MI: Detroit: Restructuring governance through privatization and corporatization
On March 23, 16 experts from around the country will convene at Wayne State University Law School to discuss how Detroit and other cities in Michigan are experiencing a transformation in the way civic structures operate and allocate resources…However, critics warn that while profit-driven governance structures may shore-up short-term finances, it does so by replacing the social mission of traditional models of governance and shifts accountability from residents to investors. Detroit is at the center of this change, and other parts of the country should take note. Asking the right questions is the first step. Is Detroit in need of corporate restructuring under an emergency manager? Would The Detroit Water and Sewage Department be more efficient under a privatized system? Will the acquisition by a for-profit corporation save the once nonprofit Detroit Medical Center? If transformation is taking place, if existing models of governance in local government, public works and health care are transforming into newer models through complex processes of corporatization and privatization it appears critical that the behavior and objectives of varying governance types be analyzed.  Huffington Post

MI: Union concessions, privatization among priorities of Flint
Cutting city spending through labor union contract concessions and privatizing some city services are high on Flint emergency manager Michael Brown’s list of priorities, he said today…Brown told residents that the city is looking to privatize at least three of the four golf courses, and hopes to have contracts in place in the coming weeks. The city is also looking at outsourcing operation of its senior centers to a nonprofit or private entity, he said. The Flint Journal

NE: State again to oversee most child welfare cases
Top Nebraska officials plan to change course on child welfare after the state’s experiment in privatization suffered a major blow Tuesday. The Kansas-based KVC announced that the company will stop managing child welfare cases as of Feb. 29. The announcement leaves the state with only one private contractor, meaning that state workers will once again be responsible for ensuring the safety and well-being of the majority of abused and neglected Nebraska children. Omaha World-Herald

MA: Union sues state over privatization
The Service Employees International Union claims Massachusetts violated the state’s “Pacheco Law” by privatizing services in the Department of Mental Health, and laying off more than 100 case managers. The SEIU Local 509 sued Massachusetts’ Department of Mental Health and its Commissioner Barbara Leadholm, in Suffolk County Court. Under the state’s Pacheco Law, for a government entity to privatize its services it must meet numerous requirements, including submitting written statements that prove the private company will provide better services more cheaply than the public employees it replaces, and ensuring “that the citizens of the Commonwealth receive ‘high-quality public services at low cost, with due regard for taxpayers of the Commonwealth and the needs of both public and private workers.’” Courthouse News Service

FL: Public workers protest privatization
Hundreds of unionized state employees from across Florida converged on the state Capitol today protesting what they call attacks on the middle class. WCTV

NC: GOP rush to privatize demeans our public assets
If you are looking for a perfect example of what’s wrong in Raleigh these days, the legislative report released last week calling for the privatization of state attractions and the closing of historic sites is a good place to start.  The report was commissioned by legislative leaders and prepared by the Program Evaluation Division of the General Assembly with the pithy title, “Operational Changes for State Attractions Could Yield $2 Million Annually and Reduce Reliance on the State.” The “operational changes” that create the savings include proposals such as closing the five-year-old Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, privatizing the N.C. Zoo and state aquariums, closing several state parks for months at a time, raising admission fees and ending discounts for senior citizens. Those recommendations are troubling enough, but “reducing the reliance” on the state is an odd goal for a report on important public institutions. It’s simply another way to shred the government the Republicans loathe and turn over more of its functions to the private for-profit market. It’s not only happening with tourist attractions, of course, it’s happening with public schools, higher education and health care. There is talk of expanding private prisons and eventually turning over the administration of some toll roads to private operators. Greensboro News & Record

LA: Privatization affecting La. employment
Bobby Jindal is proposing new rounds of privatization in his latest budget proposal. The shift has forced thousands of people from their jobs, a consequence the Jindal administration tends to gloss over as it touts the lowest number of state workers in decades. Care for the developmentally disabled, ferries to transport people across the Mississippi River and the lock-up and monitoring of criminals housed in an Avoyelles Parish prison would be farmed out to private businesses under the governor’s 2012-13 budget plans. The outsourcing of services is an easy way for Jindal to trim state operating costs and to show his conservative, cost-cutting credentials around the nation. But the administration seems to dislike acknowledging the side effect of privatization in a down economy: hundreds of workers given pink slips. Opelousas Daily World

