Changes are being made. Bureaucracy is being challenged on a state by state basis across the country.
Florida has a Constitutional Revisions Commission which meets every 20 years to make needed changes in the state's constitution. Every 10 years a commission review's Florida's tax, budget and planning procedures, reassesses its revenue requirements and judges the cost effectiveness of its programs.
Iowa is considering a department by department complete budget review on a five year basis. Every program would be eliminated automatically unless re-authorized by the legislature.
Phoenix, Arizona, requires department heads to submit a list of prioritized cuts every year that amount to 10 percent of their budgets. The city council then reviews them and makes cuts according to their own priorities.
The Montreal Olympics in 1977 left Canadian taxpayers with $1 billion debt that won't be paid off until sometime into the next century. The 1984 Olympics which took place in Los Angeles was a very different story; it turned a profit of $225 million. How? For the first time in 85 years it was financed without public money. Entrepreneurial organizers recruited corporate sponsors and 50,000 private sector volunteers to handle transportation, food services and even to provide the very sophisticated anti-terrorist systems required to protect the thousands of dignitaries, athletes and tourists from 118 countries.
With the 1984 Olympics as a model, public managers all across the county are beginning to ask,"How can this turn a profit?" Ted Gaebler and David Osborne scatter many of the following examples throughout their 1993 book, Reinventing Government:
Milwaukee sold sewage sludge for $7.5 million.
Phoenix gets an annual $750,000 by selling methane gas, a
byproduct of its
waste-water treatment, to neighboring Mesa, Arizona. Mesa residents
use the
gas for cooking and heating.
Chicago used to pay $2 million a year to have abandoned cars
towed. Now it
receives $2 million a year from a private company that pays for the
privilege
of towing the cars.
The St. Louis Police Department developed a software program that
allows
officers to call in rather than write up their reports. This saves
time and
labor, but better still it generates $25,000 each time the software
is sold to
another police department.
The Washington State ferry system makes money from selling
advertising in its
terminals and leasing space to operators of two duty-free shops on
two
international ferries.
San Bruno, California, operates its own cable television system
which offers
lower priced comparable service than its private sector competitors
and makes
a profit besides.
Orlando, Florida, got itself a free city hall by letting a
developer build two
office towers on the same seven-acre parcel.
Fairfax County, Virginia, gave a private developer up to 146 acres
of prime
public land---valued at $50 million to $70 million---in return for
construction of a new county government center.
Visalia, California, arranged a four-parcel land swap and sale
which allowed
the local school district to build a new school.
In 1993, Minnesota's Department of Revenue saved the state's taxpayers $60,000 in printing and mailing costs by publishing 700,000 fewer tax booklets. The state sent instead a postcard and address label to the almost one million taxpayers who use professional tax preparers and therefore didn't need the income tax forms and instruction booklets. Officials estimated an additional savings of 102,500 kilowatt-hours of electricity, 820 trees and 460 thirty-gallon cans worth of landfill space. (Governing 3-93 issue p 13)
Paulding County, Georgia, built a prison with four times the beds it needs and ended up with a $200,000 profit its first year by taking in the overflow from other jurisdictions. Georgia charges $35 a night for use of each bed.
Some enterprising California police departments have come up with a similar idea but without the expense of building a new prison. They rent blocks of cheap motel rooms over the weekends and pay someone to make sure convicted drunk drivers, who generally are sentenced to serving time on weekends, stay in the rooms. California inmates must pay $75 a night for their substitute jail cells.
Visalia, California, used to charge every softball team in the
city $25 each
even though it cost the city $140 per team each season to provide
umpires,
equipment and park maintenance. In an attempt to stem the flow of
red ink.
the city raised the fee to $90 per team ---- all they thought players
would
bear. In Reinventing Government Ted Gaebler, who was once
Visalia's city
manager, and David Osborne explain how a simple innovation made both
city
managers and softball players estactic over a $400 fee.
"Because they had decided to recruit team sponsors, who would pay the
$400,
ballplayers no longer had to pay a fee, merchants got cheap
advertising and
loyal customers, and the city earned $260 per team, per season." But
the
story goes on. Soon there were 300 teams and there simply weren't
enough
toilets. "...the finance director assured the recreation director
that if she
wrote up a request she could get portable toilets tacked onto the end
of the
five-year capital improvement plan. If she could get a state
matching grant,
in six or seven year the city could buy her some new toilets. "
(F-1) You know an entrepreneurial city like Visalia is not
going to wait 7
years for toilets. How would you solve this problem?
Governments all over America are unintentionally subsidizing softball
teams,
golfers, developers, and corporations---because they can't tell if
their
charges cover their costs. Once they expose the true cost of their
subsidies,
elected officials often decide that some are inappropriate. ... An
enterprising government exposes its subsidies to public light, relies
on
public pressure to do away with them---and then finds ways to make
money from
the services involved. It raises its greens fees for golf. It asks
softball
teams to get sponsors. It limits its tax subsidies. If it gets
truly
creative, it might even charge those convicted of drunk driving for
the cost
of processing the arrest as San Jose does; or charge those whose
malfunctioning security systems set off false alarms, as Baton Rouge
does; or
charge motorists who run into city-owned trees, as Fairfield does.
Such
practices may not yet be widespread. But ask yourself: Are they not
more
consistent with American values than subsidizing the affluent to play
golf and
use marinas? RIG p 217
(F-2) Contact an official at city hall and determine the
subsidies your
local government provides in any 2 of the following areas:
Public golf courses:
(F-3) State your reason for deciding whether each of the activities listed above are, in your personal opinion, legitimate objects of the public's tax dollar. Why or why not?
(F-4) Write out your suggestions for decreasing the subsidy in one or more areas.
Instead of paying road contractors for the cost of material and labor, some governments are tying payment to the expected life of the roadway with penalties if the expectation is not met. Likewise bonuses are offered for beating deadlines and exceeding performance expectations.
In the 1970s, when New York City was going through a real fiscal crisis, an independent foundation called the Fund for the City of New York came up with a system which they dubbed Scorecard which measures the cleanliness of city streets. It's not an automatic high-tech system---in fact it requires the services of volunteers who go out and rate each of 6,000 streets every month. With the Scorecard information the sanitation department began assigning crews based on the cleanliness of the streets and rewarding them on the basis of performance. This worked so well that performance measurements were devised for foster care, school maintenance, home care services, job training, park maintenance and so forth.
(F-5) Could you or your entire class develop outcome measures which might improve some specific service in your school or in the community? Could you get volunteers to do the ratings? List at least two possible Scoreboard targets and describe the outcomes you would measure.
