July 13, 2012

Headlines
NY: Nassau County sees minimum of $700 mln for sewer plant
TX: Eminent domain abuse & monopolies: TxDOT resurrects the Trans Texas Corridor
TX: Texas’ recent track record with privatization gloomy
PA: Prisons for profit on the rise
Public Education Is for the Common Good
A Long Way From Cinderblock
A year after new regulations, for-profit colleges still a bad deal

NY: Nassau County sees minimum of $700 mln for sewer plant
New York’s cash-poor Nassau County received 13 responses from companies interested in privatizing its sewer and waste water authority for at least $700 million, a spokesman for County Executive Edward Mangano said on Thursday.  A state overseer Nassau’s troubled finances and some board members have fiercely opposed a public-private partnership which they consider a one-shot that would fail to solve the county’s long-term gap between spending and revenue…Located just east of New York City, Nassau is home to many Manhattan commuters. The county has a median income of $93,613, but its strong property tax base has not been sufficient to offset poor financial management. In 2000, the state created a control board to prevent the county from going bankrupt. Though investment banks and hedge funds have raised hundreds of million of dollars to invest in public-private partnerships, credit analysts say they should be reserved for new and high-risk projects, such as highways, bridges and tunnels. Reuters

TX: Eminent domain abuse & monopolies: TxDOT resurrects the Trans Texas Corridor
On July 11, TURF warned the Texas House Joint Committee of Government Efficiency and Reform and State Affairs that controversial public private partnerships (P3s) that sell-off Texans’ public infrastructure to private corporations represents eminent domain abuse and grants state-sanctioned monopolies….When it comes to infrastructure projects like roads and public buildings, it involves eminent domain that forcibly condemns private property in the name of a ‘public use.’ With P3s, that land, including any amount of adjacent property a developer claims it needs to re-coup its investment, is handed to a private developer for private gain.So in the case of the City of Bee Cave, Texas, the developer built its city hall building, but gained hundreds of acres of adjacent private property under the guise of a ‘public use’ that they turned into a massive shopping mall for private profits. That’s a deplorable abuse of property rights.  Examiner

TX: Texas’ recent track record with privatization gloomy
..In places like Republican-controlled Texas, where bumper sales tax reports are a monthly event, the recent track record of privatizing state services has been dismal. Earlier this year the state and IBM finally walked away taking heavy losses from an $863 million contract that utterly failed to modernize data services for more than two dozen government agencies. Three years earlier, the state and Accenture divorced after a nearly $900 million contract to provide Medicaid and food stamp services that was to have saved the state $646 million brought instead nothing but misery to both parties. Tough to figure out just why the partnerships didn’t work out. IBM, the company that practically invented the computer industry. Accenture, one of the most successful technology services companies in the world. And the state of Texas, which brought us the stimulus weatherization program and driver’s license renewal centers. Still, some like Talmadge Heflin, the former Houston lawmaker now with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, say the state should consider giving private enterprise another chance. Texas Watchdog

PA: Prisons for profit on the rise
…Whatever the interrelated reasons, the United States has emerged as the nation with the highest number of adults and juveniles serving time — approximately 2.5 million people. The costs of housing these men and women have become so high that many states are looking for alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders, or to the private prison industry to help defray the expenditures. Since the 1990s the rise of for-profit prisons have emerged as a major facet of the nation’s corrections system — and companies like Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group have seized upon a lucrative opportunity to provide needed services, especially to cash-strapped state governments looking for ways to reduce the cost of corrections. Philadelphia Tribune

Public Education Is for the Common Good
Public education advocates welcomed the news that Change.org recently decided to drop Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and Jonah Edelman’s Stand for Children as paid clients. Change.org is a powerful platform for individuals trying to correct the injustices they see in the world. Whether it’s a young woman angry at her bank over new fees, a bullied high school student taking on an industry association over censorship issues or grieving parents trying to find some sort of redress or justice for their loss, Change.org has proven to be a vitally important tool…The last line is incredibly important: they do not accept clients for sponsored campaigns that “seek private corporate benefit that undermine the common good.” After examining the two groups more critically, Change.org joined a growing number of people and organizations nationwide who are rejecting Rhee and other Astroturf groups who undermine the public good by lobbying to privatize schools, profit off of our nation’s students, and limit or eliminate the rights of working people. Many of these groups choose deceptive names and use carefully crafted language to appeal to wider audiences. The two groups in question, StudentsFirst and Stand for Children, can look great at first glance. But when you look more closely at the policies they push, and who pays to push them, you have to take pause. Huffington Post

A Long Way From Cinderblock
…So McGuire joined dozens of other bases across the country in taking advantage of the Military Housing Privatization Initiative passed by Congress in 1996, which opened the door for private developers to upgrade the housing stock. Under the initiative’s rules, the developers build or renovate military homes, which they own and rent out to military personnel, and continue to manage and maintain for the next 50 years. As of February 2012, there were 105 of these privatized housing projects nationwide, with a total 191,905 homes, according to the Department of Defense. New York Times

A year after new regulations, for-profit colleges still a bad deal
About a year ago, the Education Department started cracking down on career colleges — community colleges, vocational institutions and other schools that offer non-degree certificate programs intended to prepare students for a specific career or trade — that left students in excessive debt and without gainful employment. The first round of data on whether such programs are living up to the new standards came out a couple weeks ago and it’s pretty ugly. Washington Post