FL: Kill prison privatization? Not so fast, Gov Scott says
He told a group of reporters that he is going to explore ways he can privatize prisons unilaterally. Talk that the governor has the power to privatize areas of government was sprinkled in debate as senators slugged it out over the prison privatization.  Florida Times-Union

PA: Officials say privatizing prisons not an option in Pennsylvania
Officials here say full privatization — which Ohio did with one of its prisons last year — is off the table. “We’re reviewing everything, but the full and total privatization of an SCI (state correctional institution) is not something we’re looking at,” said state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan Bensinger. Corbett’s proposal to freeze prison spending at just less than $1.9 billion puts unprecedented pressure on the corrections system, said state Rep. Tom Caltagirone, D-Berks County. Lawmakers are discussing ways to cut the prison population, such as relaxing mandatory minimum sentences, speeding up drug and alcohol treatment programs, and streamlining the probation and parole process. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

CA: Calif. weak on oversight of for-profit colleges
California’s recently formed Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education has significant weaknesses in its oversight of for-profit colleges, advocacy groups told lawmakers at a hearing this week. California Watch

GOP not giving up on Medicare privatization
Republicans may be backing off their famously toxic plan by Paul Ryan to privatize Medicare, but they’ve doubled down on the broader concept and are taking strategic steps to get there over time. TPM

Profiting from prisons
Early this year, the United Methodist Church Board of Pension and Health Benefits voted to withdraw nearly $1 million in stocks from two private prison companies, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The decision by the largest faith-based pension fund in the United States came in response to concerns expressed last May by the church’s immigration task force and a group of national activists. “Our board simply felt that it did not want to profit from the business of incarcerating others,” said Colette Nies, managing director of communications for the board. “Our concern was not with how the companies manage or operate their business, but with the service that the companies offer,” Nies added. “We believe that profiting from incarceration is contrary to Church values.” It was an important success for a slew activists across the country who are pushing investors and institutions to divest in the private prison industry. The National Prison Divestment Campaign, launched last spring, includes a broad coalition of immigrant rights, criminal justice and other organizations targeting private prison companies like CCA and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison corporations in the United States.  The Crime Report

News summaries
AZ: Arizona private prisons slammed by report
Arizona’s private prisons are not cost-effective for taxpayers and are more difficult to monitor than state prisons, according to a new report by a prison watchdog group that is calling for a moratorium on any new private prisons in the state…Based on public-information requests and other data, the report by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that works on criminal-justice reform, concluded that: Arizona paid $10 million more for private prison beds between 2008 and 2010 than it would have for equivalent state beds. The Arizona Republic

FL: Gov Scott moves to keep prison privatization alive
‎Gov. Rick Scott has his office working to determine what he can do to keep up the effort to bid out the services of up to 26 Central and South Florida correctional institutions this session. With the private outsourcing effort projected by state economists to save at least $16.5 million a year, Scott is trying to determine if he can proceed on his own or through other means after the Florida Senate — with 10 Republicans joining the entire Democratic roster — rejected a bill on the future management of the facilities on Tuesday. Sunshine State News

FL: Feds deal setback for Florida’s Medicaid privatization
‎Republican lawmakers’ quest to expand a Medicaid privatization program statewide was dealt a blow last week after federal health officials said the state could not impose $10 monthly premiums on Medicaid beneficiaries. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also denied the state’s proposal to charge $100 co-pays for any non-emergency ER visits, according to a letter sent Feb. 9. Federal health officials said the fees violated several statutes designed to protect nearly three million of state’s most vulnerable residents…The privatization program builds on a controversial five-county pilot program that started in 2006. Patients said they struggled to get doctor’s appointments and doctors dropped out of the program complaining the health plans denied the treatments they prescribed. Several health care providers also dropped out of the program, saying they couldn’t turn a profit, leaving patients to be deal with gaps in services as they were bounced between plans.  South Florida Times

CA: Calif. weak on oversight of for-profit colleges, advocacy groups say
California’s recently formed Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education has significant weaknesses in its oversight of for-profit colleges, advocacy groups told lawmakers at a hearing this week. The agency’s lax approach limits its ability to police abuses in the for-profit sector, said Jamienne S. Studley, CEO of Public Advocates Inc., a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group in San Francisco. California Watch

