drawing from a nationally representative survey of more than 3,900 U.S. adults, the study offers a more nuanced picture of public opinion than the heated debates dominating headlines. The research also provides insights for policymakers and educators navigating the complexities of public education in an increasingly polarized America. ‘We were surprised and hopeful to find such strong bipartisan support for public education and its purpose,’ said Anna Saavedra, co-author of the study, research scientist and co-director at the Center for Applied Research in Education at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. ‘That said, there are major partisan differences in beliefs about what children should be learning in public schools, particularly regarding topics related to LGBTQ and race. Local districts have the challenge of reconciling these differences in the coming years,’ said Saavedra, who is also the director of research for the USC EdPolicy Hub based at the USC Rossier School of Education.”

9) National: A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that educators across the country favor teaching students about race and gender. “When it comes to race, most U.S. public-school teachers think students should be taught that the legacy of slavery affects Black Americans today and that parents shouldn’t be able to opt their children out of lessons on racism, according to Pew. At the same time, most educators don’t think schools should teach that a child’s gender can be different from the child’s birth sex. Teachers say this topic usually doesn’t come up in class anyway, the national survey shows. Meanwhile, more than 40% of teachers said that the high-profile discussions about classroom content have had a negative impact on their jobs. Seven in 10 teachers think that, as a group, they don’t have enough influence over what they teach.” [Sub required]

10) Alaska: “Governor Dunleavy’s endorsement of charter schools raises concerns about privatization in Alaska. “Hawaii’s privatized education system serves as a cautionary tale. Investing in public schools and supporting teachers can ensure high-quality education for all,” says Ebenezer Mensah in BNN. “As a former resident of Hawaii and a current supporter of Alaska’s public schools, I have seen firsthand the potential consequences of underfunding public education and the resulting shift towards private education. Hawaii’s education system is heavily privatized, with families spending tens of thousands of dollars on tuition annually. If Alaska follows suit, families with means will undoubtedly seek alternatives to the underfunded public schools, leading to a rise in private school tuition costs. The influx of new families could also change the Christian character and philosophies of Alaska’s private schools, as well as increase competition for jobs at these institutions.”

11) California: Peter Dreier sat down with Jon Wiener of The Nation’s Start Making Sense podcast and talked about Dreier’s new article, co-authored with Mike Bonin, on the battle for control of the Los Angeles City Council, which has played a leading role in national efforts to defend the interests of renters against predatory corporate interests. The alliance of unions and community organizers terrifies LA billionaires, says Dreier.

 “Jon Wiener: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about this DSA thing. They say that they are out to stop DSA from taking over the city council, Democratic Socialists of America. Is this just old-style red baiting and name-calling, or is DSA really a political force in LA City politics?

Peter Dreier: It’s mostly red baiting. The local chapter of DSA has maybe 1,000 members, which is a big increase from what it was 10 years ago. They do know how to door knock and phone bank and get people to vote, but it’s nowhere close to the power that the unions have. They’re really afraid of the unions and the community organizing groups that do tenants’ rights work, work on education reform, and try to stop the tide of chartered schools. So it’s really the billionaires, the cops, and the firefighters who don’t like a progressive city council, and they’ve been losing for the last five or six years, and billionaires don’t like to lose.”

12) Florida: Writing on Twitter/X, Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, says “there is a massive teacher & staff shortage impacting the education of Florida’s students. However, the Governor and Lawmakers continue to ignore the issue. With about 2 1/2 weeks left in the 2024 Legislative Session, Florida lawmakers must do better!”

13) Kentucky: Veteran Kentucky investigative reporter John Schaff, writing in the Northern Kentucky Tribune, says school vouchers are hurting students’ academic performance. “A couple of weeks ago at the State Capitol in Frankfort, a lobbying group called ‘EdChoice Kentucky, Inc.’ organized a rally in favor of changing the state’s constitution to funnel taxpayer money into private religious schools. Most of the people who showed up were students from Catholic and Christian schools who were bused in for the occasion. They were there to support lobbyists’ efforts to force all Kentuckians to pay tuition and expenses for students like them who are already attending private schools. Sadly, most taxpayers were probably at work and couldn’t attend the rally to hear EdChoice’s Moe Lundrigan tout his dream for a huge and costly expansion of state government: vouchers paid for by every Kentuckian, with the voucher money flowing into the pockets of out-of-state corporate big shots and churches from the ‘hood to the holler.’”