In Napa County, California, qualifying applicants for welfare benefits used to mean hours of delay because of paper work and unhappy public employees as well as clients. Computer upgrading worth $12,500,000 meant that determining eligibility could now be done in minutes instead of the typical eight hours formerly required.
Alabama has adopted a new computerized financial management system which saves local taxpayers $600,000 a year. It used to take 15 people at an average compensation of $40,000 to handle the purchase orders, receipts, invoices and vendor checks by hand.
Pennsylvania's 541 district judges had offices where manual typewriters were used and court documents were filed in cardboard boxes until they were recently automated.
Oregon had been spending $100,000 a year on postage alone in order to let private vendors know about the state's purchasing guidelines. In 1991, it spent $300,000 and substituted computer hardware, software and phone lines for the 15 employees who had been stuffing envelopes and updating vendor lists. Now vendors use their own personal computers and pay their own phone bills to access an up to the minute list of Oregon's shopping list. They download the state's Request for Proposal forms and fill in the blanks with their own specification and bids. Vendors can see who has been awarded a contract and at what price. The results have been more competitive bids.
In Chicago , EDS, the General Motors subsidiary, developed a high-tech parking ticket system for the city. It used to take an average of two years for a parking ticket to show up in the city's files. Most tickets were dismissed because the issuing officer usually failed to show up. In the 80s the city lost approximately $420 million in unpaid traffic fines. Now approximately 14,000 tickets a day are delivered to the EDS's computer which instantly puts them on optical disks. Meter maids punch out tickets on hand-held computers and portable printers. The information is electronically transferred into EDS every night. If a ticket isn't paid promptly a computer-generated letter is sent. A hearing is available at a "week-long window"--no appointment necessary and decisions are rendered on the spot. Chicago should save about $5 million a year in administrative costs besides generating millions of dollars in ticket-revenue. The efficiencies didn't cost the city a penny because EDS made the initial investment and hopes to eventually recoup it by charging the city a per-ticket processing fee.
Now Palo Alto and other northern California towns allow settlements of moving violations by mail. Motorist and police officers both submit written versions of the incident and a judge makes a determination. A court appearance is still possible if the settlement is unacceptable to the defendant.
Pennsylvania is using optical character recognition (OCR) to save
half the
time it takes to process Medicaid claims. OCR is a technique to
convert
scanned images into a format that computers can read. Manual data
entry is
eliminated and savings of time, labor and typing errors are achieved.
By creating electronic images of paper documents for computerized
manipulation, storage and retrieval, the technology cuts down on
space needed
for filing cabinets, ensures accuracy of information, simplifies and
speeds up
employee access to information and thereby saves time, labor and
money." New
Jersey is using OCR to process employers' unemployment tax forms.
The state
had been using 10-year-old equipment to process over 2 million
quarterly
employer wage and tax reporting forms each year.
A county clerk in Harris County, Texas saw OCRs as the potential
for the
county to pick up some extra revenue.
The County Clerk's Office ... had been using OCR wands for several
years to
manually scan the registration numbers of every county resident who
voted.
... At 20 registration numbers per poll sheet, and as many as 120,000
poll
sheets after a major election, a final voter list required six to
eight
workers, scanning full time for three months, at a labor cost of
$100,000.
County Clerk Anita Rodheaver decided the office needed a much faster,
more
cost-effective system. She also wanted to develop a new revenue
source for
the county and to deliver better service to the public. (She said)
"When
candidates wanted to know who had voted in previous elections, they
took the
poll sheets to people who put the information on computers and
printed it for
them...These private companies were making a fortune, and I didn't
see any
point in the county furnishing them the data to make a fortune when
the
country could be capturing that information and selling it
ourselves."
New York uses OCR to speed up child abuse investigations,
generated by more
than 100,000 calls on its hot-line annually. New York required the
department
to keep records on each case for 10 years after the 18th birthday of
the
youngest child in an abusive family. Workers were buried under
mountains of
paper, all deemed necessary to protect the states children.
Unfortunately,
filing and retrieving took up so much time those same children were
not
getting the attention they deserved. But in New York, OCR technology
will
soon be replaced by something even better which requires no documents
and no
images of documents. Technology breakthroughs are continuous.
(Quote and
information re: OCR is from p 48 Governing April 1993)
(F-6) Does your local government use OCR? If not, bring the preceding examples to its attention.
In Section Three we learned about STEP---Strive Toward Excellence in Performance----the program instituted by Sandra Hale, head of Minnesota's Department of Administration. You may recall the STEP Board actively solicited proposals from employees. There were, however, certain stipulations. Projects had to be operated by a team, they could not require new money and they had to encompass at least one of six principles: (1) cutomer orientation, (2) participatory management, (3) decentralization of authority,(4) performance measurement, (5) new partnerships or (6) state-of-the-art technology.
(F-7) Which, if any, of STEP's six principles would apply to the OCR programs described above?
The Minnesota STEP program has given way to new programs
instituted by a new
governor. In the July issue of Governing, Commissioner of
Minnesota
Department of Finance , John Gunyou wrote:
The real revolution in Minnesota's service redesign has largely taken
place
under Governor Arne Carlson through such recent efforts as his
Commission on
Reform and Efficiency, grassroots Minnesota Milestones project,
Commission on
Long-Term Financial Management, outcomes-based Performance Budgeting
system
and Investment Initiatives process.
Fifteen years ago Phoenix, Arizona instituted an employee suggestion program that promised 10 percent of any savings generated, up to $2,000. Today savings generate awards up to $2,500, and awards above $1,000 are ceremoniously presented.
Realizing that individual awards might make colleagues too
competitive and
encourage them to hoard rather than to share information, the Windham
Town
Council in Maine came up with a hybrid awards program:
Employees who finds ways to save taxpayer dollars are able to reap up
to 15
percent of the total savings their ideas generate, capped at $3,000.
For an
award winning idea generated by more than one individual, the shared
reward is
set at 20 percent of the annualized savings, capped at $5,000.
The idea is evaluated by a Cost Savings Awards Committee made up of
local
residents in consultation with department heads. Final
recommendations are
then submitted to the town council.
A cost saving idea form asks the following questions: What is your
idea?
What would this replace? What is your estimate of savings? How can
we make
this idea work?
(F-8) Describe your own creative plan to generate suggestions from members of your school or local community.
Often the best and most useful ideas are the simplest ideas. Do you know anyone who doesn't use coat hangers, safety pins or paper clips? What about those little post-it notes? It doesn't take a specialist to come up with good ideas; many problems are solved by ordinary people who don't overlook the obvious.
(F-9) It's your turn to be creative. Write down your own idea for an innovation in an area you choose.