PA: Liquor privatization compromise legislation
The Pennsylvania Senate Law and Justice Committee has proposed legislation that looks to be a compromise gesture between ardent privateers a la House Majority Leader Mike Turzai and advocates for the PLCB…The compromise bill will give the PA House and Senate the opportunity to modernize the PLCB and also generate $75 million a year in new state revenues which could be used to forestall some of Governor Corbett’s proposed budget cuts.  Senate Bill 1287 would free the PLCB to operate like a modern, wholesale and retail business and deliver a greater return for all Pennsylvania taxpayers.. Keystone Politics

News summaries
FL: Unions sue over plan to privatize prison health care system
Two labor unions have filed suit against the state Department of Corrections in an effort to prevent privatizing health care for all 100,000 inmates in the Florida prison system. It’s the latest controversy in the outsourcing of inmate health that began as a campaign pledge by Gov. Rick Scott. Protests by health vendors objecting to the original bid specifications have delayed the plan by months and contributed to ousting Scott’s former prison chief. The lawsuit was filed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Federation of Physicians and Dentists/Alliance of Healthcare and Professional Employees. It was filed Tuesday, the same day the state Senate voted 21-19 to reject privatization of more than two dozen prisons and work camps in South Florida.  Tampa Bay Times

LA: Following the money on Jindal’s privatization of Louisiana Group Benefits
Why is Governor Bobby Jindal pursuing the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits?  Is that approach to reforming government in the best interest of the taxpayers?..Louisiana has the only self-administered and self-funded health insurance for state workers and retirees. The plan provides competitive rates to members and to the state. Remember, the taxpayers pick up most of the cost. And unlike some other departments OGB has for the last seven years grown in becoming a model of what other states should emulate….Experts are telling us that the private insurance company will have to ease in another increase of roughly 10 percent to meet the needs of executive compensation, marketing, stockholder dividends, profit, taxes and other expenses we don’t currently have at the not-for-profit OGB…
This privatization will be very costly to the taxpayers of Louisiana, but then we get to fire 177 rank-and-file state workers to counter the hiring of former chief of staff Teepell’s family members and all of the politically-connected, deposed elected officials over the last four weeks, most at six figure salaries. You only need to follow the dollars to understand why the Governor wants this to happen. Bayoubuzz

AZ: Arizona still doesn’t own its capitol
Jan Brewer did not get what she wanted for the state’s 100th birthday. In her State of the State speech last month, the governor pointed out that Arizona does not currently own the House, the Senate and the Executive Tower. They were essentially mortgaged off two years ago as part of $1 billion in borrowing to balance the budget. Brewer, however, sketched out a plan where the state could put the $106 million payoff into a special account and get the lenders to let go of their hold…But the birthday came and went on Tuesday. And there is not even legislation in the pipeline to do what she wants….”A lot of members want to pay down the debt,” he said. “And others want to put it into a larger rainy day fund so in 2015 if we have a major shortfall we can handle it without drastic program cuts.” Kavanagh said lawmakers will revisit the early payoff proposal next year after they have a better idea of the long-term revenue prospects. Arizona Daily Star

VA: ALEC in Virginia
Between 2001 and 2010, the Commonwealth of Virginia spent over $230,000 to send legislators to ALEC conferences in order to meet with corporate lobbyists behind closed doors. ALEC has spent over $70,000 feting Virginia legislators. Over 50 bills drawn from ALEC sources have been introduced in the Virginia General Assembly in the past few years.  As Governor, Bob McDonnell has requested the introduction of at least 3 pieces of ALEC legislation.  At least 115 current or former Virginia legislators have ties to ALEC. Progress VA

PA: Philly mayor wants to sell city’s gas works
It could take two years to close the deal, but Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter favors selling the city’s 175-year-old gas company if price and conditions are acceptable. “The time is right to consider a sale of Philadelphia Gas Works,” the mayor said in a statement…Philadelphia is among only four of the 30 largest cities in the United States that still owns its gas company, and is the largest in that group. PGW has about 500,000 customers…Officials say the city could get up to nearly $2 billion for a privatized PGW. Messages seeking comment were left with budget director Rebecca Rhynhart.  According to Lazard, the city could realize a net $496 million from the sale after accounting for PGW’s liabilities, and could also collect real estate taxes from a privatized utility, though potential tax revenues could be lower than the current $18 million annual franchise fee. Bond Buyer ($)

