It is a marvel that during a time of budget crises and constraints and a steadfast refusal to raise taxes, or even spread them evenly, that privatizing public services is regarded as a cost saving measure. No business will undertake government services without factoring a profit into a business plan and if there is enough room in government budgets for profit then there must be enough room to keep providing the services already. The argument is always that governments are wasteful and employees are lazy but even the most anti government members of the structure committee acknowledge that Coos County has been cut to the bone and that staff do more than their fair share of work and are not lazy so how would privatizing these services and adding profit to the cost of payroll burden improve services to the taxpayer?

One committee member has suggested that Curry County will soon privatize many of its departments and be a “model” for other Oregon counties. In 2008, Governor Ed Rendell sought to transfer control of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a Spanish consortium, Albertis.

Rendell is not the first governor to trade off common property to private firms but the $12.5B, 75 year lease is considered the largest privatization deal in US history.

The deal was promoted as a way to bring in badly needed cash and to save the state money but the first thing Albertis planned was a 25% toll increase, giving rise to the question of why didn’t the state just raise tolls in the first place? In effect, Pennsylvania outsourced political will to a private entity whose primary mission is to its shareholders, not the taxpayer. Similar results have played out elsewhere, including Indiana, with the net result to the consumer being a rise in service costs without any improvement in the service.

Several states, including California, have established what is known as a “benefit corporation”. Theoretically, status as a benefit corporation enables the directors to redirect some funds to socially responsible investments or causes that might otherwise be mandated to shareholder returns. But even if Oregon had such an option for businesses, which it doesn’t, the only way a company can provide the same level of service without raising rates is to cut back on labor costs thereby reducing spending capacity and further damaging the local economy.

Theoretically, public assets should be managed for the public good rather than private gain and the complications associated with faulty government work performed by private companies, whose loyalties do not lie with the taxpayer may leave taxpayers wondering where they go for recourse. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if Curry County does become a model of privatization that could run side by side Coos County for long term comparison of both systems. After three years we can measure quality of life, cost of services, poverty levels, population, unemployment and income levels, and overall customer satisfaction amongst other measurement criteria.