Here’s one of the things that puzzles me about Nikki Haley. To hear her talk sometimes, you’d get the idea that unions are a bad thing.
And yet she keeps pushing and pushing and pushing to unionize the drivers who operate public school buses in South Carolina.
Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, she calls it something different. She calls it “privatizing” school buses.
But what’s the first thing that happens whenever a private entity takes over the school buses in a South Carolina district? The Teamsters (and folks, if unions are bad, you’d think Jimmy Hoffa‘s old outfit would be superbad) come in right behind it.
How do we know this? Experience. There are three districts in South Carolina where the buses are no longer operated by the state. Let’s run down the list, shall we?
- Charleston — the drivers are represented by the Teamsters.
- Beaufort — the drivers are also Teamsters.
- Dorchester 2 — As of Friday the 13th, Teamsters Local 509 is celebrating having won the right to represent bus drivers.
So thanks to Nikki Haley and her ilk, the Teamsters are batting 1.000 in South Carolina.
I don’t know why she keeps pushing this privatization thing, given this apparently inevitable result. Maybe the answer is in her book. If anyone out there actually reads it, let us know.
All irony aside, this is yet another example of what you get when you are governed by people who do not have a clue how the world actually works.
What Nikki’s privatization scheme does is provide a back-door way to unionize public employees — just make them private employees. Neat, huh?
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Maybe the bus drivers unionizing isn’t the only effect of privatizing the bus system.
Let’s not lose track of the primary purposes of privatizing SC’s school buses:
S.C. is relieved of buying and replacing new school bus fleets by contractors large enough to negotiate better deals for safer, newer buses than S.C. can on its own.
S.C. is relieved of employing thousands of part-time employees and attendant legal issues surrounding such employment.
S.C. can hold the private contractor legally liable for poor performance, cancel the contract for cause, and demand competitive pricing for a fixed period of time from the contractor(s) ultimately awarded privatization contract.
Now, what was your question, Brad? There are many companies in S.C. unionized in other states that are NOT unionized in S.C. Surely you knew that?
Misleading headline, Brad. But you knew that.
South Carolina is the only state in the country where school buses aren’t run by the school district. Why is that?
In a similar vein, the SC school bus situation might be a perfect arena for those who believe that government ought to be run like a business to step up and demonstraight how that could (should may be an altogher different question) operate.
That would start with making capital investments to properly fund the endeavor. And yet the consensus in goverment is to underfund the school buses.
Makes one wonder how on earth private companies are going to provide newer, better buses for less money? They won’t, because their contract bids would be based upon the record of funding the state has historically provided – and the level of service that state government has decided is minimally sufficient and what it is willing to pay for the service. You don’t get new buses for those peanuts.
These days, conservatives’ answer to EVERYTHING is privatization. Including those things normally the kuleana of responsible government. Why do you think our military is being replaced by mercenaries?
Always a good idea to have the health and safety of our children in the hands of the lowest bidder.
@Burl – as a defense contractor, I object to your use of the term “mercenary” with all of the associated negative connotations. It makes folks think that we are all sitting around reading “Soldier of Fortune” magazine just after our five mile run, right before we go do pull-ups.
In fact, we are professionals who allow for a high degree of technical skills to be maintained by the DoD at a lower cost than DoD civilians or military personnel.
Now, back to this month’s issue of “Combat Handguns.”
It’s one thing to be a mercenary; the critical question is, are you a Roland or a Van Owen?
So the state has a chunk of money to spend on transporting students – they can either do it themselves directly or pay a private entity to do it. Adding a middle man who will then take his own cut always saves money, right?
Is there any evidence that the districts who have privatized are getting better quality service or incurring lower costs than the state run districts? Last I heard the answer was no, perhaps because of the unions to which Brad is referring.
This is just a guess, but I wonder if the question of savings or lack thereof revolves around health benefits? Does the state think it can save money by throwing bus drivers off the state plan? Are those savings lost if private companies find they need to offer benefits anyway because of union influence? How do private benefits compare with the state plan??
