Headlines
CA: UCLA faculty votes on privatizing business school
NC: NC House wants to go slow on prisoner health care
NJ: Opinion: The conservative case to save traditional public schools
PA: New push to privatize wine, liquor sales
ME: East-West Highway: savior or albatross?
IN: Commentary: Toll road deal took decisions out of hands of Hoosiers

CA: UCLA faculty votes on privatizing business school
A controversial proposal that would privatize the University of California Los Angeles’ business school but allow it to remain affiliated with the state university is moving ahead. Sacramento Bee

NC: NC House wants to go slow on prisoner health care
Legislators are trying to prevent North Carolina prison officials from privatizing inmate medical care for all of the state’s adult prisoners unless they get the express approval of the General Assembly. Business Week

NJ: Opinion: The conservative case to save traditional public schools
..What was odd about the scene — and what makes Ravitch so powerful an advocate for pre-privatized public schools — is that she is an apostate. The New York University historian worked for three right-wing think tanks. She was an official in the administration of the first President Bush. She embraced choice, testing and accountability…Public education, she says, is “an institutional essential to American democracy” and, in cities across the country — and in the state — it faces dismantling. The closing of traditional public schools and the reopening, in their stead, of privatized charter schools.
Ravitch does not consider charter schools to be public schools. In an interview, Ravitch said, “I have problems thinking of charter schools as public schools. They have private management and, just because they have public money, it doesn’t make them public schools. If that were the case, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton would all be public schools. They receive public funds.” Star-Ledger

PA: New push to privatize wine, liquor sales
Their efforts stymied a year after they made a high-profile push to get the state out of the wine and liquor business, privatization supporters led by House Majority Leader Mike Turzai are offering a new plan that would make beer distributors exclusive one-stop shops for beer, wine and liquor. But there remain serious doubts as to whether the reconfigured proposal, which continues to undergo tweaks and changes as supporters seek votes, will do any better at garnering the support needed to end nearly 80 years of state wine and liquor sales. Allentown Morning Call

ME: East-West Highway: savior or albatross?
The proposed road runs through a very sparsely populated part of Maine and would compete for Canada-to-Canada freight traffic with an existing railway that could be upgraded for a fraction of the cost and environmental impact. Given border delays, the proposed route isn’t even a slam-dunk shortcut for most Atlantic Canadian truckers and motorists. Add in the steep tolls that may be necessary to pay for construction, maintenance and plowing, and many may think twice about using it.  New York Daily News

IN: Commentary: Toll road deal took decisions out of hands of Hoosiers
The state plowed that $3.8 billion into road work on a large scale, but less than a decade into that 75-year lease, word comes that the money will be gone and we have lost control of the asset that is the toll road for the next three to four generations…In a self-governing society, taxes are supposed to be something a free people pay to themselves – an investment in building the infrastructure that supports them all. When government runs a budget surplus, it is a savings account that we can draw upon to build things that will benefit everyone – or return the funds to the individual taxpayers. When government runs a deficit, it is, by and large, a debt we owe to ourselves. Either way, the choices remain ours, because we’re supposed to control the process through our votes – and the votes of the people we elect to represent us. In this case, if the state had hiked the tolls, the funds for the next 70 years would have gone to helping the people of this state. Instead, the hikes that will come for the next three to four generations will benefit the shareholders and employees of the company. The Statehouse Files