What Does Privatization Really Mean?
In all of Jeb’s pandering and rhetoric about running state government like a business, has anyone stopped to ask what that really means to the average citizen? The names Wal Mart, Lowe’s, Sprint, Tyson, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Home Depot, Publix, Winn Dixie and others frequently are mentioned in this context because they instantly conjure clear images, good or bad, of personal experiences with that
business.
Others corporations such as Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Westinghouse, Monsanto, among other multinationals, are similarly used as a model for describing how an ideal government should function, but are less likely to be mentioned because they do not have the immediate recognition factor for the average citizen. Their products, on the other hand (Bufferin, Comtrex, Excedrin, Clairol, Roundup, Nutrasweet and others), are as much a part of our lives as air.
When the Governor speaks euphemistically of “outsourcing”, of “modernizing our state workforce,” and of a “service first initiative”, how does he reconcile the fact that the state already has in place laws, rules and regulations, policies and procedures pertaining to the review, evaluation, reward and recognition or reprimand and dismissal of state employees at all levels? Are these laws not good enough?
Agency heads and executive managers have the tools already to properly lead and direct their workforce. Their hands are tied, however, and their duties constrained due to the chaos created with outgoing and incoming administrations and with the Governor’s mandate to reorganize and overhaul the ways the state’s agencies go about serving the people of Florida. Performance evaluations are a rare occurrence these days in state government.
Ideally, a business is responsive to its customers. But, if anyone has ever had to wait on hold for 30, 45, 60, even 90 minutes in order to reach the first of sometimes many customer service representatives, or if anyone has ever been given the hard sell in order to get their business only to get something totally different if anything at all when the deal is done or the problem apparently resolved, then it is safe to say that privatization for the sake of running Florida’s government more like a business is not a good thing.
If anyone has ever attempted to hold a business accountable for its negligence, abuse, mismanagement or some other problem, or if they needed an attorney to have their voice heard, or even worse if they needed an attorney when they found out the business was suing them for some legally manufactured intrusion or disruption to the process of free enterprise, then it is safe to say that privatization for the sake of running Florida’s government more like a business is not a good thing.
Granted, stockholders in a company are given the opportunity to vote on some of the company’s operations and financial management and to attend stockholders meetings. Beyond these formalities, however, the stockholder is not allowed to really know what goes on in other meetings, planning sessions and transactions of business that occur behind closed doors privy to only the right people.
Florida’s Sunshine Laws were adopted to prevent that very thing from happening. They were crafted so that the average citizen (the stockholder, if you will) is able to access their elected officials and government in all of its forms - to keep the doors and the lines of communication and response open at all times.
A bill recently introduced in the Florida Legislature (SB 1356, sponsored by Senator Jim King, R-Jacksonville) is disturbing. The family of Dale Earnhardt, by requesting to keep his autopsy photos off limits to the public, have clearly suggested by their action a repeal of a part of the Sunshine Laws.
With all due respects, was it really the Earnhardt family’s idea in the first place to attempt to prevent the photos from being released? Dale Earnhardt was a very popular sports figure, with a tremendous following of fans in Florida, not to mention the entire country. There must be enough of his fans among the populace, across the districts of Florida, for their representatives to gain wide enough support to introduce and perhaps pass a bill that would, unbeknownst to them, have the intended result of laying a foundation for eventually depriving them of their right to access and to hold their representatives and their government accountable.
The Sunshine would soon begin to set on the Sunshine State.
It appears that, after looking through the Governor’s proposals and at current trends towards repeals of old laws and drafting of new ones, at the very core of privatization and related issues competition is the only thing that matters. In the Governor’s agenda, not unlike his older brother’s national agenda, public services and employees must be cut because they do not and cannot follow the fundamental law of competing for profits. Repeal of laws intended to ensure the transparency of government is a step towards less rights for the average citizen. All arguments and distortions aside about effectiveness and efficiency, performance and merit, patronage and favoritism, few are benefiting financially with so many state employees.
(Top)
Even before Jeb fired the starter pistol for this year’s legislative session, a number of mechanisms were in motion that would strip away the rights of average citizens to seek relief from malpractice, negligence, abuse, discrimination and death on the part of corporations and government.