Juan, I’m not sure that privatization doesn’t cause as many liability issues as it may solve. If a private employee does not implement a special ed student’s IEP on the bus, who is liable – the private company or the school district?
Just wondering.
Silence, Burl voluntarily lives in the land of uber-liberalism, they call San Francisco residents neo-cons. Even their state license plate has a rainbow on it.
From the land of the midnight sun? Nope.
Joined the bloody fray? Nope.
66 & 7 – Not alive yet.
Help out the Congolese? Nope, but I did help some Bantu’s when they moved to Columbia.
Best Thompson gunner – Yes.
CIA wants me dead? – Maybe.
Been to Mombasa? Nope.
Still wand’ring though the night ten years later? – Yup.
Anyone who works for BlackWater or whatever they’re called now or any similar gun-for-hire outfit is a mercenary. Any other phrase is blowing smoke…
According to the State Department, the average “contractor” working in, say, Pakistan is making $600 a day. A DAY. That’s a bit more than the average soldier makes. Both are paid out of taxpayer dollars.
“Here’s one of the things that puzzles me about Nikki Haley. To hear her talk sometimes, you’d get the idea that unions are a bad thing.”
SC as a whole has a very small amount of unions. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t05.htm
Bureau of labor statistics shows about 2.5% union membership. That makes SC right up there with NC as having the lowest unionization rate in the country.
I dont think privatizing a government entity is neccessarily bad. The free market can determine the price and the new operators have a reason to trim costs to maximize their profit.
I agree that their performance should be audited. I dont wanna see kids get hurt.
“”What we saw with the NLRB and what they did to Boeing was what I said was un-American all along, but more importantly I didn’t see it as something where we just got over a hurdle I saw it as a warning shot, I saw it as something that we are no longer gonna be reactive to, we’re gonna make sure that we’re proactive we’re gonna make sure that nothing like this happens again,” said Haley.”
Just read the one link on haley’s love for union and had to add this.
Im at work so can’t do much digging but the un-american comment seems a lot over the top for someone filing a labor complaint.
Im personally not a big supporter of unions mainly because I believe the protect the lowest common denominator and discourage upward mobility by focusing on seniority vice aptitude. On the other hand I’d never label them Un-American for that.
@ Burl – $1000/day is the goal, and very few of us work/ed for Xe (Blackwater). It’s cheaper for the DoD to spend 500k on a contractor for one year than it is to spend 200k on a soldier (salary, fringe, combat pay, sep pay etc.) because the military owns that soldier for life. The post retirement benefits are substantial.
The contractors are usually ex-military and already trained. It takes a year or years to get soldiers, marines and airmen proficient at their jobs.
Lastly, there’s the issue of continuity. I have the utmost
respect for people who are deployed for a year, or even six months. However, by the time you deal with in and outproceessing, learn a job and get settled in, it’s almost time to leave. Contractors provide better continuity, and are therefore more effective, generally.
Do you really need a one or two striper serving chow, emptying the latrine, mopping floors or whatnot? No you do not.
It does however, remind me of The Sand Pebbles.
P.S. – What kind of military vehicles do you restore?
We are making the assumption that: 1. The service we are getting now is satisfactory,
2. That anybody else would do what we are now doing for the same or lower costs,
3. That we once we divest ourselves of all state-owned “bus-ability” we won’t get “screwed” in the private market on the back side of initial contracts,
4. That an unsatisfactory contractor, or a striking union, could not leave us with no way to get kids to school, especially in the rural hinterlands.
S.C. is relieved of buying and replacing new school bus fleets by contractors large enough to negotiate better deals for safer, newer buses than S.C. can on its own.
-Juan
Huh? How could a private contractor have more leverage to buy new buses cheaper than the entire state of South Carolina? What an utterly ridiculous comment. And why would they even have an incentive to buy newer, safer buses in the first place. They’re in it for profit not to safely transport the kids to school. That’s nothing but an afterthought to the corporate mindset.