(1) In Madison, Wisconsin, garbage truck drivers were taking over an hour to dump each load and a real bottleneck was occurring at the plant. The city was considering expanding the plant's tipping platform which would have cost millions of dollars. There was no need: dumping time was cut to an average of 15 minutes and fewer trucks did a better job. The solution: stagger the dumping by scheduling half the trucks to start work one hour earlier.
(2) The following is a quote from Chuck Huchel, chief of public
safety,
Visalia, California, as reported by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler in
their
1993 best seller Reinventing Government;
We needed a weather covering over a gas pump, to protect people from
the rain
when they were gassing up their vehicles. The architectural design
to make it
like a gas station came to around $30,000. We thought that was
outrageous.
So somebody said, 'What about these bus stop covers---the
glass-enclosed
ones?' We checked, and they cost $2,500. We put one of those up and
it works
fine.
The following example s come from an article by Charles Mahtesian and printed in the July 1993 issue of Governing magazine :
(3) Oaklyn, New Jersey, population 4,000 needed $20,000 to add facilities for the handicapped to an existing playground. They decided to sell bricks for $35 to individuals and $50 to businesses. Individuals got their name inscribed and the additional $15 bought businesses the opportunity to add a phone number. The bricks were used in the park landscape.
(4) Southington, Connecticut used a straightforward approach to its budget crisis. It sought and received some concessions from its union employees. Then the town manager wrote a "Dear vendor/professional/ supplier" letter asking, and for the most part receiving, a five percent discount on goods and services.
(5) In another instance, four small towns in Minnesota wanted town administrators but had neither the workload nor the money to afford them. They pooled their money to pay for a circuit-rider whose duties ranged from making sure dogs are leashed to scheduling grass mowing to planning investment strategy.
The following examples of entrepreneurial governing come from The Good Idea Book: A Directory of Maine Municipal Innovations, an annual publication first printed in 1991.
(6) All the information that a municipality normally distributes to residents throughout the year was put on a calendar by the Public Works Department in Portland, Maine. Instead of running notices in newspapers, the city found it was cheaper, more efficient and more effective to distribute free calendars noting things like trash pick-up days, recycling programs, can-food drives, leaf removal projects, city council meetings, tax-due dates, winter storm advice and beach regulations. The calendars featured photos of all the employees in the department. They were identified by name which boosted their morale and self-esteem. As a side benefit the calendar gave citizens an overview of the services provided by Public Works and an opportunity to meet the workers as they distributed the calendars door-to-door throughout the city.
(7) The South Portland Public Works Department decided it was time to educate the public and their elected officials about roads. They wanted to explain why it is not effective to repair the worst roads first, why maintenance saves money why different repairs are used on different roads and so forth. They spent $75 producing a video which was aired on the local public access cable TV channel and could be viewed by council members in their homes. Slides and tapes were incorporated along with discussion by a three member panel. The video was inexpensive because it was produced on a local college campus using their equipment. Students gained experience running the cameras.
(8) Towns faced with limited funds for park development might follow the example of Fort Kent, Maine. The local Lions Club supplied the labor and the town provided the cost of materials to turn part of the town's undeveloped land into an R.V. park. The revenue generated by tourists pays for the upkeep of the remainder of the park. "The town's police department maintains a 24 hour a day registration service. The town's general assistance workfare program provides the sites with free firewood."
(9) Most government entities are faced with lengthy and
inefficient
procurement systems. Because of the bureaucracy involved, many
retailers are
reluctant to deal with governments and premium prices are charged
when it
comes to small purchases 末末volume is another matter. Frustrated
employees
in Portland, Maine decided to establish their own General Store:
In a space measuring about 80 by 40 feet, space renovated by the city
employees, the General Store stocks everything from paper towels to
plywood,
from paint thinner to plumbing supplies. Everything you would find
in a good
hardware store and then some.
To start up the store, the city manager dedicated $22,900 in good
faith.
Items were identified and stocked and the whole inventory was put on
computer.
As a result the city has capitalized on its buying power, saving
taxpayer
dollars. Employee productivity and morale has improved. Vendors
have one
contact, rather than many, and they now receive faster payment of
invoices.
Also, the computerized inventory/transfer process automatically takes
an item
out of stock, then credits payment to the line budget, substantially
reducing
invoice float/budget line lag problems. To date, in slightly less
than a year
1,122 requisitions have been processed, totaling $49,395.
(10) From p 25 Governing July 1993:
Out in Helena, Montana, court fines became food for the hungry.
Justice of
the Peace Wallace Jewell set aside a day in April in which citizens
could
settle fines they owed to his court by donating canned goods to a
local food
bank.
Community response was overwhelming. Between 200 and 300 people
redeemed more
than $60,000 in fines that day. "A lot of these dollars we would
have very
possibly not collected, " says Jewell.
(F-10) List the previous examples by number, starting with your personal favorite.
Many states now pay vocational education providers according to job placement rates and those that fail to perform to a certain standard sometimes lose state funding completely.
The federal job training system now pays vendors according to job placement not enrollment.
Some public housing authorities replace managers if certain standards are not met concerning appearance of the property, vacancy rates and rent collection.
Utilities that operate nuclear power plants have been paid according to performance with penalties for operating at less than a certain percentage of time at full capacity and a bonus for operating at full capacity for more than a specified percentage of time.
It's nothing new for government to contract with private companies to build roads, sewer systems, buildings, and other elements of our infrastructure. Over half of the people working on defense are private company employees. The federal agency HHS (Health and Human Services) contracts with the privately operated Blue Cross/Blue Shield on behalf of millions of Medicare recipients. Chelsea,, Massachusetts, is currently using Boston University to run its schools. Seventy-two cities in southern California contract most of their services to private providers and even to public providers outside their jurisdiction.
Phoenix, Arizona, allows private companies to bid against the city's public works department. In 1984, Phoenix successfully outbid five private companies. It beat its nearest competitor by $1 million to secure the contract to collect garbage in one area. In its first seven years of contracting, the city won 15 bids and private firms won 28. Overall the bidding procedure has been a success because there has been no detrimental effect on the morale of public employees, and it has certainly helped increase their productivity. Phoenix closed a $22 million operating deficit without raising taxes or reducing services. The city has privatized some services since 1978--but depends not so much on privatization as on competition. They also have a suggestion plan where workers can earn bonuses of 10 percent of the amount their suggestions save up to $2,500. Awards above $1,000 are ceremoniously presented.
More than half of all states and cities have contracted out at least one previously public service. President Clinton advocates contracting out and so have many of his predecessors.
In 1955, President Eisenhower endorsed contracting-out through
directive A-76,
telling federal agencies to contract everything "that can be procured
more
economically from a commercial source." If the directive had been
adhered to,
federal agencies would still be fit and trim. But it was ignored.
In the
1980s, there were 10,000 public painter and paper hangers, 20,000
public food
preparers, 30,000 public supply clerks and 10,000 public librarians.
