Privatization May Be Costly Mistake

So privatization is the answer to our problems. Then please explain two items in the paper on Jan. 23. Orange County Perspective tells us that, by keeping more legal work in-house rather than farming out to private attorneys, the county hopes to save $12 million. Then, in an article on the San Joaquin Hills tollway, we are told that county staff will finish work on a contract canceled with an outside contractor and save the county $40,000.

Why should we think our county supervisors, who have been disastrously incompetent, have suddenly developed good judgment? Are we really going to let them sell us down the river with their privatization scheme?

DIANTHA SMITH

Yorba Linda

* Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) along with a gaggle of legislators including state Sens. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove) and John R. Lewis (R-Anaheim), Rep. Jay Kim (R-Diamond Bar) and others recently convened a hearing in Garden Grove to offer ideas on solving Orange County’s fiscal crisis.

What could have been a useful discussion of competing ideas turned into a public relations opportunity for the Libertarian Reason Foundation and other radicals. In case you missed the hearing, they propose to sell county assets and let private enterprise run the place.

While some privatization may be a good idea (but please don’t forget the S&Ls;), by stacking the deck in such a biased way even viable ideas lost credibility. If Pringle and friends are so sure of their agenda, why not hold it up to scrutiny and have a wider viewpoint expressed? What are they afraid of?

The participants were gleeful that they might cut work forces by large numbers--maybe we should start at the top. Useless government and sophomoric think tanks were in full display at that hearing.

AMERICA BUCHANAN

Fullerton