Let’s get one fact out there so that we’re crystal clear about what we’re dealing with. Whatever problems the SC schoolbuses may have safety is not, repeat NOT one of those issues. Drivers are adults with excellent driving records. The number of child passengers killed each year is virtually zero. Very occassionally someone is killed in another vehicle or a child may be killed at a bus stop. These incidents are exceedingly rare. Why change something as successful as that? It’s utterly ridiculous to put the safety of our children in the hands of a greedy corporation whose primary concern is the bottom line. Let’s leave the buses in the hands of the state and simply fund the endevour a bit more. Seems like a small thing to ask.
@ bud & Mark- you would think that the State of SC could leverage its massive bulk to gain purchasing power, but they certainly didn’t do it with the state’s Blue Cross plan I used to be covered under. It was expensive garbage.
Also, I think our school buses are already newer than most places’. The drivers currently make suprisingly little, I can’t imagine there will be much savings there. I agree that the system is already very safe.
While I agree in principle with NOT having state run bus system, I doubt we’ll save any money by changing it.
If you really wanted to save money, you’d consolidate districts and make them single-county, or even multi county for the less populous counties.
We always end up in these ideological arguments, with the Nikki Haleys who believe, as an article of faith, that private is inherently superior to public, on one hand, and the Buds who see only “greedy corporations.”
Neither public nor private is inherently superior in all things. Some things should be public; some should be private.
The problem in this case is that I haven’t seen the privatization advocates make a convincing case for privatizing the buses.
I refer you to a column Cindi Scoppe did last year dissecting a failed pilot bus privatization program: “And that’s the point that pragmatists keep coming back to: Privatization saves money – except when it doesn’t. Privatization provides better service – except when it doesn’t. Privatization, in short, works just fine – except when it doesn’t.”
If only ideologues could be persuaded to see such things.
Was anyone besides me annoyed by some of the salaries listed in Sunday’s article in The State?
http://www.thestate.com/2012/04/15/2235104/what-people-earn-a-look-at-salaries.html
A few of the most egregious in my opinion:
$219,472 exec. director Columbia Museum of Art (no longer on the article)
$175,130 director, EdVenture children’s museum
$215,000 superintendent, Richland School District 2
When I saw what the Art Museum pays, I was like “What the #&@$?”
If government is inefficient, we should work to make it more efficient. Privatization means someone is making a profit, unlike government. I find it hard to imagine that you can provide the same level of service AND take out a profit. See also: The State newspaper.
Why should people make a fraction of what they’d earn in commercial enterprises just because they are arts administrators or education administrators? We need the A team to play for those enterprises at least as much as for tire companies and real estate developers.
Hey, I’ll think society has its priorities straight when and only when people who care for and/or educate children make more money than anyone else.
Some people are interested in what works and some people are interested in what fits their stated philosophical position. Don’t look for any “How Well is This Likely to Work?” studies, at least not during this administration.
The same conservatives who go ballistic over a 200k state salary don’t bat an eye for a hedgefund manager who makes a billion/year. THE biggest problem we face economically is not unemployment, inflation or the deficit but rather the grotesque inequality in earnings. Bring that down to what we experienced in the 60s and the other problems largely take care of themselves.
“How could a private contractor have more leverage to buy new buses cheaper than the entire state of South Carolina? What an utterly ridiculous comment.” -Bud
Gee, Bud, how does Greyhound do it?
Overall, the privitization of hard services (for example garbage collection, transportation, building roads) works better than privitizing soft services (those involving people, such as child protective services or foster care). However, the success of privitization most often hinges on the effectiveness of the contracting procedure, from designing and advertising a Request for Proposal (RFP), to awarding and writing the contract, to actually enforcing the conditions of the contract.
Outsourcing government services requires talented government employees. Unfortunately, it seems the days of having “the best and the brightest” in our bureaucracies has ended. IMHO, that is the biggest challenge in outsourcing government services.
The City of Columbia taxpayers give the Art Museum $695,250 annually. I assume the other 696,750 from government grants comes from mostly fromRichland County.