These mechanisms, regardless of the names by which they mask themselves (Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, Stop Lawsuit Abuse, among others), are best known as tort reform: the attempt to take compensation judgments away from civil juries and replace them in some instances with a statutory structure over which political action committee (PAC) and corporate donor money can have more control.
Reforms are frequently disguised in euphemistic language such as the “Comprehensive Family Health Access and Savings Act”, as well as in ridiculous PR claims that proponents for reform are “promoting the public welfare.” All of which should be taken with a pillar of salt.
After reading or hearing of a few sensationalized and exaggerated cases (McDonald’s coffee, et. al.), the general public most often comes away disgusted, with the notion, after having their emotions manipulated by the reporting source, that lawyers are nothing but ambulance chasers who have nothing better to do than to file “frivolous lawsuits.”
Furthermore, these few extreme cases are the ones that reform advocates want the general public to remember when their television commercials highlight a few well-dressed men supposedly walking away from a courthouse, with a voiceover that asks the public if they aren’t tired of “runaway juries”, and of “fat cat lawyers lining their pockets with your money, driving up the costs of insurance premiums and of healthcare.”
What the advertisements don’t say is that the very reforms advocated virtually never limit the rights of corporations to sue competitors for losses resulting from the exercise of free enterprise. This applies to private executives and public servants, as well.
For example, according to the Center for Justice and Democracy:
In 1999, George W. Bush sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car over a minor fender-bender involving one of his daughters in which no one was hurt. At the time, his daughter’s driver’s license was suspended.
Also in 1999, Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa), an advocate for tort reform, supported his wife’s medical malpractice lawsuit for $500,000 against her chiropractor.
In 1995, Representative Mark Flanagan (R-Fl), a major force behind severe tort restrictions that were enacted in Florida in 1999, sued both the day care center his daughter attended and the manufacturer of a jungle gym after his daughter fell from the set and broke her leg. He quickly and quietly settled the case as elections approached.
In the early 1990s, Anheuser-Busch sued a small publishing company, and won the case, over a parody advertisement of one of A-B’s products. Anheuser-Busch still paid the publisher $10,000 for the negative and paste-up sheet of the ad and all remaining copies of the magazine.
In 1990, Eastman Kodak Company sued Goodyear Tire and Shell Oil for patent infringement over a process that increased the molecular weight of polyester. The jury awarded Kodak and its co-plaintiff $12 million.
Major corporations like Exxon support laws to limit the ability of average consumers to sue their insurance companies when those companies unfairly deny claims. But when Lloyds of London refused to pay Exxon $250 million for losses it suffered as a cargo owner resulting from the Valdez oil spill in Alaska, Exxon did what all consumers should have the right to do. Exxon sued its insurance company. In this case, Exxon won.
Even more recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state employees with disabilities cannot sue for damages for violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act. This ruling created a new shelter of immunity for the states from the reach of federal civil rights law.
On the other hand, at the local level, District Judge Nikki Clark recently overturned the 1999 Florida Tort Reform Law, much to the regret of House Speaker Tom Feeney (R-Oviedo). Pined Feeney about the law his bud, Representative Flanagan, helped pass: “The Florida Legislature worked diligently to balance the interests of the protection of individuals to access redress of complaint in Court, with the interest in growing our businesses, generating economic health and creating jobs.”
Which “individuals” interests was Rep. Feeney and the legislature trying to protect?
Torts are not responsible for corporate mismanagement and incompetence or for medical malpractice and negligence. Reform advocates such as George W. Bush, Jeb Bush and Representatives Feeney and Flanagan would argue, however, that it is because of torts that mismanagement, incompetence, malpractice or negligence occur - due to fiscal constraints on corporations that result from excessive damage awards.
But their circular, chicken-or-the-egg argument is nothing more than manipulative device to avoid the core issue of maintaining every consumer’s right to seek “redress of complaint in Court.”
No ill wishes intended, but what if one of the individuals fighting so strongly for reforms suddenly found himself or herself or a family member incapacitated, on life support, or worse.
What if their medical bills were mounting into the hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, or their survivors were seeking compensation as a result of malpractice, incompetence or negligence.
Where then could they turn if the very laws they helped amend or abolish were no longer available?
(Top)
