Government Should Hire Businesses, Not Be In Business
Tamara Audi writes for the WSJ:
Faced with a $118 million budget deficit, the city of San Jose, Calif., recently decided it could no longer afford its own janitors. So the city's budget called for dropping its custodial staff and hiring outside contractors to clean its city hall and airport, saving about $4 million.To keep all its swimming pools open and staffed, the city is replacing some city workers with contractors.
"These are cases where the question is being asked, 'Is this a core service at the city level?' " said Michelle McGurk, senior policy adviser to the San Jose mayor.
After years of whittling staff and cutting back on services, towns and cities are now outsourcing some of the most basic functions of local government, from policing to trash collection. Services that cities can no longer afford to provide are being contracted to private vendors, counties or even neighboring towns.
The move saves cities budget-crushing costs of employee benefits like health insurance and retirement. Critics say contracting means giving up local control and personalized services.
Boohoo. If the wastebaskets are getting emptied, do we really care? Police forces, I think that's a different story.
And for anybody who thinks government can do better than private sector businesses, witness a side comment made by boasting racist Shirley Sherrod, in her speech where she talked about screwing a white farmer. From FoxNews.com:
In a second clip from the same event posted online, Sherrod appeared to urge black job seekers to find work at the Department of Agriculture because the federal government won't lay people off."There are jobs at USDA and many times there are no people of color to fill those jobs because we shy away from agriculture. We hear the word agriculture and think, why are we working in the fields?" she said. "You've heard of a lot of layoffs. Have you heard of anybody in the federal government losing their job? That's all I need to say."
Sound all well and good till things become cozy between business and government.
"Mayor did you know that your brother was the head of company that runs the cities janitorial services"
No.... (insert excuse here).
OR
Alderman how come your reelection campaign got a big boost of money from "Street Cleaners R US owners wife"
John Paulson at July 20, 2010 2:36 AM
Sound all well and good till things become cozy between business and government.
The fact that nepotism and self-dealing might occur is no reason, in and of itself, not to hire certain services out to businesses that have an interest in running their operations efficiently. Especially in these days when taxpayers frankly cannot afford the crushing burdens of paying government workers much more than the same job gets in the private sector, along with the benes.
If you're worried about nepotism and self-dealing, pass laws that put the reponsibility for avoiding such directly on the public official -- no exceptions. If it's found that they haven't avoided it, they immediately lose their job and all benefits. And the contract is immediately rescinded and the business must make the taxpayers whole for any abuses thereunder. Plain and simple.
cpabroker at July 20, 2010 4:30 AM
Another comment on nepotism -- while the potential for corruption certainly exists when soliciting government contracts, I would imagine nepotism is also a problem when government functions are kept in-house. I doubt outsourcing itself is the problem.
The military gets into the outsourcing business in a big way every few years. Go to a stateside military installation, and you might find any number of functions being handled by contractors: real property maintenance, mess halls, different kinds of administrative offices, etc.
old rpm daddy at July 20, 2010 5:06 AM
Eliminating sealed bids and no-bids can help with a lot of that. Even so, I'd rather have nepotism and cronyism (assuming the job does get done at the agreed upon price) than incompetens that keep getting promoted, with super-cushy retirement deals, in government.
momof4 at July 20, 2010 5:39 AM
wow the author of that article does not understand the meaning of core competency.
The city's job is, among other things, to make sure all that stuff gets done. That does NOT mean the city's job is to do it itself. "The city must make sure garbage gets picked up" is not the same as "the city must pick up garbage."
Give up personalized service? what? If that is true why do so many buildings already contract out their own private garbage collection? The cities have trucks specializing in dumpsters, but many buildings would rather hire private corps who will give them personalized service. The city doesn't do that and never has.
plutosdad at July 20, 2010 6:42 AM
cpabroker writes: "If you're worried about nepotism and self-dealing, pass laws that put the reponsibility for avoiding such directly on the public official." I'm about 99% certain that every jurisdiction in the U.S. already has such laws, in triplicate. Government contracting is one of the most law- and regulation-infested economic activities you've ever seen. So if some government unit manages to break those laws with impunity -- and it does happen -- there's a much larger problem there.
Cousin Dave at July 20, 2010 8:41 AM
In high school I applied for a job with public utility company for a summer job (entering data to a computer map as to where various resources were actually located) at the urging of a neighbor whose lawn I had been moving. I was rejected right off because my Father also had a job with city - that is what was on the rejection letter which came before the opening was even closed. Any influence he would have had would have to go through the utility board - well at least officially.
I think a bigger problem is the lack of responsibility. A on/off ramp to a freeway is being redone. Due to a number of screws it was about 75% done when it was realized that the design would not work (the on ramp went through the off ramp at 90 degrees. So a whole lot of work has to be redone. To begin with, it was a poor design. Then it was decided to widen the freeway. This meant one of the ramps had to move. No one checked to see if this move would be a problem. The construction crew "should" have noticed much earlier. The state decides, "oh well, there was so many things that no-one can be blamed and so no one will be punished or even a note added to their file."
The Former Banker at July 20, 2010 3:37 PM
Part of the issue is the with government contracts is the Davis–Bacon Act and its state/local equivalents.
This needs to be killed -- everyone always misses the issue.
Jim P. at July 20, 2010 5:46 PM
Yes, poor broke San Jose. Funny, the latest Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for San Jose (through June 30, 2009) has them in the black by 6.4 billion dollars. Let 'em sell something to bridge the gap just like normal people do . . .
http://www.csjfinance.org/cafr/2009_CAFR_FINAL.pdf
Jay J. Hector at July 21, 2010 4:27 PM
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