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Friday, September 30, 2005

Lessons Texas can learn after Katrina and Rita

John Young always writes in such a lucid manner. Here's a concise commentary that questions the alleged virtues of privatization. I include it in this blog because the concerns translate directly into moves to privatize schooling. It asks the question "Who really profits from this privatization?" And just as importantly, "What governance structures are in place to offer protections when things go awry?" -Angela

John Young, WACO HERALD-TRIBUNE
Wednesday, September 28, 2005

The joke wasn't so funny a few days ago, but it's starting to assume resonance: Why couldn't the people of Louisiana get support when they needed it? Because the lines to New Delhi were down.

It's still not funny to those in despair. But it says a lot about a corporate-driven culture and the government it has spawned.

Now that the leave-it-to-Fox-News crowd has regained its footing after Washington's inexcusable federal response to Katrina, we hear such shiny stars as Tony Snow calling for complete privatization of FEMA to make it more efficient.

Snow should know that the fruits of privatization were already on display with the "new, improved and repackaged FEMA; now with Homeland Security!"

For instance, FEMA had hired a Jacksonville, Fla., firm, Landstar System, Inc., to coordinate logistics for evacuating after hurricanes. It subcontracted and subcontracted. You know the drill. When Katrina hit, nothing but free-market bureaucracy stood in the way.

"The bureaucratic chain of command (under Landstar) made it tough to get the word out to bus operators," a spokesman from the American Bus Association told the Louisville (Ky.) Business Journal. The association had an armada of buses ready to stream to the Gulf, but: "You had a company hired to do a job that I don't think really even knew where to find enough buses to do the job."

Katrina and FEMA aside, the encouraging news is that rather than caving further to the forces of privatizing and outsourcing, even Republican-controlled Washington is looking anew at the issue.

Last week, the Senate passed an appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture with language that prohibits states from using federal money if they privatize more than 10 percent of their food stamp program operations. The amendment was authored by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

The companion bill in the House has no such language, so it will be debated in conference committee. If it were to become law, it would crimp Texas' pedal-to-the-metal effort to privatize human services. Pursuant to a massive restructuring bill in 2003, the state plans to lay off 2,500 people in a move to private call centers for food stamps under a contract with Accenture. The move has yet to be approved by the USDA.

Organizations that advocate for services for the poor are urging a go-slow approach on privatizing, and they have good reason. Often the "benefits" of privatizing go not to the people who need them but to corporate chieftains and the consultants who snag the contracts.

Two years ago, the Lone Star State, which had dropped hundreds of thousands of children off the Children's Health Insurance Program — CHIP — was red-faced when auditors found it had overpaid a vendor $20 million for administering it, including millions for individual consultants.

Of course, the traditional form of administering government programs has waste and incompetents. But at least government is governed. At least it's ours. Privatizing makes it someone else's.

Privatizing does more than lend itself to profiteering at the expense of the taxpayers. It also cuts them out of the loop when they seek information about the companies operating with public funds. Such information is called proprietary, meaning, "It's your tax dollars, but it's our business."

Post-Katrina, post-Rita, every citizen should be thinking afresh about the function of government and understanding the stakes when we parcel its functions out to the lowest bidder.

It's a good time to discuss curious comments like this from President Bush's first budget director Mitch Daniels: "The business of government is not to provide services, but to make sure that they are provided."

That's all the people of Louisiana were asking of FEMA, new, improved and already knee-deep in privatization.

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