News summaries
House transportation bill lets states privatize rest areas
A little-noticed provision of the House transportation bill would allow states to privatize interstate rest areas, open them up to advertisers, and let them sell a variety of goods “serving the traveling public” — which under the bill’s definition, includes lottery machines. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bill, which will face a tough road to becoming law, later this week.  Critics charge that privatizing interstate rest areas, which are generally prohibited from selling commercial goods and services under federal law, would harm gas stations and convenience stores at interchanges…Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, said he was concerned that maps and lottery machines could be a first step to eventually opening up rest areas to a far wider range of business activities. His organization represents companies that currently operate gas stations along interstates, but at interchanges and full highway exits. Huffington Post

Private prison corporation offers cash in exchange for state prisons
As state governments wrestle with massive budget shortfalls, a Wall Street giant is offering a solution: cash in exchange for state property. Prisons, to be exact. Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for “challenging corrections budgets.” In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post.  The move reflects a significant shift in strategy for the private prison industry, which until now has expanded by building prisons of its own or managing state-controlled prisons. It also represents an unprecedented bid for more control of state prison systems….But estimated savings often come down to how those calculations are made, and outside researchers have questioned the numbers. In Arizona, for example, a 2010 report from the state’s auditor general showed that it cost the state more to house prisoners in private facilities than public prisons after factoring in administrative costs and adjusting for the types of medical care provided to less healthy inmates who tended to be housed in public facilities. And in Florida, where lawmakers this week could decide whether to privatize more than two dozen state prisons, reports about private prisons from the state’s legislative research office note, “cost savings estimates are subject to caveats and should be evaluated cautiously.” Huffington Post

FL: Prison privatization dies in Senate 21-19
A massive expansion of private prisons in Florida collapsed in the Senate Tuesday as nine Republicans joined a dozen Democrats in handing a setback to Senate leaders and a victory to state workers. As a result, the state will not undertake what would have been the single greatest expansion of prison privatization in U.S. history, affecting 27 prisons and work camps in 18 counties and displacing more than 3,500 correctional officers.  Senate leaders immediately said they would have to cut education and health care programs by $16.5 million, the amount privatization would have saved in the first year… Tuesday’s vote was a triumph for a rebellious group of Republicans who rejected supporters’ arguments that for-profit prisons would save tax dollars and increase efficiency. All 12 Democrats also voted no, putting the minority party in the unaccustomed role of being on the winning side…Senators debated privatization for nearly three hours, and opponents’ floor speeches often showed more passion. Rather than talk about numbers, they talked about people, such as the treatment of correctional officers, whose starting salary is $34,000 a year and who have not received an across-the-board pay raise for the past six years.”What’s wrong with state employees?” said Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole. “We should be taking care of them, rather than kicking them under the bus.” Tampa Bay Times

MI: Michigan’s hostile takeover
A new “emergency” law backed by right-wing think tanks is turning Michigan cities over to powerful managers who can sell off city hall, break union contracts, privatize services—and even fire elected officials. When the city of Pontiac, Michigan, shut down its fire department last Christmas Eve, city councilman Kermit Williams learned about it in the morning paper. “Nobody reports to me anymore,” Williams says. “It just gets reported in the press.” This was just the latest in a series of radical changes in the city, where elected officials such as Williams have been replaced by a single person with unprecedented control over the city’s operation and budget.  

Gov. Rick Snyder put Louis Schimmel in charge of Pontiac last September, invoking Public Act 4, a recent law that lets the governor name appointees to take over financially troubled cities and enact drastic austerity measures. Under the law, passed last March, these emergency managers can nullify labor contracts, privatize public services, sell off city property, and even dismiss elected officials…Michigan’s emergency-manager law is the centerpiece of the fiscal program enacted by state Republicans after they took over the Legislature and governor’s mansion in early 2011. The law’s supporters say it allows for a more efficient and nimble response to the budget crisis confronting local governments in the wake of the housing crash and near collapse of the auto industry. Critics are seeking to block and repeal what they call an illegal power grab meant to usurp local governments and break up public-sector unions. “We haven’t seen anything this severe anywhere else in the country,” says Charles Monaco, a spokesman for the Progressive States Network, a New York-based advocacy group. “There’s been nothing in other states where a budget measure overturns the democratic vote.” Williams says emergency managers are able to enact draconian policies that would cost most city officials their jobs: “They couldn’t get elected if they tried.” Mother Jones

