Stacking a commission to produce the desired result

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

No, not that commission.

I am talking about the Governor's "Privatization" Commission. The Governor stacked the commission with like-minded individuals who would parrot back to her what she wanted to hear and to produce the desired result — a commission recommendation to which she will point in support of her policy proposals. This is a stacked deck with a rubber stamp.

On Thursday, the Governor's pet commission told her exactly what she wanted to hear. Hossanah! It's a miracle! Panel pushes Arizona Lottery privitization, other state government changes – East Valley Tribune:

Arizona should have a private firm run the lottery, make it easier to fire public workers and even changing how the state funds public schools, a special commission recommended Thursday to the governor.

The panel also is proposing major changes in pensions for new state workers, changes far beyond what lawmakers approved earlier this year.

[The proposal on pension reform would scrap the current “defined benefit’’ system where the state and workers contribute to retirement funds, with workers guaranteed a certain amount of money based on their years of service. . . The report proposes a “defined contribution’’ plan, with both the state and workers putting aside a specific amount of money each paycheck, and the workers deciding how to invest it. What they ultimately get in benefits could vary depending on how well they make those decisions.]

(Press aide Matthew Benson said Brewer wants to see how this year’s changes work before making the kind of radical revision suggested.)

As noted in the earlier post, the public employee pension reform law was a manufactured "crisis," the constitutionality of which is being litigated in court. This proposed change also runs afoul of these constitutional provisions.

[Brewer] set up the commission to see if there were ways, over the longer term, to deliver government services at a lower cost.

An initial report last year already has had some results.

One of the recommendations was to consider privatizing state parks. While that did not gain traction amid some public outcry, the Parks Board has since requested proposals from private companies to manage some of the concession operations.

Let's get to the crux of what this commission was really all about — providing cover for Governor Brewer's long anticipated assault on the merit selection system of public employees. There was talk of a special session earlier this year, but I would anticipate that Governor Brewer and the Tea-Publicans will make this regressive reform ("Back to Tammany Hall and the political spoils syastem!") a centerpiece of their legislative agenda for 2012 — there's nothing Tea-Publicans like more than union bashing in an election year.

One recommendation would "reform" the system of merit protections that exist for about 80 percent of the approximately 33,000 state workers.

These rules govern procedures for hiring, probationary periods, compensation, discipline and firing. But commission members say they make it difficult and expensive to get rid of bad workers.

The plan also would give supervisors more say over salary decisions rather than having these restricted by pay scales.

Then there is the Tea-Publican assault on environmental regulations. The end-timers believe we are in the end of days, Jesus is coming, what do we need environmental regulations for? Even the conservative Arizona Republic opined the other day against the congressional Tea-Publicans' assault on environmental regulations. (Bill at odds with nation's values July 20, 2011).

Another recommendation would farm out to private companies the process of issuing permits to let companies discharge pollutants into the air and water.

The report says that due to downsizing, many workers at the Department of Environmental Quality lack expertise in reviewing and issuing the permits. And because it is impossible to determine how many requests will come in at any given time, it forces the agency to either have staff available for any rush or delay issuing the needed permits.

That proposal is likely to meet opposition from environmental groups amid questions of whether permits requests reviewed by private firms will get the same scrutiny as those processed by state employees who are accountable to the public.

Then there is the "Privatization" Commission's recommendations regarding public education funding — you really didn't think the "privatize public education" folks would be left out, did you?

One of the more interesting changes would have the state provide funds for education not to the school districts but to the individual schools that youngsters attend.

The report says the current system results in one school getting “vastly different real dollar amounts’’ than another school in the same district of about the same size.

“School districts allocate staff to school buildings based on student formulas rather than allowing principals’ autonomy to spend school dollars to meet the needs of their individual students,’’ the report says. Under the proposal, principals would decide how to spend the cash — and how many staffers to hire — rather than having those decisions made by district administrators.

The money-saving aspect, according to the report, would be that school districts would not need large central offices to handle the finances.

That "have a private firm run the lottery" recommendation that Howie glosses over is interesting. State Gaming Director Mark Brnovich was chosen by Brewer to head her pet commission. Oh, nothing suspicious about that.

The commission recommendations should be filed in the garbage can. The recommendations are "garbage in, garbage out" (GIGO). Did these guys get paid to parrot back Governor Brewer's policy proposals to her? If so, what a monumental waste of taxpayer's money.