The same city taxpayers give $509,850 annually to Edventure. They probably also get money from the county as well.
I just think it’s a shame that the CMA with a $4M budget is paying that kind of money, especially when the taxpayers are footing the bill. Thats more than the City Manager, County Manager, Sheriff or Chief of Police.
Edventure gets less of its funding from the city/county – just 16% but I think they are in the same boat. It’s shameful that these people are picking our collective pockets.
@bud – If I don’t want a hedge fund manager to get my money, I can always do something else with it. It’s not a big deal for me to move money around between investments. It’s actually easier than moving my checking account.
Hedgies that underperform won’t be around very long, and they must constantly perform to prove that they are “worth” their inflated expenses and salaries. Most of them aren’t. A select few probably are.
If I am upset about how much a public official or employee is making, there’s really very little I can do other than rant on a blog or show up and vote. Selling ahouse and renting or buying another one in a different jurisdiction is pretty costly and wholly inconvenient.
A hedge fund should be run for the benefit of the investors. Government should be run for the benefit of the citizens.
Thanks, Silence, for neatly summing up why government should not be run like a business, and vice versa.
Now please, go ‘splain it to Nikki. I tried over the years, and she would just laugh a charming laugh and go on happily believing what she chose to believe…
Government should be run for the benefit of the citizens. That begs the question of just how best to do that. Since there’s no profit motive the end product becomes the primary motivating factor. If the art museum is providing a service to the community by whatever measure you want to use then it is up to the citizens to decide if the costs, including the salaries are justified. If not it should be abolished or scaled back, something admitedly difficult to do in government.
Profit motivation can and does work well in the private sector but it is subject to many, many externalities that just aren’t captured on a balance sheet. That’s what the capitalism worshippers fail to grasp. And it’s a very big failure.
The bottom line is clear, government can and is effective in doing some things BECAUSE it is not focused on profit. I think school buses are a good example of that.
Many other activities, wheat farming for instance, lend themselves well to capitalism because externalities are really at a minimum. Government would do a very poor job of growing wheat.
Other industries lend themselves well to a hybrid approach. Energy production is one of those. If externalities can be properly captured in the bottom line, the whole idea behind cap and trade, then energy producers can find efficient ways to generate electricity while keeping an eye on the smokestack emissions. But we should never forget that profit is not the only goal for our economy, even with private companies. Profit motivation is just a tool. Other issues do matter.
@ Brad – As a former Haley voter, I apologize for foisting her on the S.C. public.
I’ve already explained my dislike of Sheheen, but if the SC Dems want to put up a better candidate, they’ll get my vote next time.
I’m hoping that the SC Republicans will field a decent primary challenger. Someone who understands the meaning of “transparency” and who will do a better job governing our state.
There’s still the systemic issue though, that the SC Senate is too powerful for our own good.
@Juan Caruso – your points are full of errors.
“S.C. is relieved of buying and replacing new school bus fleets by contractors large enough to negotiate better deals for safer, newer buses than S.C. can on its own.” Not at all true. S.C. has one of the largest bus fleets in the country and when it buys busses, which is not nearly frequently enough, it has significant purchasing power and clout and gets significant price concessions. Other states have inquired into how S.C. does this so well, but because other state systems are fractured into district level operations, they are simply unable to do this as well as S.C. Passing this obligation off to the school districts or their private contractors will result in lesser buying power because the districts and the contractors will not have the size and clout of the state’s current fleet.
“S.C. is relieved of employing thousands of part-time employees and attendant legal issues surrounding such employment.” Not true. First, the thousands of bus drivers are not even employed by the State. They are employed by and paid by the school districts. Second, the state operates several bus maintenance shops, each of which serve multiple school districts, and employs a minimal number of mechanics for that purpose. If the obligation of repairing and maintaining the busses is shifted from the state to the districts or contractors, they will each have to open up some kind of maintenance shop with sufficient numbers of employees to service the busses, a much less efficient and more costly way of maintaining the fleet.