Contracting out these skills would have saved taxpayers over $3
billion a
year, not to mention the new tax revenue which would have been
generated from
all the private contractors bound to replace those on the government
payroll.
In 1967 about 60 percent of the goods and services used by the
federal
government came from private providers. Twenty years later private
sector
participation had fallen to 40 percent.
Normal government practice discourages natural selection. Rather
than the
survival of the helpful, we find the survival of the already
entrenched or the
politically powerful. Service decisions are made based on what was
done last
year, which provider organizations have political clout, who gave
campaign
contributions, and where the unions stand. " Unions generally oppose
threats
to their monopoly status for fear that competition will mean lost
jobs for
their members. That's why governments that institute competition
make
provision for displaced government workers by requiring private
contractors to
give these employees first crack at a job or seeing that they get
retrained
for another type of government job. RIG p 83
(F-11) What effect does a monopoly have on providers of the
service or
product? On the consumer?
By 1987, the federal government contracted out $196.3 billion of
work, while
state and local governments contracted out $100 billion. ... The
average city
contracted out 27 percent of its municipal services. ...Many
governments act
as if their job is done once they have signed a contract. As a
result, too
many private contractors fail to deliver what they promise---or
worse, commit
fraud. The AFL-CIO has filled books with the resulting horror
stories. ...
During the heyday of Boss Tweed, contracting was often rife with
corruption---one reason the Progressives turned most service delivery
over to
public bureaucracies. RIG p 87
A 1989 survey by the National Commission for Employment Policy found
that 72
percent of local officials rated the quality of their contracted
services
"very favorable", 10 percent "slightly favorable," 13 percent
"slightly
unfavorable," and 5 percent "very unfavorable." The same study found
that
contracting saved local governments 15 to 30 percent. RIG p 89
Many people, in and out of government, believe public enterprise
should not
compete with private business. Osborne and Gaebler give reasons why
it should
on page 216 of Reinventing Government:
Some services are natural monopolies. It is inefficient to string
two or
three sets of electrical lines and or bury two or three sets of gas
lines in a
city, for example. In such cases, governments can grant a private
monopoly
and regulate its prices, or they can create a public monopoly. The
latter
option often delivers a better deal to the public.... In other areas,
where
there is insufficient private competition, public enterprise can act
as a
competitive yardstick, forcing private firms to lower their prices
and pursue
greater efficiency. ... Finally there are some occasions on which the
private
sector chooses to abandon a profitable business.
The following is found on page 45 of Reinventing
Government:
Those who advocate it (privatization) on ideological
grounds---because they
believe business is always superior to government---are selling the
American
people snake oil. Privatization is simply the wrong starting point
for a
discussion of the role of government. Services can be contracted out
or
turned over to the private sector. But governance cannot. We can
privatize
discrete steering functions, but not the overall process of
governance. If we
did, we would have no mechanism by which to make collective
decisions, no way
to set the rules of the marketplace, no means to enforce rules of
behavior....
It makes sense to put the delivery of many public services in private
hands
_if by doing so a government gets more effectiveness, efficiency,
equity, or
accountability. But we should not mistake this for some grand
ideology of
privatizing government. When governments contract with private
businesses . .
. they are shifting the delivery of services, not the responsibility
for
services.
A similar sentiment is expressed in a commentary by Austin Koenen,
managing
director of Morgan Stanley & Co. It can be found in Governing
March 1993 p.
11:
Too often, however, the argument in support of privatization is used
as an
ideological weapon against government. In this garb, privatization
is
promoted as a panacea, capable of accomplishing many
goals---shrinking
government, reducing its scope and discrediting liberal public policy
goals.
Somehow, the ideologues argue, privatization will allow government to
raise
billions of dollars, decrease the cost of providing services and
increase the
quality of that service. .... We have to remember that our objective
is
effective service to the public at a lower cost, not victory on some
ideological battlefield. ... Can private providers produce real
economic
efficiencies that government cannot replicate? ... many supposed
efficiencies
are simply transfers of wealth or income from one group to another.
Private
companies can sometimes reduce the cost of garbage collection simply
by paying
their workers less than government sanitation workers are paid. This
result
presumably could also be achieved by a local government willing to
take a much
tougher stance in labor negotiations. ... When we consider
privatizing prisons
or other elements of the criminal justice system, for instance, we
should
worry about maintaining democratic control over government's historic
monopoly
over the legitimate use of force. When we debate choice in
education, we
should be concerned above all about the role of schools in the
creation and
maintenance of common democratic values.
In 1984 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)compared eight services provided in 10 cities by public employees and in 10 cities by private sector employees. These cities were all in Southern California. The differences in service were minor, but the differences in cost were staggering. Asphalt paving cost 95 percent more provided "in house" and janitorial services cost 73 percent more. Traffic signal maintenance, street cleaning, and lawn and street-tree maintenance and garbage collection were more expensive "in-house" but in varying degrees, with the exception of payroll preparation, which was about even.
The following is from Randall Fitzgerald's 1988 book, When
Government Goes
Private: Successful Alternatives to Public Services:
Of the eight services analyzed, contractors actually gave their
workers an
average of $106 a month more in salary and benefits than municipal
agencies
paid their employees. For instance, private firms in ten of the
cities pay
asphalt-overlay workers an average of $2,421 monthly, compared to
only $1,532
monthly by the ten municipal governments. Yet it costs private firms
only
$42.85 per ton of asphalt laid compared to $83.99 per ton for
municipal
departments.
Fitzgerald explains the disparity by pointing out that private firms reward their employees based on performance and often have elaborate incentive programs such as profit-sharing and stock ownership. They generally maintain their own equipment, spread equipment costs over several jobs and sometimes rent instead of purchase more expensive equipment. Most importantly, private firms have the flexibility to take risks in the pursuit of productive innovations.
(F-12) Is it possible for private providers to reduce costs without paying their workers less than public sector workers are paid? Explain.
On page 84 of RIG, John Cleveland, formerly of the Michigan
Commerce
Department is quoted:
They (government employees) find that when they get into a
competitive
situation, they work a lot harder, but it's far more exciting. They
may have
to be pushed into it, but they discover that it's much more
rewarding. And
there's no question about when they're doing a good job. The world
knows it,
because they're winning in competition with others.
California boasts more private-sector involvement in transit than any other state. It has a pretty good system, as public systems go. The state gives the counties funds and when a county reaches a specified level of transit service, any state funds left over can be used for streets and highways.
(F-13) Do you think the incentive provided by California in allowing counties to keep any savings they generate leads to the higher use of private contractors? Why might this be so?
