What other public services might be subject to a “trigger” law?
Should 51% of the tenants of a public housing project have the authority to seize control and hand the property over to a private management company?
Should 51% of the patrons of a public library have the authority to seize control and privatize it if they don’t like the staff’s efficiency?
Should 51% of the riders on a public bus have the power to seize control of the bus and privatize it?
Should 51% of those using a public park have the power to seize control and give the real estate to a developer if they don’t like the way it is maintained?
This reader asks:
Can 51% of a community take over the local police force if there are too many burglaries? Can it take over the local hospital if too many patients are dying? Can it take over the local fire department if it couldn’t save a home from burning down? Can it take control of a local road and start charging a toll on it?
Do you have other ideas about how to improve public services by allowing 51% of its users today to seize control and privatize it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
51% of the people can vote out politicians. I urge everyone to register and to vote this Novemebr. It’s time to do some hiring and firing.
What about a public health clinic? Can the public take it back if too many people get sick? Hospitals, parks, courts any govermeny building are all supported by public Fu D’s.
We should take over the health insurance industry. I’m sure 51% of people who have used private insurance in the USA would agree. UMR insurance has people on staff just to change ICD code designations so claims are immediately rejected. In London they were dancing the Charleston during Olymipic Opening Ceremonies to celelebrate their National Health Service. Let’s hope the Brits don’t follow us into the charter school rabbit hole.
Sure, I’ll take the community’s money to do lawn service along its roads and in its park. And then, in the interest of efficiency, I’ll mow less. I’ll let all the public employees go that were on the staff of this community service, and hire some high school charter school kids to mow it once at the beginning of the summer and once at the end of the summer. I’ll not bother to do any oversight of the lawn and trees and bushes to see if anything is growing at all, besides the weeds. I’ll not water because, well, water costs money and we’re trying to be more efficient anyway. Me? I’ll get all the money that was going to my employees, plus I’ll sell off the community lawn mowers and rakes and such, and just rent those from my brother-in-laws’s rental company, charging the community of course.
Good question, Diane. To be fair, most public services don’t already have a vast array of private alternatives that are open to the wealthy but not the poor. Money does not create privilege in access to firefighting services the way it does in education. Some thoughts today: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/on_performance/2012/08/parent-empowerment_dynamics_on_avoiding_the_neighbor_kids.html
If you google privatization, you will see that many services that were once public are now privatized in many communities: prisons, hospitals, even libraries. And in some communities, police and fire protection. Once services are privatized, these services have no obligation to provide “equality of opportunity.” True, education doesn’t provide that now, but at least it is an ideal and even enforceable by law. Once the ideal is abolished, well what do you think will happen? The profit motive is far stronger than idealism.
The obligations that any business has can be set by the community through the political system. Private companies may be required to provide “equality of opportunity” by statute.
I really need an edit button here. Strike has from business has can.
Money creates privilege in access to (say) firefighting services via remote home monitoring. It’s more likely to create privilege in access to police services because it’s usually security systems. What does a home alarm monitoring company do? They install alarms, monitor them from a call center (not a high quality job, by the way), and alert the publicly funded response personnel. They don’t do the actial police work.
Proximity also creates privileged access to fire protection.
If 51% of New York City public school teachers disapprove of Mayor Bloomberg’s control of the city’s schools, then he is fired, and we divide his loot among ourselves. Bloomberg’s net worth is $22 billion; there are 75,000 NYC public school teachers. That comes to approximately $293,000 per teacher. Upon receiving that sum, the majority of teachers would retire. Bloomberg would then be free to re-buy the Mayor’s office (with his hidden assets), and replace the the retired teachers with graduates of McDonald’s burger-flipping courses, who would be put to work as per-diem employees in for-profit charter schools. It’s a win-win situation.
I think 51% of us ought to take over the state house, governor’s office, US Congress, Oval office, or wherever…
Keep your eye on http://www.privatizationwatch.org…they keep an eye on privatization.
I think people need to get back to the public policy issue here. Government contracting with non-profit and profit corporations is a reality that won’t go away. In some places it works well, in others it does not. However, contracting needs to be considered carefully. Sometimes it creates more equitable, efficient, and accessible services. In other cases it creates problems worse than the ones that existed before. There are a number of issues governments need to consider before contracting. Then, the group providing the government services needs to be supervised carefully by the government agency that did the contracting. The government needs to set up evaluation and supervision standards BEFORE the contract is granted. Finally, the government needs to be able to end the contract is the corporation is not completing the work.
The parent trigger does not follow any of the guidelines needed for responsible contracting. Additionally, it defies our democratic values to allow only the parents of the students attending the school to privatize it. These schools use federal, state, and local tax money. As a tax-paying citizen I have the right and responsibility to vote on this issue, even if my children do not attend the school. A group of unelected parents who are not accountable to the constituency of voters whose tax money they are reallocating does not have the right to do this.
I think you’re on to something. How about this?
Some folks could start private police force companies…
like… I don’t know…
“Ronco Rent-a-Cops”… or “Acme Police Services”…
You could go around the neighborhood gathering
signatures, telling people how bad the current
police services—with all that crippling oversight via
democratically elected officials…
Why that “is just so 1990’s” (or earlier),
After all, couldn’t these private police forces provide
citizens with with a choice of police force options.
This way, citizens will have the ability to choose the
police force best suited for their neighborhood
Furthermore, “Ronco Rent-a-Cops”… or “Acme Police
Services” can act as laboratories of law enforcement
reform, identifying successful practices that could be
replicated by the stale, complacent police forces that
are not triggered… you know the ones with lazy,
greedy, police officers who, but for that pesky union,
we citizens would be able to remove and be replaces
with cops with just 5 weeks of training.