CA: Privatize everything in the universe?
Michelle Rhee and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson are leading the charge locally and throughout the country to privatize public education and bust unions…I wrote this song, “Privatize Everything,” back in 2000. The song was meant as political satire, but unfortunately, many of these lyrics have already become reality in recent years…Ocean conservation management has been privatized under the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative’s creation of so-called marine protected areas in California that fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture, wind and wave energy project and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, chairs the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force that imposed the “marine protected areas” that went into effect in Southern California waters on January 1, 2012. The water in Central Valley rivers and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is being privatized though the Obama and Brown administration Bay Delta Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal, designed to increase water exports to corporate agribusiness interest. Bay Area Indymedia

CA: Sacramento council votes to privatize parking
The Sacramento City Council unanimously voted to move ahead with plans to privatize city parking assets Tuesday night.  The motion, which passed 9-0, requests bids from companies that want to take over the city’s parking. The city believes it could raise up to $240 million if it handed over revenue from city parking to a private company for the next 50 years. The money would go towards construction costs for building a new sports and entertainment complex, which is estimated at $400 million. News10.net

NC: State eyeing privatization for aquariums
Privatizing the state-owned aquariums’ operations and implementing other management changes for tourism attractions could save the state almost $2 million each year, according to a government oversight report released Tuesday….Recommendations include seeking public-private partnerships for the state’s three aquariums and zoo; closing historic sites for a couple of days each week; and studying visitation data to determine whether state parks should close for several months in the winter…North Carolina is the only Southeastern state that owns and operates an aquarium or a zoo, and Minnesota is the only other state in the country that owns and operates a zoo at all, the report states. StarNewsOnline

FL: Don’t rob reeling school districts to pay charters – editorial
Charter schools currently get tax money based on each student they have, but when it comes to the separate pot of construction and maintenance money, school districts get to decide whether and how much to give charter schools. A bill introduced by Sen. Stephen Wise, a Jacksonville Republican, would do away with that local discretion. District school boards would be forced to proportionately share property tax revenue for construction and maintenance on a per-student basis with charter schools. About a $140 million windfall for charter schools. Backers say the move simply balances the funding scales. Earlier this week, a Florida TaxWatch analysis revealed a funding disparity. Charters get only 70 cents for every dollar per student that traditional schools receive. Wait. Rewind … Didn’t charter school prophets pledge to do more with less? Wasn’t less regulation supposed to deliver greater efficiency?Now, Wise’s bill would poke another stick in taxpayers’ eyes. For-profit charter management companies could take the money and build schools and lease them to the charter schools. Should the school fold, taxpayers are out the money — and the building. Unacceptable. We’ve supported charter schools in the past, but traditional public schools aren’t in shape to absorb the blow they’d take from Wise’s bill. In many districts, much of the property tax is already dedicated to servicing debt for construction to accommodate growth and class-size mandates. Districts could be left scrambling to pay their debt — which could sink their bond ratings. Orlando Sentinel

New law could make it easier for airports to privatize security screening
Until now, airports that wanted to contract private companies to provide security screening services had to apply to the TSA under its Screening Partnership Program (SPP) and prove there would be “a clear and substantial advantage to transition to privatized screening.” However, the FAA authorization bill, which the Senate approved on Feb. 6 and President Obama is expected to sign it into law soon, shifts the burden of proof from the airport to the TSA, which would now have to prove the advantage of privatization does not exist. TSA Administrator John Pistole…said that privatized screening at airports that participate in the SPP have in the past cost between three percent and nine percent more than if the TSA had operated screening services at those airports. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), ranking member of the transportation security subcommittee, baited Pistole, asking him to agree that shifting the burden of proof to the TSA would make securing the country more difficult. Pistole deftly avoided the prompt with a non-committal answer: “Well, Congress has passed this law and the president intends to sign it, I believe, so I look forward to working with the committee to figure out the best way forward on this.” Security Director News

