Can You Save Money and Still Save Lives. The Debate Over Fire DepartmentPrivatization

摘要

With the passage of California's Proposition 13 in 1978, local government'sinterest in contracting out or privatizing government services increased as a way to contend with reduced revenues. Nationwide local government has been increasing the number of services that they contract out since the recessions of the early 80s and 90s. By the 1990s researchers have estimated that the average U.S. city contracted out 27 percent of its municipal services for a savings of between 15 and 50 percent. Privatization is a term that includes competitive contracting as well as deregulation, divestiture, franchises, grants and subsidies, leases, public/private partnerships, service shedding (where a private firm assumes the ownership, control and delivery of a service), sale of assets, and vouchers. The privatization of government services can be broken down into levels based on how much responsibility government turns over to private firms. The most common level is when government maintains overall responsibility of services but contracts out auxiliary services such as accounting, billing or data base maintenance. The next level is the contracting out of day to day management while maintaining overall responsibility such as garbage and recycling in some communities. The final level, as mentioned above, is service shedding where a private firm both owns and manages the service provision of what many consider a government service, such as public utilities.