Some observers have suggested that the simplest way to privatize transit in this country would be to simply let the public systems declare bankruptcy. This would void all existing labor agreements and allow private operators to purchase the bankrupt systems and start providing services in a competitive environment.
(F-14) Define bankruptcy. Do you think bankruptcy, as described above, is a good and workable idea? Why or why not? Substantiate your opinion.
Change is occurring. In 1985, Dallas contracted with three different private companies; one to operate 204 buses, another to maintain the buses and a third to manage the system.
In Phoenix, Arizona, the city sets routes and determines quality and frequency of service, but they don't provide the service. Private operators save 62 percent over what it would cost the city to provide the service itself. The city claims another savings of $700,000 a year by substituting taxis for its regular Sunday fixed-route services.
The Tidewater Regional Transit Authority of Virginia is able to manage public transportation services in a five-city area without tax subsidies. It discovered private companies could provide better vehicle maintenance and higher labor productivity. But the main innovation was to encourage the formation of private citizen-operated-van-pool services carrying about 1,000 persons to and from work. If the authority had provided instead of managed the service they would have needed to buy 25 buses and the taxpayers would have had to come up with more than $3 million a year.
Westchester County, New York has 11 private companies running 323 buses a day. But even with the county setting fares and schedules, operation costs a few years ago were $3.26 a mile. This compared favorably to the $4.27 a mile operating costs for a neighboring publicly operated system. Employees belonged to the same union and therefore received almost identical salary and benefits. Both systems also carried about the same number of passengers, yet privately operated Westchester needed $9.1 million in local tax subsidies compared to $17.8 million needed by the publicly operated system. One of Westchester's innovations was to locate a private company to finance, install and maintain bus-passenger shelters at 252 locations, free of charge to the county. Winchester made its money by selling advertising space on two panels of each shelter. The idea is being copied all around the country.
(F-15) Apparently Westchester's employees didn't suffer even though operating costs were $1.01 per mile less than neighboring systems. How could this be?
In 1987, the Japanese government privatized the money-losing Japan National Railway and divided it into six smaller private entities. These entities diversified their activities so as not to be totally dependent on the railway for revenue. The government railroad was heavily overstaffed but 40,000 senior employees were retrained for jobs at hotels, construction outfits, restaurants, retail stores, landscaping and so forth. More than 1,000 workers were displaced but they were put to work at the subsidiaries of one of the six smaller companies. The new companies were making profits in three or four years and one of the largest of the new companies is developing a magnetically levitated train that can travel at speeds of 320 mph.
(F-16) Our policy makers instigated the breakup of privately operated AT&T. Do you think they are capable of doing the same for Amtrak and all federally subsidized transportation systems? Explain.
Ralph Nader and countless others have suggested privatization as a viable alternative to improving the way government manages its assets. Instead of demanding higher royalties for logging, grazing and the use of mineral and petroleum resources these assets could be sold to the highest bidder.
In his highly recommended book, When Government Goes
Private, journalist
Randall Fitzgerald writes
In Maine an association of private landowners has pooled 2.8 million
acres of
forest for camping, hunting, fishing and other recreation. North
Maine Woods,
Inc. a nonprofit group, charges its visitors lower fees than a
nearby state
park _ State parks nationwide occupy nearly 11 million acres, just
one-seventh
of the acreage of federal parks, yet host nearly twice the number of
visitors.
We could shut down federal labs instead of worrying about the profits made on drugs developed in them. Private-sector labs that found it impossible to compete with the federal government would have more incentive to engage in costly research.
(F-17) Give two arguments for and two against shutting down federal labs as suggested above.
People have been talking about privatizing the United State Postal
System for
years. The following quotation is from David Linowes, Professor of
Political
Economy and Public Policy at the University of Illinois:
Local post offices in each community are essentially self-contained
operating
units. Each day the personnel receive bundles of mail which they
sort and
deliver to the residences. Give them an opportunity to set up their
own
businesses, contracting from the government for this function, but
require
them to deliver the mail twice a day instead of once; and keep the
Post Office
open six full days a week. Each community postmaster's facility
thereby
becomes a franchise operation. Policies and standards would continue
to be
set by the government. Employees of the Post Office, many of whom
are in
dead-end jobs, would find themselves part-owners of a private
business in
which they share in the profits.
(F-18) Give two arguments for and two against the preceding proposal concerning postal service.
Lower private-sector costs are mainly due to incentive programs, responsibility for equipment maintenance, fewer managers and using more advanced technology, rewarding employees based on performance and structuring performance incentives by use of profit-sharing and stock ownership, spreading equipment costs over many jobs and renting other equipment quickly as needed. Finally, private firms are willing to take risks for innovation that municipal governments have neither the incentive nor the flexibility to pursue. On the other hand, pension benefits are generally much better for public than for private employees.
Scottsdale, Arizona has been served by Rural-Metro, an employee-owned company, since 1948 with a cost of about half what most cities its size pay for protection. A study found that in comparing dollar loss from fires, response times, firefighter salaries, (with nearby towns with similar residential patterns and with public fire departments) Scottsdale had the fastest fire response times and the lowest dollar loss per capita from fires. Not only that, it paid on average $1,500 more for a starting firefighter and $1,100 more for a captain. The company has come up with numerous innovations, including a fire fighting robot. It is a $25 million business with 400 vehicles, 1,600 employees and a few years ago was found to have contracts with 16 communities in five states providing ambulance, forestry-fire suppression and fire-code enforcement as well as the standard fire-protection services.
(F-19) Prioritize by number (#1 being of utmost importance)
your personal
opinion of the reason more fire departments are not operated by
private
companies:
a) Most people are not aware of the facts given in the preceding
paragraph
b) Unions are too strong
c) The public impression is that privatizing means putting people out
of work
d) Safety is a public concern and should be handled by public
employees
e) Government workers can do a better job than private sector workers
Many public managers believe that unions are the greatest obstacle
standing in
the way of entrepreneurial government. Certainly unions resist
changes that
threaten their members' jobs---as any rational organization would,
but most
entrepreneurial managers tell us that unions have not been their
primary
obstacle. The real issue, they believe, is the quality of
management. RIG pp
263 and 264
The typical government loses 10 percent of its employees every year.
By
taking advantage of the attrition, governments can often avoid
layoffs. They
can also shift employees to other departments or require contractors
to hire
them at comparable wages and benefits. Los Angeles County, which has
more
than 100 separate contracts with private firms, has successfully
relocated
people within county government. The federal government requires
contractors
to give workers who are displaced by a contract first crack at job
openings.
... Many employees in bureaucratic governments feel trapped. Tied
down by
rules and regulations, numbed by monotonous tasks, assigned jobs they
know
could be accomplished in half the time if they were only allowed to
use their
minds, they live lives of quiet desperation. ... When they are moved
into the
private sector, they often experience the same sense of liberation.