Working people speak out on attacks on public employees
,,,One thing California might have gotten a clue about is furloughs for public workers. Furloughs are basically forced days off. That’s exactly what happened in California. State workers were forced to sacrifice every other paid Friday of work to help balance the state budget. The state workers furlough officially ended October 2010 but now we are still suffering from a $26 billion deficit. Local governments are now considering furloughs as a solution. Some of my coworkers are even forced to take their children to work because the schools are closed down every other Friday. Didn’t we learn our lesson? There’s this strange rationale swooping around that if funding were reallocated and controlled by local government that would solve the problem.  I’m no economist but a redistribution of a $26 billion deficit still equates to a $26 billion deficit, doesn’t it? I recently caught up with a couple of state workers to ask them what they thought about the furloughs and their effect on the economy. AlterNet

News summaries
MI: Detroit crisis may force sale of crucial assets
..Now, the city of Detroit’s most venerable assets — from Belle Isle to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel — could end up on the auction block as the city fights for its financial life. Facing mounting debt and the prospect of a state-appointed emergency manager, the city is looking at all options to shed expenses and raise revenue. If city officials can’t come up with a viable budget plan, an emergency manager would have the power to sell assets as part of a financial takeover of Detroit. The Detroit News

OH: Interstate rest areas gets privatization look
A study of the privatization of the Ohio Turnpike will also weigh the possibility of leasing rest areas along the state’s freeways. In his State of the State speech Tuesday, Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sik) mentioned leasing rest areas as a way to address a recently discovered gap in the transportation budget. The Republic

FL:Senator says DOC records show private prisons aren’t cheaper 
With the Florida Senate poised today to return to a contentious prison-privatization debate, one critic of the proposal to outsource prisons in 18 southern counties says the Department of Corrections’ own calculations on incarceration costs show currently private prisons aren’t necessarily cheaper than public ones. Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, has been railing on the lack of serious policy analysis surrounding the push by Senate President Mike Haridopolos and Budget Chairman J.D. Alexander to enact the most sweeping prison privatization move in the country. While they say the push to hand over the prisons and some 19,000 inmates to a private vendor like Boca Raton-based GEO Group would save the state money, the DOC records Dockery has unearthed suggest the savings from the seven currently private prisons in the state isn’t substantial. Specifically, the records compare per diem costs per average prisoner between the private prisons and their most comparable public-prison (a type of analysis the department itself uses internally, but which it has not released publicly during the debate). The results: mixed.The privately run Bay Correctional Facility, for example, had an average per diem of $48.70 per prisoner in the 2010-11 fiscal year, compared to the $43.78 per diem at the New River prison. The publicly run New River, also had to incarcerate “close management” prisoners that are more dangerous, while the private Bay prison did not. Orlando Sentinel

LA: Jindal budget ticks off many
The governor’s proposed budget, with its privatization of education, prisons, health care and state employee insurance, angers a huge number of people. Some are angry because they would lose their jobs. Some don’t want their relatives moved from one medical facility to another. Doctors and medical facilities don’t want to provide services for less.Some view the governor’s desire to create more charter schools and sending far more kids to private schools as giving up on trying to reform public education.  The News Star

WI: Voucher enrollment jumps after rules are relaxed
Voucher student enrollment grew significantly as a result of legislation signed by Gov. Scott Walker that relaxed income limitations and eliminated enrollment caps in the school choice program, according to a report released Monday by the Public Policy Forum…The report also found that overall enrollment growth in the private schools that participate in the Milwaukee and Racine school choice programs was a direct result of the expanded voucher program, in which qualifying students receive a taxpayer-financed subsidy worth $6,442 to attend a private school…Critics of the program and its expansion say it drains resources from MPS. They argue students in the voucher program haven’t shown better overall results than their peers in MPS. Bob Peterson, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, points to voucher students’ failure to top MPS students’ reading and math scores.”This is not about improving education in Milwaukee,” Peterson said. “It’s about transferring students to private schools.” “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a failed social policy that ultimately is undermining the public schools and privatizing education,” he said.  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Veterans Admin accused of excessive outsourcing of vets’ jobs
The Veterans Affairs Department is being accused of undermining its own goal of hiring more veterans by expanding its outsourcing practices that eliminate many federal jobs currently, or historically, held by veterans, according to the union representing 205,000 employees at the VA. In November, President Barack Obama signed into law the “VOW to Hire Heroes Act,” which included language to set up an expedited process for hiring returning solders for federal jobs. But the VA’s own outsourcing, which began to grow under the Bush Administration and are continuing to expand, are abolishing many federal jobs currently held by veterans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), an AFL-CIO union, said in a Feb. 8 news release. For example, the Veterans Benefits Administration recently entered into a $54 million three-year contract with ACS Government Systems to perform claims processing work. That work currently is being performed by “large numbers of veterans,” the union said. “To add insult to injury, the VBA employees are being asked to volunteer to train the contractors to do their work.”Federal Computer