Also, by waiving regulations in a Ronco-run or
Acme-run force, the most prohibitive law enforcement
strategies can be identified and eliminated for all schools..
Through such choice, competition within the existing
law enforcement systems is created, pressuring any
publicly controlled police force to reassess and
improve their law enforcement practices.
I mean, when you think about it, we really are over-paying
these donut-quaffing, bungling Keystone cops we have now…
with all their cadillac health benefits, and luxurious retirement
plans. You know these guys have the nerve to demand
that—should they die in the line of duty—the public has
to provide for their widows and surviving children? We
need to tell these widowed wives, “We get it… your spouse
got shot to death… boo-hoo… that doesn’t mean you
can sponge off us hardworking taxpayers… move on,
stop your pity party, go out and get a job like the rest of us!!!!”
These privatized police forces will lead to overall systemic
reform through the pressure and competition of the choice
mechanism, and unlike traditional public police forces, these are
held accountable. If they do not perform, their charter
to act as law enforcement organization are not renewed.
As for the training… you know certain butt-insky citizens
or bleeding heart socialist elected officials will ask all
those whiny questions:
—- “Well, will you have the same training as the traditional
police academies… that have been training cops for
two hundred years or more… and perfecting and developing
their training for that long?”
—“Also, what about the management… will you tell us
your procedures for running these private police forces,
your standards for terminating police officers… and
will the public be able to attend your board meetings
and have any decision-making power?”
“Don’t worry,” the private police CEO’s will tells us, “just
trust us that we can do a much better job… you don’t need
to know all the details, and we can’t do the job we have
to if we have to answer to any of you citizens.”
—“Yeah, but what about the salaries of the CEO’s and other
top officers? Will the public have any ability to have input
or oversight of this, so that you won’t be taking excessive
salaries, or engaging in nepotistic hiring, or conflict of
interests in your subcontracting out of services, that might
involve companies that are also run by the same entities/people
that run the private police forces? Or will the public be
able to prevent any corrupt system of kickbacks in contracting
out services?”
“Listen here, you commie-liberal jackballs! If you want
management of the caliber that Ronco or Acme will deliver,
you better just butt the-hell-out of how we compensate
our people… and don’t even think of trying to regulate
how we contract services… it’s all that socialistic regulation
that has crippled the public sector’s ability to provide
cheap, efficient services. Just let us alone so we can
run it like a business… and then everything will be
just roses-‘n-sunshine from that point on. “
@ Jack
If you are responding to Midcareerteach, I do not think he is advocating private police protection, but pointing out that different types of public services might require different approaches. Governments do not build any public roads, for example.
@Jack and @teachingeconomist I agree with both of you.
My point was that privatizing public education will not improve it. However, I think we should attack the parent trigger on their own grounds. The parent trigger is NOT good contracting. So, rather than get into an argument about contracting (and most people think services like police, fire, and education should NOT be contracted) we should just point out the many flaws of the plan. At it’s core the parent trigger is anti-democratic because it gives a small subset of the taxpaying population (51% of parents in one public school) to alter the allocation of public money. THAT is inappropriate. We have publicly elected school boards, mayors, city councils, state legislatures, etc to whom we have granted the power to levy taxes in exchange for responsible use of that money. Additionally, the are held accountable through these elections. The parent trigger undermines those democratic institutions by giving a very small group of unelected, unaccountable people the power to contract services. Additionally, there is no method by which a subsequent group of parents can undo the trigger.
Privatization of Camden, NJ’s police force is currently being proposed by the mayor.
Hogan’s 51 % ❢
Lord Of 51% Of The Flies ❢❢
51% Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest ❢❢❢
1011.84
(you do the math)
Ya got me on that one!!!
Of course it might have something to do with the cold/flu meds I’m taking so that I can be at school for the first day tomorrow. Damn, didn’t even wait for the students to infect me. Maybe it’s payback time.
51% of 1984
Very good.
The Facebook group Resist the Privatization of America keeps track of news related to the privatization of the public sector.
Bob Sloan is an expert on the privatization of prisons.
Daily Kos Tags —
• ALEC
• Inmate Labor
• Prison Labor
• Prison Industry
We will see these services privatized after education. Prisons are already privatized, so is health care and trash pick up in a lot of places. A lot of these privatization schemes have been tried in Latin America with disastrous results. We may live to see private police and private firefighters. Some places already have this. There is a Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” that really describes this.
Was health care ever public?
Yes, parts of it were. But the bulk of health care was usually provided by non-profit organizations. The private sector was usually in play in the individual doctor’s/dentist’s office. I’m thinking bdfore the 80’s.
Many, many hospitals in the U.S. were founded on the model of community-based charities and cooperatives, as were the original public utilities, before they were later converted into private concerns.
My children were born in a community’s owned hospital. I was thinking more of the physician’s services. Was there ever a time when the majority of physicians were public employees?
@Duane
For the purposes of the discussion here, I think non-profit counts as private.
It looks like one of my comments got tossed in the moderation hoosegow for going over the legal limit on links, so I’ll try posting them in dribs and drabs.
The Facebook group Resist the Privatization of America keeps track of news related to the privatization of the public sector.
Bob Sloan</a< is an expert researcher and prolific source on the privatization of prisons.
Yes, I am having no luck with links today. Maybe you could fix the bad last angle bracket on the above link, or just delete the comment and I’ll try again.
Here is another excellent source of information about privatization: shabibi@inthepublicinterest.org
If you get on this list, you will get national and state updates on privatization in many different areas.
Who needs triggers when the Governor can appoint a hired gun?
Michigan Emergency Manager Outsources Water Treatment to Company Indicted By DOJ For Felony Violations of the Clean Water Act
Trickle Down, Anyone?