RIG p 38
(F-20) In light of the preceding two quotations, re prioritize
your answer to
(F-19). Of course you may stick with your original priorities.
(a) Most people are not aware of the facts given in the preceding
paragraph
b) Unions are too strong
c) The public impression is that privatizing means putting people out
of work
d) Safety is a public concern and should be handled by public
employees
e) Government workers can do a better job than private sector
workers
The National Science Foundation in the 1970s compiled data on solid-waste collection in 2,200 U.S. cities and found that municipal provisions of this service cost from 29 percent to 37 percent more than private delivery. If one factored in the amount of taxes the private delivery firms pay in the communities they service, along with pension-fund and other costs cities typically exclude from departmental operating budgets, it was discovered that private delivery becomes more than 60 percent cheaper for taxpayers than garbage collection by municipal sanitation departments.
Newark, New Jersey, became a contract city in the late 1970s.
Newark, NJ, turned to community organizations and private sector
initiatives
to deal with problems from housing to AIDS to homelessness, as it
pared its
payroll from 10,000 in 1980 to 4,000 in 1988.
Between 1975 and 1985 Newark reduced its department of engineering
from 1,052
to 600 employees via contracting out solid-waste collection, street
sweeping,
snow plowing, sewer reconstruction and cleaning, water-line
connections,
street resurfacing and street-sign installation. Comparisons of
garbage
collection showed the city was 21 percent higher than a private
contractor,
and that didn't even include all of the cities overhead expenses.
The city
saved $5 million over a 3 year period by that one contract alone.
The private
contractor collected 5.7 tons per man-day compared to only 3.2 tons
per
man-day for the city department. Higher productivity was due to more
efficient routes, better-conditioned, newer, larger trucks and a
younger, more
energetic work force. The private contractor also employed
considerably more
black workers than the city sanitation department. RIG
New technology turns garbage into natural gas, resulting in power for producing electricity. Signal Environmental Systems operates in the Northeast. Towns in New England pay Signal $22 per ton to take their garbage compared to the $100 per ton charged by regular landfills. Signal burns the trash to boil water and make steam for electricity. When they produce 37 megawatts of power, three megawatts operate the plant and the rest is sold to a Massachusetts electric company. This resource-recovery-process filters out 99 percent of particulates flowing through the plant smokestacks before the exhaust reaches the outside air. Although ash must still be buried the old fashioned way, there is less of it, and it is less likely to contaminate underground water.
Westchester County has access to a similar environmentally sound waste-to-energy facility. The costs and risks associated with performance remain the responsibility of the private-sector provider. A recyclable residue of carbon is all that remains of the garbage after processing, plus it is cheaper to install this process than to install incinerators.
Participatory management saved the New York Sanitation Department over $16 million in only 3 years.
(F-21) The following will require some research via the
telephone. Report on
the garbage disposal system in your community. Include answers to
the
following:
a) Is disposal service in your area provided by the public or the
private sector?
b) How much does your community pay per ton of garbage?
c) What is done with the garbage?
d) If recycled, what is the savings over regular landfill?
e) Is the procedure environmentally sound? In what way?
A private company, Peat Marwick, has been running ads sharing
insights on
governing in this country. The following is from a full page ad
placed in the
April 1993 issue of Governing:
Virtually every government in the nation has been buffeted by
stubborn and
enormous national and regional economic challenges. Leaders are
aware that
service delivery issues in the areas of health care, education,
public safety,
transportation, and highways are neither disappearing nor decreasing
in
magnitude. The challenge today is to figure out how to maintain and
pay for
these services without bankrupting the government or placing undue
financial
hardship on taxpayers. Short-term results are not enough. It is
essential
that governments identify and implement long-term solutions. Tough
decisions
about programs, staff and service levels and the cost of providing
programs
need to be made. Smart strategies have to be designed to effectively
implement these decisions while preserving the quality of life and
vital
services for all citizens. Long-term fiscal solutions depend on
foresight and
structural change. In the real world, that means developing plans
that are
politically viable, technically sound, and stand up to public
scrutiny. The
initial phase of the change process is often the most challenging
one. North
Carolina chose to start their long-term change process using
legislation.
Among other things, the legislation mandated a performance audit of
major
management policies, practices, and functions across all executive
branch
agencies. It covered: (1) Planning, budgeting, and program
evaluation
policies and practices; (2) Personnel systems operations and
management; (3)
State purchasing operations and management; (4) Information
processing and
telecommunications systems policy, organization, and management; (5)
Organization and staffing patterns, particularly in terms of the
ratio of
managers and supervisors to non-management personnel.
(F-22) Restate the challenge as stated in the Peat Marwick ad.
(F-23) Real world solutions, according to the ad, need to be "politically viable, technically sound, and stand up to public scrutiny." State three requirements, of your personal design, for ideological solutions. (For example: meet needs, encourage independence, discourage graft.)
As institutions see their funding cut back, volunteers become more important. Volunteers work in schools, housing projects, parks and anywhere they are needed.
Many corporations, like Espirit of San Francisco, sponsor
employee-volunteer
programs. Espirit allows a portion of every employee's paid
time to be spent
on volunteer projects. Another San Francisco program is called
Linking San
Francisco, and brings together private foundations, service
organizations, and
some of the largest corporations in town.
It is not necessary to bribe people to be generous. Paid time is a
gift of
the employer rather than the employee. Giving that is reciprocated in
any
manner deprives the ordinary person of the good feeling which comes
from
freely giving something of value---time, energy, skills or
money---to
something he/she cares about. If free checking, is the reward for
giving,
then giving is an exchange. It may be elitist to assume other people
require
incentives in order to act compassionately. However all studies on
charitable
giving show that people with the lowest incomes are the most
charitable 末
they give the largest percentage of their wealth 末 freely and not as
an
exchange. (Helen P. Rogers 8-93)
City Year in Boston, draws volunteers from a wide spectrum.
Lawyers provide
pro bono legal assistance, consultants help with strategic planning,
computer
companies provide equipment, a clothing manufacturer provides
clothes, banks
provide free checking accounts to volunteers, and a host of firms
loan out
experienced managers to take on leadership roles within the
organization. The
six year old program has been described as an urban Peace Corps. The
program
pairs inner city gang members with college students. City
Year was featured
in Parade magazine on July 18, 1993:
Funding is provided primarily by Boston area businesses and by
private
citizens, who adopt teams and act as mentors to corps members. Each
of the
volunteers receives a weekly salary of $100 and a $5,000 grant at
the end of
the nine-month work year.