14) Wyoming: K-12 mental health services have been revived in the state budget. ““Even in my little town of Big Piney, we have an inordinate amount of children that are going to school counselors that are basically talking about suicide and are in crisis,” Speaker of the House Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale) said. Sommers learned of these circumstances through his experience on the Legislature’s Mental Health and Vulnerable Adult Task Force. It spurred him into action. ‘These are our precious resource, these children,’ Sommers said. ‘And to see them in the pain, and the crisis that’s occurring in our schools, is tragic.’ The bill, however, died when the hardline Freedom Caucus used its voting bloc to kill it upon introduction. ‘It’s not the role of government,’ caucus member and Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (R-Wheatland) said in opposition to the bill. (…) Today, however, a slightly different version of the bill got a second chance when Sommers brought it as an amendment to the budget bill. The House voted 33-28 to put $18.5 million toward establishing a grant program intended to address K-12 mental health needs.”

Infrastructure

15) National: The Congressional Research Service has a new report out, The Highway Funding Formula: History and Current Status Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. “The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA; P.L. 117-58), enacted in 2021, changed the relatively simple programmatic structure for highway funding established by MAP-21. Part of this change was that the IIJA combined surface transportation reauthorization with a broader infrastructure bill funded primarily with multiyear advance appropriations. The IIJA retained the existing formula programs and created several new ones. The IIJA also created new competitive discretionary programs.

The IIJA added two new formula programs to the core highway programs that were funded from the HTF: the Carbon Reduction Program and the Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation (PROTECT) Program. Two other new formula programs created by the IIJA for highway bridges and electric vehicle infrastructure were funded with multiyear advance appropriations and apportioned on the basis of formulas unique to the individual programs. The IIJA also revived a stand-alone Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS) Program, provided for ADHS funds to be distributed according to a cost-to-complete formula, and funded the Ferry Boat Program from both the HTF and the general fund. The formula funds under the Ferry Boat Program are not apportioned to the states but are allocated to existing public ferry service entities on the basis of ferry passengers, vehicles carried, and route miles.”

16) National: The transportation industry says the Build America, Buy America Act is holding back infrastructure development. “Part of the worry is that U.S.-made materials might not be available. In that case, the federal approval process for getting foreign parts can take years. But even the prospect of certifying that components are made in the U.S. is so grueling that many suppliers choose not to do it, instead selling their goods to private industry and leaving public agencies with fewer design choices or more expensive bids. The new Build America, Buy America rules come at the same time that public agencies confront shortages of workers and materials to build projects funded by the 2021 infrastructure law. Inflation has been especially high in the construction sector, too.”

17) Alabama: A bill advancing through the state legislature could introduce so-called public-private partnerships into the airport sector, The Bond Buyer reports. “The federal Airport Investment Partnership Program allows airports to explore privatization as a way to generate private capital though experts say it has generated less interest than expected. Major terminal projects at John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia have led the way in the space. Most recently, the U.S. Virgin Islands is crafting a long-term design-build-operate-finance-maintain lease for both of its airports. Not all the agreements work out. In June 2022, the Gary Chicago International Airport dissolved its P3 eight years into what was to be a 40-year agreement. The Denver International Airport in 2019 dropped a two-year-old P3 in favor of a traditional general contractor approach.” [Sub required]

18) Florida: The Charlotte County Airport Authority recently signed a resolution pledging not to privatize the Punta Gorda Airport.

19) Louisiana: The Bayou State is set to float $1.34 billion of private activity bonds in April “as part of its largest public-private partnership to date, which will replace an aging bridge over Interstate 10 near St. Charles.” Interest and issuance costs will take a big bite out of the proceeds. “The approvals come a few weeks after state lawmakers revived the project earlier this month. The deal is tentatively set to price the week of April 1 by J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Wells Fargo Bank, NA. The $1.34 billion includes $800 million to cover construction costs for the first several years, with the remaining $523 million going to capitalized interest and issuance costs.”

20) Massachusetts: A Boston pro soccer team is being sued over its plans to redevelop a stadium. “Neighbors and park advocates have filed a lawsuit against the city and a professional women’s soccer team planning to restore and use Franklin Park’s White Stadium, stating that such a use would unconstitutionally privatize the land. Mayor Michelle Wu pushed back on that claim, however, stating that any attempts to paint the redevelopment project as a privatization of White Stadium was “either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation.” In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court, the plaintiffs also allege that redevelopment plans would largely displace Boston Public School student-athletes and community members who regularly use the park and stadium, and were made hastily by the city and Boston Unity Soccer Partners without public input.”

