The Cindy Wallace Firing at ASU and Privatization

You might recall this high-level firing of an AppState administrator in June. And this "speculation" over what precipitated it.

Some additional insight emerged in a July 23rd article in the Durham Herald-Sun, "UNC fields privatization feelers on student housing" by Ray Gromberg. Despite that title, a good deal of the article is focused on AppState and touches on the firing of Cindy Wallace.

The gist: Chancellor Sheri Everts is said to be "keen" to move the AppState campus toward the privatization of student dormitory management, food services, the university bookstore, and health services, and Vice Chancellor Cindy Wallace was pushing back, “trying to maintain the status quo as far as how the university does the business of housing, the cafeteria and the bookstore.”

Privatization. What would it mean? Basically, it would be turning over the operations of those parts of the university to for-profit businesses. It would mean the firing of (some? many?) current employees and the concurrent loss of their health insurance.

A letter from a former faculty member was circulating on campus yesterday which warned (in part):

...the impact of privatization in our mountain communities will likely be devastating: foreclosures, increased financial pressure, increased pressure on medical facilities and social services, reduced car sales, and a negative impact on local businesses in general. Privatization may not be as devastating in North Carolina’s larger cities, but up here in the mountains all of us know how it will affect local households. In other words, there is no doubt that many of our services would be staffed by part-timers or contract workers who would not have access to the same state employee benefits (including health insurance) associated with their current jobs.

...privately owned and operated services, with their obvious profit motive, are not aimed at assisting our faculty and students create and learn in the best possible educational environment.

I perceive it an unethical and unthinkable blow to generations of staff members who have toiled, as it is at low salaries, for our students and faculty, and their fellow staff members.

The letter writer also said that at a recent AppState Alumni Council meeting, Chancellor Everts denied that she was moving toward privatization. We hope she meant what she said.

Why You Should Never Let Them Privatize Your Water

Aqua North Carolina, a private corporation and a subsidiary of a bigger Pennsylvania company, managed to buy municipal water systems in 52 of North Carolina's 100 counties, mainly because local governments, led by people who had no foresight or vision of the civic compact, did not want to fund infrastructure and upkeep for the greater good. Now see what's happening.

Privately owned water resources for urban and suburban communities. Water sold to citizens for profit, not for the civic good. What could possibly go wrong?

Aqua North Carolina convinced the North Carolina Utilities Commission, now under control of the Privatization Brigade in Raleigh, to allow them to increase prices they charge for water (often clouded with sediment and smelly, according to customers) without going through the full cost-increase approval process, which would allow for customer push-back. No, the Utilities Commission decided it could allow for "smaller, more frequent rate increases" while cutting out the public's ability to protest.

Thank God for Attorney General Roy Cooper. He is now suing the Utilities Commission for that particular power-grab (really, for being the hand-maidens and enablers of the water bandits). Gawd only knows how the state's Supreme Court will rule.

It's a fine day in North Carolina when a company like Aqua North Carolina becomes the sole source of water for 250,000 of our citizens, and the state's Utilities Commission allows them "small, frequent rate increases" while silencing the public.

Smart Kids, Dumb Government

Headline in this morning's Asheville Citizen-Times: "Fewer NC College Students Aspire to Teach."

Gosh, wonder why that might be so? Just because North Carolina state government and especially the General Assembly have worked overtime to destroy public schooling and to disrespect public school teachers?

"I think people are saying I don't want that job because it has a reputation of being a job that doesn't pay well and doesn't pay well enough to be able to support you for just an average living," said Dawn Rookey, an Owen High School teacher. "I think also there's been a lot of low teacher morale over the past three years with a lot of the legislative changes that have impacted the profession."

Our Republican masters have set a time bomb that is going to produce a big teacher shortage in a short little while. But I'm sure the private school corporations that support Senator Dan Soucek will step right in and solve that problem.

Breaking News: Judge Rules Republican Voucher Scheme Unconstitutional

"Appropriating taxpayer funds to unaccountable schools does not accomplish a public purpose," Wake County Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood said today in ruling a private school voucher scheme passed by the Republican-dominated General Assembly unconstitutional.

State lawmakers created the voucher program last year. Hobgood ruled that the private schools which would be beneficiaries of the voucher plan can discriminate in their admissions and don't have the same curriculum and teacher certification standards as North Carolina's public schools.

WRAL reports:

Under the long-running Leandro school funding lawsuit, the General Assembly is required to ensure students receive a sound education, and Hobgood said lawmakers can't delegate that authority to "unregulated private schools" and to parents "who have self-assessed their children to be at risk."