In addition, to develop a stronger civic ethic, City Year
participants must
register to vote, obtain a library card, produce a resume, complete a
tax-preparation workshop and, if they are not high school graduates,
study for
a GED diploma. The program provides counseling on skills required
for college
and employment. And members choose a month-long internship related
to their
career interests.
City Year receives a federal grant, but its co-founder, Alan
Khazei,
emphasizes that 75 percent of the corps' expenses are covered by
private
contributions. "We've learned," he says, that the federal government
is most
effective when it works in partnership with the state, local
communities and
the private sector."
A major event in Boston末now being duplicated across the country末is
the City
Year "Serve-A-Thon." On one Saturday each year, corps members
lead private
citizens in volunteer projects around the metropolitan area. Last
fall, more
than 7,000 people from the suburbs and inner city joined in
landscaping parks,
painting schools, cleaning up beaches and rebuilding homes for the
elderly.
They included more than 100 companies and corporations who fielded
employee
teams for the day.
In 1992, more than 600 applicants were turned away from the program
because of
a lack of resources. With a fund-raising drive under way, its
directors hope
the program will double in size by 1994. However the ultimate goal
is for the
creation of a national youth service corps.
City Year was started by two Harvard law students but is currently headed by a former member of Stanford's faculty, Greg Ricks. Ricks told Parade, "Young people all want the same basic things, no matter their race or background. They want camaraderie, acceptance and support."
(F-24) Comment on the three things young people want, according to Greg Ricks. Contradict, substitute or add other "basic things" of your own.
City Year is the precursor of President Clinton's ideal---National Service. National Service is projected to involve 150,000 participants by the year 2000. The program has been estimated by some experts to cost in the neighborhood of $3.5 billion --- all funded by the federal government.
Eric Segal, Director, Office of National Service; Special
Assistant to the
President spoke to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on June 24,
1993.
The following is excerpted from that speech:
A major effort to foster what is
right with America started this week, Fifteen hundred students,
youngsters
from a broad socioeconomic spread, have just completed a week of
leadership
training on San Francisco's Treasure Island Naval Base. Tomorrow
morning,
they will be fanning out across America to service programs in their
home
areas, as part of our first ever Summer of Service. ... This summer
of Service
program is a trial run for our full program of National Service.
Legislation
establishing that program has been approved by the House and Senate
in
Washington, and it may be law as early as July, 1993. ... The
National Service
program seeks to build communities by emphasizing the relationship
between
opportunity and responsibility. Under our initiative, students will
earn
educational benefits by spending a year or two serving others in
their
community. Our young people are exactly the right age to help ensure
that
infants are immunized, tutor in our grade schools, channel teenagers
away from
gangs and drugs, promote recycling and conservation, and help make
sure that
our streets are safe. They will not do this as part of a new-fangled
national
jobs program, but as part of a small-scale, community-based program.
In
return, they will receive a stipend and an educational benefit of
$5000 upon
completion of each year of service, for up to two years. . . .In
order to
receive a federal grant, all local service programs must obtain at
least 15
percent of their budget from private sources. Let me say that again:
No
federal money will be spent until private money has already been
raised.
We're confident that this will ensure that service programs will grow
out of
communities instead of being transplanted from Washington ... Our
legislation
creates a corporation for National Service. This corporation will
closely
watch all expenditures and insist upon quality programs-not simply
good
intentions. It will require measurable success in communities by
focusing on
results, not rhetoric. If we hel p fund the program, and it doesn't
work,
then we won't fund it again. If the program does work, then we'll
expand it.
We're committed to proving that a federal program can be
soft-hearted, yet
hard-headed at the same time.
(F-25) Provide two arguments for and two against the idea of
schools
requiring service to the community as a prerequisite for
graduation.
Each participant will receive at least a minimum-wage stipend, 85
percent paid
for by the federal government. Also he said that "If it (a state)
decides to
participate, then the federal government is prepared to do a lot to
help these
(state) commissions." Mr. Segal declared that states are free not to
participate in the federal government's national service program.
<
(F-26) Pretend you are the governor or any other elected official in your state. What would go through your head? Describe the pluses and minuses of having your state participate in national service from the point of view of the average voter. What would you decide to do? Was the decision made freely?
It is a well established fact that governments have only the money and power which they take from the people they govern.
(F-27) Where will "85 percent" of the promised stipends for the National Service program come from?
Mr. Segal said in reference to the federal national service program, "We will be empowering local communities."
(F-28) What will the federal government use to empower local communities?
Supporters of National Service consider it an investment in the future. In October 1990, New Jersey Congresswoman Marge Roukema argued against the Hawkins bill, otherwise known as the Nation and Community Service Act, which passed the Senate in March and the House in October of 1991. She couldn't support the bill because, as she and several of her colleagues pointed out, to pay for voluntary service is an oxymoron. Congress in the fall of 1990 was funding only 56 percent of the money authorized for vocational education, 50 per cent authorized for Chapter One and disadvantaged youth, 20 percent of the money needed by Head Start and lesser amounts for the Job Training Partnership Act and programs for the handicapped. Considering the scarcity of public funds, does it then make sense to pay volunteers?
Texas congressman Steve Bartlett claimed that in 1989, 98 million Americans volunteered their time. Mr. Bartlett argued that the Hawkins bill would establish a new bureaucracy between volunteers and organizations and would "squash volunteerism flat!" Congressman Porter proposed an alternate bill. Instead of using money as incentive to promote volunteer activity his bill would limit the liability of volunteers.
Volunteers, like any ordinary citizen, can be sued if any misfortune should happen to occur as a result, even a remotely connected result, of his or her action or ownership of property. Today volunteers are often afraid to volunteer their services and charities often can't afford to take gifts of property because of the environmental and other potential liabilities. By accepting some gifts, charities could be forced to hire experts in a variety of areas such as hyrogeology, biology, chemistry, air quality and environmental economics.
Liability presently extends far back in the chain of title and often has little or nothing to do with culpability. The tiny Miner's Bank of Butte, Montana (working capital of $2.5 million) foreclosed on a failed business which had chemically treated and preserved wooden telephone poles. Consequently it was held partly responsible for the $10 million cleanup of land which it had owned for only three months.
(F-29) What is meant by the "chain of title"? State why or why not you would favor the Porter bill to limit the liability of volunteers and non-profit entities.
Many people believe one way to encourage voluntarism is to starve
government.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s when government funds were
non-existent, a nine-year-old boy and his father built a bridge in
Arizona.
Ronald Reagan often argued that by cutting public sector spending, we
could
liberate voluntary efforts from the oppressive arm of government.
