Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Can Private Security Guards Act As Cops, As They May Be Asked To Do On Far South Side - cbs2chicago.com

Can Private Security Guards Act As Cops, As They May Be Asked To Do On Far South Side - cbs2chicago.com: "Mayor Richard M. Daley has already privatized many city functions. The Chicago Skyway has been leased to a Spanish conglomerate. Midway Airport is run by a Canadian company. The parking meters were sold to a firm run by Morgan Stanley, and as a result, the cost of parking in the city has skyrocketed.

But the question is whether another foreign firm providing cops on patrol may be privatization gone too far."

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What the city envisions, it seems, is replacing police with security guards. It isn't just allowing gated communities to hire their own patrols for their own private streets. It is privatizing police services for minor offenses on public streets. And the streets they have chosen for this project are not easy to police.

What happens the first time somebody defies the security guards, by refusing to stop, identify himself, accept the ticket for loitering/littering/graffiti, and so forth? What then? How much force can these mall cops use to "obtain compliance," as the cops call it?

Daley isn't big on thinking things through, to put it as tactfully as possible. He is thinking about the money: somebody else pays the cops, the city collects the money from the tickets. The residents pay full property tax anyway. Does this logic sound familiar? That's because this is another privatization cash cow boondoggle like CID housing with its double taxation.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This story illustrates that local government privatization is public policy and is not merely the rise of housing contained within increasingly numerous mandatory membership homeowner associations.
Local government privatization should not be narrowly construed as a housing market phenom.

I believe some local government services can be privatized (such as trash collection, for example.) But I don't believe general governance (as in mandatory membership HOAs) or police powers (as described in this story) should ever be privatized as doing so jeopardizes constitutional protections and checks on the exercise of governmental authority.

Anonymous said...

How "public" are public streets? Consider what they did to the public streets in Silver Spring, Maryland.

This is from the article linked below:

"The Montgomery County Council passed a resolution in which they "abandoned" Ellsworth Drive. Can a county or city government give away people's First Amendment, and other rights, by ceding public property to a private company? Today's demonstration was about that question, and about educating people about their Constitutional rights."

http://www.nowpublic.com/july_4th_first_amendment_rights_march_silver_spring_maryland

Now that the camel's nose is under the tent flap, there is no limit to how much of their responsibilities real governments can shunt off on to the private sector. In this case the Montgomery County Council leased a public street to a developer for $1 a year.

Anonymous said...

It is interesting that we are treating this as both a local and new phenomenom. It is neither. Privatization of governmental services occurs at all levels and in almost every aspect of government you can name, and has been with us for generations - although it really got kickstarted in the early 80's.

NASA contracts out almost every aspect of the space program. The Air Force contracts out a significant portion of the maintenance and repair of its combat aircraft, frequently requiring civilian maintenance personnel to operate at forward bases. Municipalities contract out the entire range of services, from fire protection to propery assessments to traffic enforcement. Even the Supreme Court has upheld a taking of private property for private use in the Kehoe case, another aspect of privatization. Heck, the Federal Reserve is a form of privatization of monetory policy.

So Fred is right in terms of public policy- that ship has sailed and is never returning. If you want to blame someone blame Reagan. It was during the Reagan presidency that the anti-tax movement collided head long into the privatization public policy movement. (see OMB Circular A-76)

So the bigger question that we have to answer as individuals, communities, and governments is how do we deliver the level of service that our constituents need/require within the resources we have available. And unfortunately we have all come to expect Amazon.com efficiency in every service we purchase despite our demonstrated unwillingness to pay for Amazon.com quality via taxes.

For good or for ill, the private sector (or what's left of it) generally can do things more efficiently and effectively than government, at least from a purely cost driven perspective. And what government or business is looking at anything other than a cost perspective right now?

Evan McKenzie said...

I think the key is which things to privatize. Some thing privatize well, others don't. You can privatize painting the White House, but do we want to privatize guarding the president? In other words, there are some tasks that you can specify clearly and govern by contracts with private parties. There are other tasks that require public employees with a whole lot of experience, special knowledge, and dedication to the job.
I say go ahead and privatize trash collection, but don't privatize the policing function. This will be a huge problem. But Daley is not accountable to anybody because he never gets a serious challenger from the Democrats and the Republicans are dead in Chicago. So the residents will just have to lump it.
Aside from this example, I agree that there is no doing away with CIDs at this stage of the game. Cities are worse off today than when the CID revolution started. They don't have the fiscal capability to take over the functions CIDs are performing. So the challenge is to make community associations work properly and protect the millions of owners, because they are the ones who suffer if their associations aren't run properly.

Anonymous said...

"Aside from this example, I agree that there is no doing away with CIDs at this stage of the game. Cities are worse off today than when the CID revolution started. They don't have the fiscal capability to take over the functions CIDs are performing."

So are you saying the basis of the public policy choice to privatize local government is because the taxpayers and voters lack the political will to pay for public (constitutional) local government so they get an inferior "rent a government" instead?

"So the challenge is to make community ssociations work properly and protect the millions of owners, because they are the ones who suffer if their associations aren't run properly."