"It appears to this court that the General Assembly is seeking to push at-risk students from low-income families into non-public schools in order to avoid the cost of providing them a sound, basic education in public schools as mandated by the Leandro decision," he said. "The General Assembly fails the children of North Carolina when they are sent with public, taxpayer money to private schools that have no legal obligation to teach them anything."

Judge Hobgood has been on the receiving end of GOP spite about other rulings and was largely the target of the recent provision slipped into the budget bill that will prevent individual judges from ruling on the constitutionality of laws passed by the Republican majority in the General Assembly.

Another One Bites the Dust

Wake County judge blocks Republican school voucher plan.

"The opponents argued that spending taxpayer money on private schools is unconstitutional, especially when some of the schools discriminate in their admissions and don't have the academic standards or accountability of public schools."

Did we just hear Sen. Dan Soucek's teeth grinding?

These 40 School Systems (So Far) Are Suing To Stop Dan Soucek's School Voucher Scheme

Sen. Dan Soucek was a handy legislative tool in getting a provision into the state budget to grant up to $4,200 per student per year of taxpayer money to parents wishing to send their children to private schools. (In its original version, I believe this was called  the Kill Public Education Act of 2012.)

A lawsuit was filed Dec. 11 in Wake Superior Court challenging the constitutionality of the voucher scheme, and now some 40 school systems across the state have signed on as co-plaintiffs to that suit, including some obvious communists in places like Catawba, Cleveland, Rutherford, Surry, and Yancey counties (full list below).

They do not like your voucher scheme, Senator Soucek, and they think it bad policy, let alone unconstitutional, to rob public schools in order to fund private education.

Alamance County 

Asheboro City 

Catawba County 

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City 

Chatham County 

Cleveland County 

Columbus County 

Craven County 

Currituck County 

Davidson County 

Durham County 

Edenton-Chowan 

Gates County 

Graham County 

Halifax County 

Harnett County 

Hyde County 

Lee County 

Lenoir County 

Lexington City 

Macon County 

Martin County 

Mount Airy City 

Newton-Conover 

Onslow County 

Orange County 

Pamlico County 

Person County 

Pitt County 

Polk County 

Rockingham County 

Rutherford County 

Scotland County 

Stanly County 

Surry County 

Vance County 

Warren County 

Washington County 

Whiteville City 

Yancey County

Why isn't Watauga County on this list?

Better Be Paying Attention To Your Drinking Water, North Carolina

Aqua North Carolina, a for-profit supplier of drinking water, is asking for a 19% + rate increase from the NC Utilities Commission. Aqua North Carolina already charges twice as much for water as Raleigh, Durham, Cary, and many other municipalities in the state, and this is the company's third request for increases in the past five years.

This is what you get with the privatization that Republicans love so much. This is what you get when you let a for-profit enterprise get hold of your precious water resources. They will charge you out the nose for it.

Aqua North Carolina already serves more than 250,000 residents in 53 NC counties, including the Mountain Ridge development in Watauga County. You can study the full list of their service areas here. They seem to prey upon suburban developments that have sprouted up outside existing, traditional municipal boundaries.

With fracking coming to our state, with its side-effects of ruined well water, Aqua North Carolina will be feeding on the victims like vultures.

Don't You Love How Good Republicans Are at Managing Taxpayer Money?

An editorial in Saturday's Wilmington Star News nails what's very much afoot in North Carolina with the Republican Bunch running everything in Raleigh ... the give-away of taxpayer money to private corporations with little or no accountability to the same taxpayers who've coughed up the money. Here's the first paragraph:

It flies in the face of reason to suggest that the way to make government more accountable is to farm out public services – and dollars – to entities that have no direct accountability to the taxpayers. Yet that is the game plan of Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican-led General Assembly as they consider privatizing Medicaid and economic development and seek once again to funnel the people’s money to private schools.

The Dangers of Water-for-Profit

For-profit companies getting control of a natural resource -- in this instance, water -- and then selling that water to citizens at a profit is the purest example of where "privatization" can lead.

Aqua North Carolina Inc., which sells water to some 72,000 customers in North Carolina (and sewer service to 15,000) must pass rate increases through a mostly compliant NC Utilities Commission. Aqua NC Inc. asked for a rate increase in 2008 and got it. No prob. It's asking again, and citizens in Lewisville, northern Davidson County, and Clemmons are beginning to wake up to the clear downside of a for-profit monopoly holding their right to a drop of water.

Municipalities sell water, too, of course, but not for profit. They set their rates to cover the costs of supplying the water. Private water companies set their rates according to what the traffic will bear, and what a go-along Utilities Commission will permit.

Gov. Perdue Comes Out Against Privatization of Liquor

"Under the Dome" is reporting ... from this morning's appearance by The Guv in front of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (a meeting which, incidentally, no Watauga County commissioner attended).