Where we
followed his lead ... we often had the opposite effect, crippling
community-based organizations. Such are the perils when one acts
based on
outdated assumptions. RIG p. 45
But is the assumption outdated? In Bonner County, Idaho , neighbors banded together to pave a five-mile stretch of road. The county agreed the project needed doing but there were no funds available and unlikely to be for quite some time. Of the 408 property owners affected, only 120 contributed to the project. Some genuinely couldn't afford to chip in and they were offset by those able to do more than a proportional share. But there were the expected free loaders. However, the public spiritedness and generosity of participants more than made up for the selfishness of free riders.
A nation where people voluntarily come together to tackle problems in a spirit of community is a wonderful place to live. There are numerous stories emerging from the 1993 Midwest floods, and before that Hurricane Hugo and before that the Northern California Earthquake.
(F-30) Write down an example of community spirit that you know about personally or through research, that came from one of the natural disasters mentioned above.
A 1985 survey by the University of Idaho's Bureau of Public
Affairs Research
found that almost 75 percent of the cities surveyed used volunteers
in some
capacity. Dallas added 1,200 volunteers to its Parks and Recreation
Department and as many as 4,800 for special events.
In Florida, volunteers serve as tutors, interpreters, foster parents,
drivers,
speakers, and shopping, bookkeeping, and cleaning assistants. In
Massachusetts, the Department of Environmental Protection has begun
to use
volunteer lawyers to mediate disputes involving the use of wetlands.
(RIG p.
339)
Society becomes more charitable as it prospers. As people become
richer and
acquire more exchangeable goods the marginal utility of those goods
decreases.
Concurrently, the marginal value of non exchangeable goods葉hose
things that
money can not buy, like the pleasure of helping others-- increases.
Therefore a growing economy encourages charity and good works.
The voluntary sector plays a role in American life that is seldom
fully
appreciated. By 1982, nonprofit organizations employed 8 percent of
all
workers and 14 percent of all service workers in the United States.
Between
1972 and 1982, they were the fastest growing sector of the economy,
in terms
of employment. A 1989 Gallup survey on voluntary activities found
that
roughly half of all Americans 14 years of age or older---93.4 million
people---volunteered their time in some way. The Independent Sector,
which
commissioned the poll, estimated the dollar value of their time $170
billion.
... This sector, it seems to us, is made up of organizations that are
privately owned and controlled, but that exist to meet public or
social needs,
not to accumulate private wealth. ... When governments shift from
producing
all services ... to a more catalytic role, they often rely heavily on
the
third sector. Most of us assume that government does the important
things and
voluntary efforts fill in the cracks. But according to Lester
Salamon, who
lead(s) a multiyear research project on nonprofit organizations at
the Urban
Institute, the third sector is actually society's preferred mechanism
for
providing collective goods. It existed long before most government
services
existed. It coped with social problems long before governments took
on that
role. Governments stepped in only when the third sector proved
incapable of
dealing with particular problems. To this day, cities with a high
level of
third sector activism, such as Pittsburgh and the Twin Cities, are by
far the
most effective in dealing with social problems. ... (ten years ago)
nonprofit
organizations delivered 56 percent of all social services financed by
government, 48 percent of employment and training services, and 44
percent of
health services. RIG pp 44, 45
(F-31)
"(Voluntary organizations want) a contribution from you, in time,
talent, or treasure. Hence (their) entire attention is on your
capacities---on what you can bring to the task. In contrast, job
training
programs, social work agencies, police departments, and welfare
programs focus
on your deficiencies: what you don't know, what you can't do, how
you
have been victimized." RIG
How do you suppose this makes recipients of government services feel?
What changes could be made in the delivery of social services?
Public sector strengths are private sector weaknesses and vice
versa. The
private sector is good at innovation but is generally not interested
unless
there is a profit in the doing. The non-profit sector tends to be
best at
tasks that : generate little or no profit margin; require compassion
and
commitment to other human beings, enforce moral codes and stress
individual
responsibility for behavior, require a comprehensive, holistic
approach;
require extensive trust on the part of customers or clients; require
volunteer
labor and require hands-on personal attention (such as day care,
counseling,
and services to the handicapped or ill.)
Nonprofits can do things that a city government simply can't do in
the
targeted neighborhoods. They can, for instance, act quickly to
purchase a
necessary property. As Braswell says (head of Baltimore's
Neighborhood
Housing Services) "Government money has gazillions of regulations
attached to
it. Nonprofits have more flexibility with their funds. Governing
April 1993
P. 43
Public employees often have the idea now days that "it is wrong for a government to impose any particular set of values on its citizens."
Many people believe a sense of morality and responsibility is missing in society today. They suggest that too many Americans want that notorious free lunch and they want it now and they want someone else to give it to them. They want to act without consequences. As Bruce Evans, President of the Foundation for Economic Education has said, "Constructive freedom cannot exist without the context of principle and accountability." It is ironic that while totalitarianism is under assault around the world, free nations are devouring their freedom through social indulgence, governmental intervention, and abdication of personal responsibility and accountability.
Not all volunteer programs are worthwhile. Before supporting a program a potential volunteer should inquire if and how it is cost-efficient. Unintended consequences should be uncovered and weighed in the light of the good achieved.
(F-32) A representative from your class should contact the
director of a
program similar to the one described below. A report should be made
including two reasons one should consider working for the program
and
two reasons one might look for another project.
Smile
Amy Abe, Project Director
Waipah High School
94-1211 Farrington Hwy
Waipahu, HI 96797
808-677-0741
Smile stands for "Students Making Individual Lives Easier". It is a drug, alcohol and gang peer prevention program. High school students work with K-3 students. Through storytelling, puppetry and original creations they attempt to build self-esteem and encourage youngsters to develop values. Presentations are made to 4th - 6th graders. A community college works with Smile volunteers helping them produce videos for youngsters. The police department is involved as well as business leaders who support the program with material donations and provide sites for events. The biggest plus is kids helping kids!
Ideas for volunteers are endless. In St. Paul, Minnesota, church youth groups helped out with things like lawn care, Boy Scouts painted houses and local stores provided goods. Other communities have volunteers participating in neighborhood crime watches, maintenance of local parks, chore services where neighborhood kids do chores for the elderly and block nurse programs, where neighborhood residents and nurses provide nursing care, companionship and help with household chores to elderly residents so they can stay out of nursing homes.
Young people can make a difference. Ordinary people can make a difference. Kimi Gray, while a resident in a mismanaged public housing project, drew up a list of policy changes which became amendments to the federal Housing Act. It can be done. Unelected, unconnected, determined people can make a difference!
(F-33) This is optional but we urge you to participate. After reading the following we would like your entire class to come up with a project idea. It could be community involvement, or you might try to influence legislation by having the entire class contribute to the writing of a proposed policy change on the local, state or national level. Whatever you decide to do, make it worthwhile and submit it to the Harry Singer Foundation as a White Hats project and receive recognition.