21) Montana: The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that right wing U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke (R) has come out in favor of limiting the privatization of public lands. “Zinke introduced the public lands bill as part of a roundtable discussion on Monday between himself and representatives from outdoor recreation, sportsmen and conservation organizations. Beyond seeking to add a layer of protection to public lands and increased scrutiny on their sale, Zinke said the bill will start a discussion on the addressing issues of access, restoration and wildlife corridors. ‘We were given the legacy of public lands. Now, I think we have to look at the next 100 years,’ Zinke said. The bill is bipartisan, co-sponsored by Congressman Gabe Vasquez (D-NM).”

22) Ohio/Think Tanks: Policy Matters Ohio’s Zach Schiller has unpacked Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) proposal. “None of the TIF money is to go for stadiums or private developers. But the major riverfront development outlined by Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock Management Services LLC will be covered by its own, separate TIF. Will funds from that TIF go right to Bedrock? Why does a billionaire need such assistance?

Much of the discussion of the TIF so far has centered around how much would be spent in the neighborhoods, an important question. But there are plenty of others for Cleveland City Council to take up when it evaluates the TIF ordinance.”

23) Vermont: Tonight at 6:30 ET, St. Albans residents will vote on whether to approve an $11.4 million bond paid for through tax increment financing to upgrade the city’s downtown area. “10 million of that money would be earmarked for two new four-story apartment buildings behind city hall, housing about 90 new units in total, according to city planning documents. Those units would primarily be one- and two-bedroom apartments and be considered ‘workforce housing’—meaning they would be affordable for people making between 80% and 120% of the area’s median income. The median household income in the St. Albans City area is just under $50,000, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. (…) If passed, the bond debt would be paid for through tax increment financing, or TIF. Under that structure, a municipality designates a TIF district — in this case downtown St. Albans — and pays for upgrades to the district with future tax revenues that are expected to be derived from those improvements.”

24) Revolving Door News/Ohio: HNTB, the infrastructure design behemoth, has announced it has hired Jennifer Gallagher, until recently the “director of the City of Columbus Department of Public Service where she played a key role in the implementation of transformative transportation initiatives in Columbus.” Gallagher also worked for the Ohio DOT and Franklin County Engineer’s Office.

Public Services

25) National: As a private robotic satellite lands on the moon, the GAO has produced a report on FAA oversight of commercial human space flight. “The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversees commercial space operations with humans onboard under its broader licensing framework. FAA requires commercial launch operators to obtain a license before conducting any operation within U.S. borders—whether they carry humans or payloads, such as satellites. To obtain a license, operators must demonstrate that they can conduct the operation without jeopardizing the safety of the people and property not involved in the operation. FAA has additional licensing requirements for operations with humans onboard, such as crew training and the ability to suppress cabin fire. These requirements are intended to address risk to the uninvolved public. FAA is currently prohibited from issuing regulations directed at protecting the safety of humans onboard, with some exceptions, due to a moratorium that Congress established in 2004 to limit certain regulatory burdens on an emerging industry. This moratorium is set to expire on March 8, 2024.” [Full report]

26) National/Virginia: Transit workers represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) have launched the largest strike in years against Transdev, the private corporation operating some of the bus lines. A press release issued by Local 689 declared a ‘vast divide between the Union and the company’ as of the last meeting between the two parties. “The ATU reports that while the company’s last stated offer ‘included what appeared to be competitive wage increases for bus operators,’ it ‘deliberately failed to acknowledge’ the area’s high cost of living and excluded other benefits. The workers have been without a new contract since late November. Workers are demanding improved pay as well as retirement benefits. According to one driver, “we have people that work for 25-30 years who have retired and don’t have any income… apart from social security” in Fairfax County, one of the most expensive places to live in the United States.” Sign the petition.

