Headlines
CO: Lawmaker aims to privatize Colorado lands
OH: Ohio crafts $1.4B deal to privatize liquor sales
FL: More-expensive inmates shifted from prisons to be privatized
WI: Researcher: There are hidden costs to privatization
AK: Bill to allow state funds for private schools
NY: Reformers’ playbook on failing schools fails a fact check
ID: Republican group seeks to privatize liquor sales
State support for higher education slumps again
News summaries
CO: Lawmaker aims to privatize Colorado lands
Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, said Monday he plans to sponsor a bill that will require the state to wrest control of most of Colorado’s fourteeners and more than 23 million acres of federal public land across the state, including most of Roosevelt National Forest west of Fort Collins and most of Colorado’s BLM and U.S. Forest Service land. The state would either sell the land off to private individuals or manage it itself. He said he envisions the bill excluding all national parks and monuments, including those on BLM land. The Coloradoan
OH: Ohio crafts $1.4B deal to privatize liquor sales
Ohio has reached an agreement to privatize its lucrative liquor distribution system for $1.4 billion through a newly created private nonprofit entity that will use the revenue for economic development. The nonprofit, JobsOhio, will issue up to $1.5 billion of bonds to finance the 25-year deal. The bond sale is expected within the first quarter. JobsOhio officials said they had already assembled a finance team to bring the bonds to market, but declined to name the firms. Ohio has a monopoly on liquor sales, one of the state’s most reliable and growing revenue sources. Many states monopolize liquor sales, but Ohio is one of the few to issue bonds backed by the profits.The deal, set to close after the bond sale later this quarter, marks a victory for Gov. John Kasich. The Republican governor created JobsOhio as one of his first actions when he took office last year. The liquor lease has the highest profile of Kasich’s several privatization proposals, and is key to balancing the current $55.5 billion, two-year general fund budget. The Bond Buyer
FL: More-expensive inmates shifted from prisons to be privatized
As the Legislature was steaming toward passage of privatization of a huge chunk of its prison system last spring, public records suggest the Florida Department of Corrections was removing its most violent prisoners from the facilities slated to be outsourced…Region IV is the collection of prisons in southern Florida counties that lawmakers tried to privatize last spring, before a judge ruled they had done so improperly by placing the directive in budget language instead of passing separate legislation. “Close management” inmates are confined away from the general population, because they pose threats to others or the institution. The transfers are significant, because they impact costs. Maximum-security prisons with solitary confinement are more expensive to operate because they require isolating and monitoring prisoners individually instead of in groups…Lawmakers are trying again to privatize all 29 prison facilities in the 18-county region of southern Florida. Orlando Sentinel
WI: Researcher: There are hidden costs to privatization
The current rush toward privatization of government services requires a reality check, says a former journalist now with a Milwaukee-area research organization…The promised savings might be offset by a reduced level of service, he said, or a loss of income in the community as government workers are replaced by lower-paid employees who spend less locally — or live elsewhere. Some privatization decisions seem aimed at payback rather than taxpayer relief, he said. Legislation last year that bars counties from sharing on road maintenance work — thus requiring they hire private road crews — even drew criticism from the Heartland Institute, which Norman described as a conservative think tank. A bill has been introduced to repeal that ban. Private entities also are not bound by open records requirements to disclose budgets, salaries or results of outside oversight, such as quality testing or financial audits, he warned. La Crosse Tribune
AK: Bill to allow state funds for private schools
Students could attend private or religious schools with state-sponsored scholarships under a measure being considered by Alaska lawmakers. A companion measure to the bill, sponsored by Rep. Wes Keller, would amend the state constitution to allow public funds to go to religious schools. Anchorage Daily News
NY: Reformers’ playbook on failing schools fails a fact check
Education “reformers” have a common playbook. First, assert without evidence that regular public schools are “failing” and that large numbers of regular (unionized) public school teachers are incompetent. Provide no documentation for this claim other than that the test score gap between minority and white children remains large. Then propose so-called reforms to address the unproven problem – charter schools to escape teacher unionization and the mechanistic use of student scores on low-quality and corrupted tests to identify teachers who should be fired. The mantra has been endlessly repeated by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and by “reform” leaders like former Washington and New York schools chancellors Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein. Bill Gates’ foundation gives generous grants to school systems and private education advocates who adopt the analysis. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel makes the argument, and in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has frequently sung the same tune. And now, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has joined in. On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday last week, the governor cast attacks on unionized teachers as a defense of minority students against the adult bureaucracy. “It’s about the children,” Mr. Cuomo said. Because of failing public schools, “the great equalizer that was supposed to be the public education system can now be the great discriminator.” EPI
ID: Republican group seeks to privatize liquor sales
An offshoot of one of Kootenai County’s numerous Republican clubs filed a statewide initiative Monday to privatize liquor sales in Idaho. The move is separate from one that had been mulled by the same grocery association that backed the successful liquor privatization drive in Washington state. Instead, the “Reagan Republicans” group said its initiative would push privatization on smaller-government grounds. The Spokesman Review
State support for higher education slumps again
An annual study of state spending on higher education finds that state appropriations for colleges and students sunk by 7.6 percent in 2011-12, the largest such decline in at least a half century. All but nine states experienced one-year declines from their 2010-11 totals. Governing