Privatizing – What does this mean?
“Do you know the Governor’s budget is privatizing services at the courthouse?” the man from Buffalo County asked me. “Seniors are going to be very unhappy when they know what is happening.”
The man was talking about services now offered by people who work for us – for the county – instead being offered by a private company.
Another man voiced a similar concern. “Do you know that Hewlett Packard is going to get the contract to take care of the income maintenance jobs now done by the county?” This man not only knew about the jobs moving from public to private – he heard of the company getting the contract.
There has been a great deal of public discussion about something called privatizing.
Just what does this mean?
Most of the time we use public dollars to deliver public services by public employees for the public’s good.
When we think of public services, we think of people who serve the public: police, firefighters, social workers,