The big money behind state laws – editorial
It is no coincidence that so many state legislatures have spent the last year taking the same destructive actions: making it harder for minorities and other groups that support Democrats to vote, obstructing health care reform, weakening environmental regulations and breaking the spines of public- and private-sector unions. All of these efforts are being backed — in some cases, orchestrated — by a little-known conservative organization financed by millions of corporate dollars. The American Legislative Exchange Council was founded in 1973 by the right-wing activist Paul Weyrich; its big funders include Exxon Mobil, the Olin and Scaife families and foundations tied to Koch Industries. Many of the largest corporations are represented on its board.ALEC has written model legislation on a host of subjects dear to corporate and conservative interests, and supporting lawmakers have introduced these bills in dozens of states. A recent study of the group’s impact in Virginia showed that more than 50 of its bills were introduced there, many practically word for word. The study, by the liberal group ProgressVA, found that ALEC had been involved in writing bills that would:…Encourage school districts to contract with private virtual-education companies. (One such company was the corporate co-chair of ALEC’s education committee.) The bill was signed into law. The New York Times

Diane Ravitch: Why states should say ‘no thanks’ to charter schools
Former D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee has sent her followers to Alabama to promote charter schools, but Alabama should say “no, thanks.” The District of Columbia is no model for school reform. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is the gold standard of education testing, shows that Washington D.C. has the biggest achievement gap between black and white students in the nation, double the size of Alabama’s. Alabama should not take lessons from one of the nation’s lowest performing districts. Charter schools haven’t helped other states and they won’t help Alabama. Here are the reasons why:* Numerous national and state studies have shown that charters on average don’t get better results than regular public schools. A small percentage get high scores, more get very low scores, most are about average in terms of test scores. Why kill off a community’s public school to replace it with a privately managed school that is no better and possibly worse? * Charter schools weaken the regular public schools. They take money away from neighborhood public schools and from the district budget. As charter schools open, regular public schools must cut teachers and close down programs to pay for them. The Washington Post

News summaries
FL: Senate takes another swipe at privatizing prisons next week
Senate President Mike Haridopolos will next week resurrect a prison privatization plan he set aside twice, indicating he may have garnered enough support to pass the controversial measure. Haridopolos said today the Senate will take up the privatization plan (SB 2038) and amendments on Monday, including a proposal that prompted Haridopolos last week to put the brakes on the bill that would privatize all Department of Corrections operations – including prisons and work camps – in an 18-county region in the southern portion of the state. Haridopolos stopped debate before an amendment that would have stripped out the privatization and instead ordered a study of the outsourcing. Palm Beach Post

OH: Dems rap Ohio turnpike lease
Local Democratic officials from northeast Ohio who are opposed to Gov. John Kasich’s proposal to lease the Ohio Turnpike said last week they would launch their own study of the privatization plan. Officials from five counties met in Youngstown last Friday for the first of a series of press conferences opposing the plan. They said it would lead to higher tolls, lower worker wages and the deterioration of local roads. “The Ohio Turnpike is a tremendous asset; it is not an asset of the state of Ohio though to be bought and sold or leased,” Mahoning County Commissioner John McNally told local reporters. Ohio in late November tapped KPMG LLP to act as lead advisor for the plan. The firm has until July to recommend the best way to wring cash from the Turnpike, one of the country’s largest toll roads and one with the highest ratings. Bond Buyer ($)

CA: UC system shows why privatizing higher ed is not the solution
While tuition is rising all across the nation, the University of California (UC) system serves as a great case study for understanding what is broken about public higher education in the U.S. and the problem with how we are trying to fix it. Tuition increases are not only reflective of states’ budget crises, but a change in the attitude that a good public education should be funded by the state. The recent move toward privatization by using alternative sources to fund public higher education, such as tuition and private endowments, is the wrong step in finding a permanent solution. Instead, we need to guarantee funding from the state through a constitutional amendment that would institutionally prioritize higher education. PolicyMic