“S.C. can hold the private contractor legally liable for poor performance, cancel the contract for cause, and demand competitive pricing for a fixed period of time from the contractor(s) ultimately awarded privatization contract.” The time and expense of getting out of a contract, sometimes resulting in a lawsuit, and then finding another contractor willing and able to fulfill the terms of service are usually greater than simply firing an employee.
There may be reasons to privatize the school bus fleet, but saving money is not one of them. Ask Charleston, Beaufort, and Dorchester 2, which currently have contracts with private contractors to run their school busses. Breaking the system up into many parts and requiring the districts to run their own systems or pay private contractors, who are in it to make a profit, to do it is likely to be more expensive.
Look, in order to provide all children access to the opportunity for an education that is required by our State Constitution, the State will have to provide transportation to school somehow for many of them. The privatization proposal would simply shift the administrative and other burdens to the individual school districts. The legislature has not guaranteed that it will provide sufficient funding to the districts to offset this obligation, and given how the legislature has shifted various other financial obligations to the districts over the years (employee benefits, teacher salary increases mandated (but not funded) by the State, etc.) while at the same time withdrawing, limiting, or cutting funding to the districts, none of us should expect the legislature to uphold its end of the bargain here either. So the local school districts will have to scrounge up the money to do this job locally – that doesn’t work very well in poor, rural areas where children have to ride long distances to get to school. The State knows it must provide an opportunity for education to all children – it’s in our Constitution plus it’s necessary for a working and productive society – but our state legislators are too cowardly to provide the necessary funding for it, so they simply choose to cut back and/or push more and more of the costs off onto the local districts and local funding sources. The school bus privitization proposal is just the most recent example.
@ Abba – Those were really good points.
I do take exception to the last paragraph though. I just finished reading ARTICLE XI PUBLIC EDUCATION in our state’s constitution and I can find absolutely nothing in there about running a bus system.
We have the right (as citizens of SC) to hunt and fish, it’s in ARTICLE I, SECTION 25 of the SC Constitution. That doesn’t mean that SCDNR has to run a boat service to take me to the fishin’ hole.
Money’s not an issue and safety most definitely is not an issue. So why change a system that seems to work pretty well? Only an ideologue would push for changing something that is not broken.
@Silence–Wow–I find it hard to imagine a better candidate than Vincent.Apparently many of my fellow voters did, too.
James Smith do it for you?
Abba,
Your error detection apparatus is flawed; all you cite is personal disagreement. – Can you not discern the salient difference, Madame?
Abba, by way of example of your flawed arithmetic, the number of new school buses SC buys every decade does not approach the number of coaches Greyhound (a private company, by the way) buys every year.
Yet, my hint was apparently insufficient for you to have grasped the magnitude of that tiny little discrepancy in your logic.
@’Kathryn – Nope. I was hoping that Joel Lourie would run, I’d vote for him.
“I refer you to a column Cindi Scoppe did last year dissecting a failed pilot bus privatization program: “And that’s the point that pragmatists keep coming back to: Privatization saves money – except when it doesn’t. Privatization provides better service – except when it doesn’t. Privatization, in short, works just fine – except when it doesn’t.””
Thanks for the link. Enjoyed the read.
Juan, this is a simple discussion. There is no reason to be unpleasant. The fact remains that SC has the largest school bus fleet, and if it does not buy as many busses as Greyhound, that may be because the legislature has not lived up to its commitment to replace the older busses on a rational, regular schedule. (This is certainly the reason our school bus fleet is so filled with obsolete busses, prone to breaking down.) Greyhound is not in the business of providing school transportation; other private companies do that, and they only do it if they can make a profit on it. So if private school transportation companies provide this service throughout the state, you will likely see (1) costs go up, in order to ensure the companies make a profit, and/or (2) services go down, in order to ensure the companies make a profit. What you probably will not see is the same or better services at a lower cost. Beaufort, Charleston, and Dorchester 2 are examples of this.
”Privatization, in short, works just fine – except when it doesn’t.” -Tavish Mc.
