A Cat Of The Right Color
For years, the brave new world of privatized municipal services has had the pulse rates of young conservatives pounding, but I have to admit it doesn't turn me on. As Deng Xiaoping famously said, it doesn't matter what color the cat is, as long as it catches mice.
But of course, the ideologue's corollary is that it doesn't matter what the hell the cat does, as long as it's a cat of the right color.
Thus I can understand the argument that privatizing some city services might result in lower cost and higher quality. For instance, privatizing trash collection could result in different companies ardently courting new customers by undercutting the competition’s prices and offering better service. It sounds reasonable.
In the real world, however, these benefits are limited, because competition can only do so much to reduce prices or increase efficiency on established services. I very much doubt that anyone pays less to the private trash hauler than they paid previously, when trash disposal was rolled into the nominal infrastructure fees that everyone paid -- sewer, water, and trash.
Nevertheless, there is an overarching -- though largely unexamined -- assumption that a private contractor is inherently more efficient than a public employee .
The most bone-headed example of service privatization has to be in the city of Chicago, where a private company was given a long-term lease on all municipal parking meters. The results have been disastrous:
The City Council approved the privatization plan swiftly in December, despite complaints from some aldermen.
Chicago Parking Meters LLC hired local parking garage operating firm LAZ to collect the money from the city's 36,000 meters. As part of the deal, rates skyrocketed to a quarter for 15 minutes in many neighborhoods when it had been a quarter per hour, and as much as a quarter for 5 minutes downtown.
The rates are set to go up every year through 2013, by which point parking for an hour downtown will require 26 quarters.
Free parking on Sundays and holidays was abolished, and meters also must now be fed overnight downtown.
Many meters broke, and drivers complained that the signage with the new rates was not posted or legible, so that motorists got tickets when they thought they were parked legally.
Frustration with the jacked up new meter rates led to blocks of empty parking meters, and in some neighborhoods, meters were vandalized.
This result was entirely predictable, because privatizing parking meters doesn’t benefit anyone except the company that got the contract. Competition won’t increase efficiency or lower prices, because Chicago Parking Meters LLC holds a monopoly.
You might argue that the city government had a monopoly too, but there is a big difference: elected officials are accountable to the people. Chicago Parking Meters LLC isn't.
So now the citizens of Chicago have the worst of both worlds: they get to pay through the nose at a parking meter that is more likely than not malfunctioning, or improperly labeled, yet they have no way to redress the problem. Chicago Parking Meters LLC is not beholden to anyone. Presumably unhappy citizens could bring their concerns to the city council when CPM's contract is up for renewal.
Unfortunately, that won't be for another 75 years.
I'm sure conservatives will offer the horse-sense alternative they always do: if you don't like the prices, don't park at a parking meter.
After all, the meters belong to CPM LLC. Right?
From their lips, to the market god's ear.