CA: Inglewood looks to outsource parking enforcement
The city’s ongoing precarious financial situation — despite closing a $17 million budget shortfall last year — has been brought back into focus with the possible outsourcing of its parking enforcement services. The prospect came following a Jan. 31 meeting when the council voted 3-2 to initiate an “Request for Proposal” (RFP) process, asking staff to return with recommendations for selecting a qualified parking enforcement and meter operations provider….Paul Hawkins, a 22-year special enforcement officer who attended the council meeting, voiced his disappointment at the decision. “I was really shocked, a lot of the public spoke against it, and we’ve been rallying for the last couple of weeks,” he said. “We’ve looked at the paperwork, and to us it just doesn’t add up. The money they’re talking about saving, about $450,000 is based on eliminating our jobs alone.  Los Angeles Wave

PA: Anatomy of a deal: Scranton’s streetlight plan examined
Scranton embarked on streetlight privatization a decade ago under the assumption that maintenance costs would be fixed and the city would save money in the long run, according to minutes of a 2002 city council hearing on a bond that funded the plan. “The costs are fixed for the life of this bond issue. The costs are fixed,” former Councilman Alex Hazzouri said during an Oct. 28, 2002, council hearing, according to meeting minutes on file at city hall. Now, however, the city and its former streetlight maintenance firm, Municipal Energy Managers, are embroiled in a dispute over $657,000 in bills the firm claims it is owed by the city. The Times Tribune

AL: Gov seeks charter schools amid austere budget forecasts
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley is asking the Legislature to create a limited number of charter schools…In addition to charter schools, which are free of many of the regulations of regular schools, Bentley said he was proposing a law that would give local school systems more freedom in developing strategies, “free from federal bureaucracy “.He also said he wants to see the Legislature give parents the choice in deciding where their children attend schools. “We must also allow parents a choice in how and where their child receives an education,” Bentley said. The Birmingham News

News summaries
FL: Florida prison privatization stalls in legislature
A proposal to privatize at least 26 prisons in south Florida is facing stiff opposition in the Florida Senate and may not have the votes to pass, the chamber’s president and chief backer said on Tuesday. Chicago Tribune

FL: Private prisons gain new foes
There is new opposition tonight to a legislative plan to privatize more than two dozen south Florida prisons. The Florida ACLU is criticizing the profit motive as several studies fail to document that private prisons are cheaper or more effective. Studies of private prison costs and effectiveness are few and far between. One benchmark study by researcher Bill Bales at Florida State University examined a claim that privately held prisoners are less likely to reoffend. “Private prisons don’t effect recidivism” says Bales. The prison privatizing plan is now drawing opposition from the ACLU. Attorney David Shapiro argues private prisons put public safety at risk. “Private prisons have every incentive to maximize their profits but cutting corners even at the expense of decent conditions and public safety,” says Shapiro.  Capitol News Service

MI: Michigan prison privatization effort stalls
Requests for proposals to privatize roughly $400 million in prison services were put on hold in January after a review by Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office revealed private contractors using prisoners for kitchen, janitorial and other duties. The Detroit News

NJ: Christie administration’s attack on N.J. State Parks begins
And yet the state’s plans include further privatization of Island Beach including apparently “life guards”. Something is wrong when we take New Jersey’s state parks and privatize them. The governor is giving away our most treasured assets. newjerseynewsroom.com

CA: Sacramento moves ahead on parking privatization   
The Sacramento City Council decided to move ahead with their plan to privatize the city’s parking assets, without putting it on the ballot, in order to fund a new sports and entertainment arena, at Tuesday’s city council meeting. News10

SD: State weighs ban on public sector collective bargaining
South Dakota is considering a Wisconsin-style ban on public sector collective bargaining at all levels of government. But because many public workers have limited or nonexistent bargaining rights to begin with, the debate is causing considerable confusion.  Stateline

Congress kick-starts program to privatize airport screeners
A provision in the just-passed FAA reauthorization bill requires TSA chief John Pistole to approve airport requests to privatize their screeners unless he determines it would harm security. That is likely to open the doors to further privatization, since Pistole has said private screening and government screening is “comparable.” Local 10