Government works even less well …. After the government gets your bank account info (has your Soc Security number already), just how long do you predict, Tavish, it will be before some government moron “loses” a laptop with all of our data compromised. When it happened at the VA a couple of years ago, I got a useless letter from the government and bet you did, too.
Moreover, how about the GSA bash in LV, the deadly Fast and Furious debacle, and the $300,000 tab to move a federal employee to from D.C. to Hawaii only to quit after a year?
The government rarely works as well as our best private firms, the government just covers up its secrets much, much longer.
“Juan Caruso says:
April 18, 2012 at 11:17 am
”Privatization, in short, works just fine – except when it doesn’t.” -Tavish Mc.”
For the record I was quoting brad from a previous post with that quote. I for the most part support privatization.
I think the article brad linked showed that it may not be a one size fits all solution though and due diligence must be performed to follow up on the efforts. There are growing pains and lessons to be learned from everything.
At work they focus on being a learning organization. Learn from mistakes in the industry and incorporate processes so they don’t happen again.
“Government works even less well …. After the government gets your bank account info (has your Soc Security number already), just how long do you predict, Tavish, it will be before some government moron “loses” a laptop with all of our data compromised. When it happened at the VA a couple of years ago, I got a useless letter from the government and bet you did, too. ”
I got the letter. Same one I got from citibank and other organizations in the past. Mishandling of personal data is a serious issue for sure. I think its a separate issue from the public/private debate though. Information security is generally atrocious everywhere.
“Moreover, how about the GSA bash in LV, the deadly Fast and Furious debacle, and the $300,000 tab to move a federal employee to from D.C. to Hawaii only to quit after a year?”
I am reluctant to compare/contrast to F&F for this. Its become too much of a political and hotbutton issue and I have no idea what info to believe in it.
As for GSA yea its terrible. Its a great example of how a bad culture can allow something like that to happen. The sad thing is that no one wanted to DO anything about it. Id love to talk about the GSA more with you just dont want to sidetrack the thread.
“The government rarely works as well as our best private firms, the government just covers up its secrets much, much longer.”
Absolutely agree here. Not about the secrets as much but in efficiency. I think government is apt to keep up the status quo. Its cumbersome to change a process so they don’t do a lot of self analysis. Private firms stockholders are much more vocal. Managers bonuses are tied to goals as well. If its your money on the line you are more likely to sweat the pennys.
Voters (Government stockholders) can make their voice heard as well though. By keeping ourselves informed we can audit the process as well. We can write letters and call our councilmen if necessary. Spinning up the masses is the LAST thing they want to do.
If I can digress for just a second I can tell you I go to the council meetings. I study the minutes and agendas. Im going to head to the work meeting in about an hour at city hall.
There is no man behind the curtain. I think the council is trying to do a good job. They very much are concerned about what the voter feels and not just how to snooker the voter.
“Tavish Mc.”
Its Tavis BTW. Its actually my real life name. For sites such as this I use my real name since I believe I should be held accountable for what I say.
Just had to post this, even though this post is now on the second page.
http://permanentpress.blogspot.com/2012/04/lexington-school-bus-driver-charged.html
Returning to this subject, Bryan proposed, in the very first comment, “Maybe the bus drivers unionizing isn’t the only effect of privatizing the bus system.”
Perhaps not. And if not, it is incumbent on those who advocate privatization to present clear evidence of the benefits of privatization thus far in those three districts — benefits that make it worthwhile to turn the local school bus drivers into Teamsters.
You know what’s funny about this situation?
This would be a slam-dunk way for Democrats to argue against this goal of the governor’s — except that, since Democrats are obliged to consider unions a GOOD thing, they can’t present this as a bad thing.
Although… SC Democrats are a different breed. They were keeping unions away from SC before the SC GOP was in kneepants. So maybe some WOULD use this argument. Maybe some even have… I haven’t been over to the State House lately, and truth be told, when a Democrat says something in South Carolina it’s often like that tree in the forest. One seldom hears a sound.
SC Dems were a lot different back when the SC GOP was in kneepants–and so was the SC GOP….