There are other options. Existing large detached unit CIDs have sufficient tax bases to contribute to existing local governments or to reorganize into special districts.

Fred Fischer said...

Evan M. is right, not every service privatizes well or has the same economic or social consequences. Because privatizing also creates an automatic business monopoly that also brings new opportunities for others.

In the case of trash collection the opportunities for mischief, corruption, harassment, abuse and criminal acts are minimal. As compared to CID housing where opportunities are limitless and where personal property is used as collateral to preserve a faulty product instead of discontinuing its sale and use. As evidenced by the inherited risks and losses that members face for everything that did, has or could go wrong including the wrong doing of others. These opportunities and their resulting issues are all created and legislated into the “fundamentally unworkable” system that CIDs are operated under to primarily benefit not the members but others instead.

I agree with Fred P that CIDs can be created under or replaced by special districts as an alternative to HOAs/POAs. To eliminate and avoid the higher costs and endless baggage, risks and loses of property rights that comes with CID contract governance.

Finally the challenge is not how to make a lead balloon fly as community associations have historically and structurally proven to be. But instead how fast can we abandon and convert CIDs before another financial market like collapse occurs in CID housing and we all become homeless.

Anonymous said...

I must object once again to Tom Skiba's characterization of privatization as an immuatable public policy. All public policy is subject to change, particularly when it produces negative effects such as we've seen over the past four decades with the fiasco of privatizing local government in the form of local government mandated CIDs governed by private nonprofit corporations known as homeowner associations. This is privatization gone overboard. It's fine to privatize discrete government services provided there's adequate transparency and accountability. However it's folly to privatize the process of governance itself.

Anonymous said...

Fred Pilot may be theoretically right that you can always alter public policy. But of course theory must always be tested by the crucible of reality.

So from a practical standpoint NASA is never going to regain the ability to actually build spacecraft (something they never really had), the military is never going to expand its uniformed enlistment to take back all of the maintenance and related activities it has contracted out, and local governments are never going to take back all of the functions that they have devolved to associations over the years. Both because there is no incentive for them to do so and frankly the taxpayers will never stand for it. This is a country where we can't agree on a relatively modest bump to the gas tax to forestall bridges falling into rivers during rush hour.

And as an aside to Fred Fischer. I grew up in NJ and I don't think anyone would agree with your statement that "In the case of trash collection the opportunities for mischief, corruption, harassment, abuse and criminal acts are minimal."

Anonymous said...

Tom Skiba wrote:

"local governments are never going to take back all of the functions that they have devolved to associations over the years. Both because there is no incentive for them to do so and frankly the taxpayers will never stand for it."

Frankly, Tom, I wonder how long taxpayers are going to stand for double taxation, paying both public property taxes to counties and private property taxes to HOAs that the counties and municipalities mandate in order to get more revenues while shifting costs to the private sector -- the very HOAs these local governments require via their land use policies.

The current economic downturn is starkly illustrating the fiscal weaknesses in this dual taxation scheme, with assessments going unpaid in many HOAs. We could be on the verge of a "Network moment" for overtaxed residential property owners.

Fred Fischer said...

Never say never or believe that tax payers can’t or won’t change their minds, like AIG’s uncertain future, privatized CID housing can be ended as we know it today.

Privatization by public officials comes with conditions that start with a conscious decision to shift a traditional public function. Except in the case of CID housing with their contractual private governance, this decision was never initially made and therefore the required “due diligence” and other conditions were never met. Neither was public discussions, debates or hearings held, nor were the economic costs, risks, benefits nor social impacts upon its residence considered or evaluated.

The result after thirty six years of organized industry education, authored legislation and professional service support by CAI members is an industry that produces endless Pandora’s Box issues. That residence by industry design are left holding the bag for all the CIDs failures, risks, conflicts and shortcomings through economic costs, lost property and constitutional rights and negative social impacts.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Fisher:

Evan McKenzie made the point some years ago that the policy shift to privatize local government occurred as you describe, i.e. without adequate study or debate of the ramifications.

Regardless of how this choice was made, it nevertheless is in fact a choice -- contrary to those who would have us believe local government privatization is somehow predestined and immutable and not a matter open to our choosing.

Fred Fischer said...

Privatization of housing and governance by contract has historically brought with it endless and unresolvable issues. Again I agree with Evan, not everything can be or should be privatized by local governments.

Community associations are run by volunteer directors who may have little or no prior experience in managing real property, operating a nonprofit corporation, complying with the law governing common interest developments, and interpreting and enforcing
restrictions and rules imposed by a common interest development’s governing documents. Mistakes and misunderstandings are inevitable and may lead to serious,
costly, and divisive problems. The principal remedy for a violation of common interest development law is private litigation. Litigation is not an ideal remedy where the
disputants are neighbors who must maintain ongoing relationships. The adversarial nature of litigation can disrupt these relationships, creating animosity that degrades the quality
of life within the community and makes future disputes more likely to arise. Litigation
imposes costs on a common interest development community as a whole — costs that must be paid by all members through increased assessments. Many homeowners cannot
afford to bring a lawsuit and are effectively denied the benefit of laws designed for their
protection. From California CLRC Memorandum 2005-10, pg. 71.