27) National/Think Tanks: The Sentencing Project has produced an excellent research brief on private, for-profit prisons in the U.S., pulling together many statistics that are hard to find and laying a basis for further research and action. The author is Dr. Kristen Budd, a research analyst at the Sentencing Project.  “Private for-profit prisons incarcerated 90,873 American residents in 2022, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 5%. Harmful crime policies of the 1980s and beyond fueled a rapid expansion in the nation’s prison population. The resulting burden on the public sector led to the modern emergence of for-profit prisons in many states and the federal system. Of the 1.2 million people in federal and state prisons, 8%, or 90,873 people, were in private prisons as of year-end 2022. States show significant variation in the use of private prisons. At one end of the spectrum, Montana incarcerates almost half of its prison population in privately run facilities, but in another 23 states, private prisons are not used at all. A total of 27 states and the federal government use private corporations like GEO Group, Core Civic, LaSalle Corrections, and Management and Training Corporation to run some of their corrections facilities.”

28) Colorado: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado is resisting the privatization of Aurora’s Public Defender’s Office. “In a December 2023 letter to the council, the ACLU cautioned that “Privatization of indigent defense services will likely cost the City of Aurora millions of dollars long-term,” explaining that the current freestanding public defender office is the gold standard and represents significant cost savings over alternative models like flat-fee or assigned-counsel systems. Policy Counsel Catherine Ordoñez of the ACLU of Colorado warned against abandoning the city’s current model, which she views as a cornerstone of fair and effective legal defense for Aurora’s indigent population.”

“Furthermore, the ACLU’s letter outlines that the Request for Proposals (RFP) process posed by the resolution presents significant conflicts of interest and is inconsistent with state and municipal law, stating, ‘Under current law, the Aurora Public Defender Commission is the only entity with legal authority to contract out the indigent defense services currently provided by the Public Defender’s Office.’”

29) International/Argentina: UNI Global Union stood in solidarity lasty week with 500,000 striking healthcare workers, demanding the negotiation of a wage increase. Argentina is undergoing massive popular resistance to the brutal scorched earth austerity and privatization policies of its new right wing president, Javier Milei , which are crushing the economy. The teachers union, CTERA, is planning a national strike on March 5. “On Monday, the teachers of CTERA will also organize a march to Congress. ‘We’ve defined a national resistance strategy that has a 48-hour strike, Monday and Tuesday, and a march on March 5 ending at the National Congress,’ [(CTERA General Secretary Sonia Alesso] specified. ‘We will not tolerate the war-like language from the national government,’ indicated Alesso. ‘We want to work like the schools in Finland and have salaries like the teachers in Finland have,’ added the secretary, alluding to comments that have been made on more than one occasion from the government about wanting an education similar to the that country’s.”

30) International/Canada: The Ontario Nurses’ Association is strongly urging Ontarians to fight the Ford government’s Blood-for-Cash Scheme. “‘Ontario nurses and health-care professionals are horrified at this government’s latest plan to enrich a private corporation while risking the health and well-being of Ontarians,’ says ONA President Erin Ariss, RN. ‘Premier Ford is laying out the red carpet for a private, multinational corporation to make off with profits from a blood and plasma supply that our patients rely on. The evidence is clear from other jurisdictions: for-profit blood and plasma collection erodes the voluntary donor base and exploits the vulnerable. This scheme will put a safe blood supply at risk in Ontario.’”

The Ontario Health Coalition has issued a new report revealing that “local hospitals in every region of Ontario have operating rooms sitting idle the majority of the time. The public has funded local hospitals for more than 70 years to build operating room capacity that is unused while the Ford government is shunting unprecedented public money to private for-profit clinics and hospitals to build new operating rooms, the Coalition reports. For the last year, the Coalition researched the unused capacity in local public hospitals through Freedom of Information requests and interviews with surgical staff.”

An it’s not just in Ontario. In the Maritime provinces, Josh Lewis says, there are signs of creeping privatization. “Here, perhaps the most concerning is a private clinic in Summerside run by a company called Medicalux which charges for services covered by Medicare. It also serves private companies. One of these companies is JD Irving. It’s no surprise that one of the Irving companies, which get an easy ride in New Brunswick with virtually no accountability, thinks it is appropriate to partake in such tomfoolery. The province is leaning more and more on Maple, a for-profit app, in lieu of access to adequate public services. But complaints of having to wait hours, and even then not being able to see a doctor, are widespread.”

