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Jul. 19th, 2014 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoelevenwhile the nation's attention was a little distracted by foreign events, president obama was here in delaware talking up his latest scheme to pay for the country's infrastructure. he's pushing "public-private partnerships", the idea that large companies and governments would jointly build, own, and/or manage large hunks of stuff the public good is dependent on.
coincidentally, the chicago tribune ran a story about one public-private partnership: Red light cameras tag thousands for undeserved tickets. summary of that goes like this: chicago, which is currently run by obama's bud rahm emanuel, set up a partnership with redflex to build and operate red light cameras at a bunch of the city's intersections. by "operate", i mean "send people tickets for supposedly running red lights, giving the city a cut of the loot".
if the city's ticket records can be believed, every once in a while, dozens of people will run the same light at a few random intersections on the same day, where usually, only one or two do. uh-huh. more likely, the cameras are flakey or, even more likely, somebody is fiddling with them to write lots of bogus tickets in short bursts. a great success for the public and public-private partnerships!
cynics may point out that i'm writing about chicago, a byword for corruption. the chicago government could write bogus tickets all by itself. indeed it could. but since chicago is a byword for corruption, i'll point out that having the city enforce the red lights itself would have more safeguards for maintaining the public trust (such as it is). all of the city's accounts are matters of public record; redflex's are not. if, say, redflex is giving some of emanuel's cronies kickbacks from the take, proving that would take a lot of work (police/FBI investigations, search warrants, etc). but mysterious withdrawals from from city's (public) accounts are easier to spot, and don't require anything but a freedom-of-information request, which is how the trib got the city's ticket records.
in any case, this is a public-private boo-boo, and it provides an example of how they go wrong: the government, which would usually be in the business of overseeing private industry, now as a conflict of interest in that oversight, and seems to have turned a blind eye to the problem. the trib story mentions that redflex is supposed to document curiosities in its enforcement. did they tell the city? if so, what did they do with the information? i imagine somebody's already filed a class-action tort to answer those questions.
i see this as a special case of one of the two main ways public-private partnerships go wrong. sports stadia are the more typical and more expensive example: lots of public money is spent on something which provides undue profit for a few, already-wealthy, well-connected private citizens. in more extreme forms, this is called crony capitalism or kleptocracy. i'd like to avoid the temptation for the US to go down that route.
amtrak typifies the other (rail)road to ruin: it's set up as a corporation, formally, the "national railroad passenger corporation". it was cobbled together from a big hunk of private infrastructure that had gone broke: the passenger railroads that barely survived into the early 1970s. so, hey, it's a corporation, right? it can raise money on the open markets, right? well, theoretically. no investor will touch it because it's subject to too much political meddling from washington.
that's the other failure mode of public-private partnerships: they become subject to political pressure, and can't do their jobs properly. amtrak probably can make money on the northeast corridor line -- and provide excellent service on it -- since it serves, oh, about a fifth of the national population (by state served). but running a train through east elbow, nebraska? never gonna do anything but lose money and be a drag on investments that could benefit lots of people. but if ya want amtrak to have an annual subsidy, ya gotta fondle a lot of senators, and they ain't all in the northeast.
the only cases i know that work involve arrangements that keep the government so distant from the results that it's hard to call them "partnerships". for example, governments have privatized certain public goods and services -- mail delivery in germany, ports and airports in various countries -- but note the difference. if a government sells something, there's no expectation it has any responsibility for what happens afterwards. likewise, if they've offered a hands-off, long-term lease or contract... but setting those up to avoid conflicts of interest is difficult, and the failures bring us back to chicago.
so, frankly, i'd just as soon keep a firmer line between public and private ownership and management than the president is pushing.
coincidentally, the chicago tribune ran a story about one public-private partnership: Red light cameras tag thousands for undeserved tickets. summary of that goes like this: chicago, which is currently run by obama's bud rahm emanuel, set up a partnership with redflex to build and operate red light cameras at a bunch of the city's intersections. by "operate", i mean "send people tickets for supposedly running red lights, giving the city a cut of the loot".
if the city's ticket records can be believed, every once in a while, dozens of people will run the same light at a few random intersections on the same day, where usually, only one or two do. uh-huh. more likely, the cameras are flakey or, even more likely, somebody is fiddling with them to write lots of bogus tickets in short bursts. a great success for the public and public-private partnerships!
cynics may point out that i'm writing about chicago, a byword for corruption. the chicago government could write bogus tickets all by itself. indeed it could. but since chicago is a byword for corruption, i'll point out that having the city enforce the red lights itself would have more safeguards for maintaining the public trust (such as it is). all of the city's accounts are matters of public record; redflex's are not. if, say, redflex is giving some of emanuel's cronies kickbacks from the take, proving that would take a lot of work (police/FBI investigations, search warrants, etc). but mysterious withdrawals from from city's (public) accounts are easier to spot, and don't require anything but a freedom-of-information request, which is how the trib got the city's ticket records.
in any case, this is a public-private boo-boo, and it provides an example of how they go wrong: the government, which would usually be in the business of overseeing private industry, now as a conflict of interest in that oversight, and seems to have turned a blind eye to the problem. the trib story mentions that redflex is supposed to document curiosities in its enforcement. did they tell the city? if so, what did they do with the information? i imagine somebody's already filed a class-action tort to answer those questions.
i see this as a special case of one of the two main ways public-private partnerships go wrong. sports stadia are the more typical and more expensive example: lots of public money is spent on something which provides undue profit for a few, already-wealthy, well-connected private citizens. in more extreme forms, this is called crony capitalism or kleptocracy. i'd like to avoid the temptation for the US to go down that route.
amtrak typifies the other (rail)road to ruin: it's set up as a corporation, formally, the "national railroad passenger corporation". it was cobbled together from a big hunk of private infrastructure that had gone broke: the passenger railroads that barely survived into the early 1970s. so, hey, it's a corporation, right? it can raise money on the open markets, right? well, theoretically. no investor will touch it because it's subject to too much political meddling from washington.
that's the other failure mode of public-private partnerships: they become subject to political pressure, and can't do their jobs properly. amtrak probably can make money on the northeast corridor line -- and provide excellent service on it -- since it serves, oh, about a fifth of the national population (by state served). but running a train through east elbow, nebraska? never gonna do anything but lose money and be a drag on investments that could benefit lots of people. but if ya want amtrak to have an annual subsidy, ya gotta fondle a lot of senators, and they ain't all in the northeast.
the only cases i know that work involve arrangements that keep the government so distant from the results that it's hard to call them "partnerships". for example, governments have privatized certain public goods and services -- mail delivery in germany, ports and airports in various countries -- but note the difference. if a government sells something, there's no expectation it has any responsibility for what happens afterwards. likewise, if they've offered a hands-off, long-term lease or contract... but setting those up to avoid conflicts of interest is difficult, and the failures bring us back to chicago.
so, frankly, i'd just as soon keep a firmer line between public and private ownership and management than the president is pushing.