32) International/U.K.: Writing in Jacobin (“The West Is Sabotaging a Global Pandemic Treaty”), Leigh Phillips says, “although Britain’s National Health Service has been eroded over the decades by wave after wave of ‘internal market’ wheezes, corporate outsourcing, and partial privatization, it remains the case that the principle of a nationalized healthcare system resolves the conflict between need and profit incentive: the provider is compensated for their work not by profits but instead via taxation, or other forms of cooperative pooling of resources.”

All the Rest

33) National: Nvidia, the AI chipmaker, had a spectacular performance on Wall Street this week, with its valuation topping $2 trillion. But the AI chipmaker’s revenue is not just a private sector story. Publicly-funded military research and government subsidies are part of the profit mix (sales were up 265% year-on-year). But “some investors said they were more cautious about the frenzy. Activity in corners of the stock and options market in recent sessions has shown extreme optimism about the technology, stoking fears about an AI-driven bubble.” The Economist, striking a cautionary note, says ‘the end of the era of cheap money is largely to blame.’” [Subs required]

The post Republicans and Corporate Dems Aim to End LA Left Turn appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
Direct File Might Be Right for You https://inthepublicinterest.org/direct-file-might-be-right-for-you/ Thu, 22 Feb 2024 21:39:04 +0000 https://inthepublicinterest.org/?p=16048 Side effects may include actually enjoying mid-April

The post Direct File Might Be Right for You appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>
A nation needs tax revenue to pay for the things we all need and that should be held as common goods and services. We have no trouble paying taxes, though we certainly wish the wealthy paid their fair share. What we, and lots of other people, have trouble with sometimes is filing taxes. If it seems unnecessarily complicated and time-consuming, it’s because it is. While the U.S. tax forms might be only a handful of pages long, the instructions for filing taxes runs to over 130.

Every President since Ronald Reagan, Democrats and Republicans alike, have promised a system of free and direct filing. This year, President Biden is taking the first steps to fulfilling that promise with the pilot program launch of Direct File..

Other countries have shown it can be done.

“The reason why Tax Day is a breeze in places like the Netherlands or Japan is because that’s the day when the government just sends you a pre-populated form,” according to video journalist Johnny Harris in a New York Times video that’s well worth watching. “You can either approve it or you can amend it if you think you qualify for some credit or write-off or if you think they did the math wrong. But if you approve it, you’re done in just a few minutes.”

Sounds dreamy. So, what’s the hold up? Well, listen to Times editorial board writer Binya Appelbaum’s explanation, also in the Times video.

“There is a company that dominates the tax preparation industry in the United States. It makes billions of dollars by charging Americans to help them complete their taxes. It makes a product called TurboTax, which, for most Americans, is practically synonymous with doing your taxes. And it has made an industry out of something that ought to be a public service.”

That company is Intuit, and for decades it has hired the best lobbyists to block the Internal Revenue Service from offering a free tax filing tool. In a rare and unfortunate moment of bipartisanship, the company has been able to influence Republicans and Democrats alike with its fundraising prowess.

As I’ve said many times, including when we joined the Coalition for Free and Fair Filing (CFFF) last summer, “Businesses do one thing: They sell stuff.” And they don’t take kindly when the government comes along to offer what they sell for free, even when it’s a public good that should belong to all of us.

In that article, I also pointed out that Intuit had net income of about $2 billion last year and their top five executives made $80.7 million. The company donated $646,000 to political candidates and organizations in 2022. They also spent $3.5 million in federal lobbying in 2022, and in 2023 outpaced all of their previous first quarter spending on lobbying—$980,000. (I’ve also written about how Intuit’s behavior follows a well-worn pattern of corporate PR nonsense, which I explored more fully the book I co-authored, Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America).

Direct File isn’t for everyone—yet.

As a pilot program, the IRS is rolling it out carefully in mid-March in a dozen states and with a number of eligibility requirements.

You can use Direct File if you live in one of the states included in the rollout (Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming) and if your tax situation from 2023 was relatively simple, and you want to claim common credits like the EITC and the CTC. If your income came primarily from W-2 employment, you’re likely eligible. Direct File has a screener tool that will make sure it’s the right tool for you before you start filing. Visit directfile.irs.govon your computer, tablet, or phone to find out if you’re eligible in a few minutes.

If the pilot is successful, it will begin to include more and more Americans. And someday, we might just answer a two-question survey from the IRS, and never again have to beware the Ides of April.

Donald Cohen
Executive Director

The post Direct File Might Be Right for You appeared first on In the Public Interest.

]]>