Push to Privatize State Jobs

Re “Big Privatization Push on Wilson’s ’96 Agenda,” Oct. 19:

Breaking his vow to the voters to finish his term as governor, Pete Wilson made an abortive run for President. He failed, but not before building up a big campaign debt. Now, he thinks he has found someone to pay that debt--the California taxpayer.

Wilson gives thousands of contacts worth billions of dollars to private companies without a cost analysis or competitive bids. The companies that receive the huge no-bid contracts make political contributions to Wilson’s campaigns. Wilson has opposed legislation which would require contracting out to be less costly than having the work performed by government agencies. He opposes requiring competitive bids for all state contracts. He opposes requiring contractors to be liable for defective work, preferring instead to have the taxpayer foot the bill. He opposes prohibiting the award of state contracts to individuals or firms which contribute to his political campaigns. That would defeat his whole purpose--to give huge costly no-bid contracts to his political pals in return for campaign contributions.

BRUCE J. BLANNING

Executive Assistant, Professional

Engineers in California Government

Glendale

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* I was pleasantly surprised to read about Wilson’s “big privatization push,” but I remain skeptical that he is willing to go after the really “big fish” such as K-12 public education.

Politics aside, is there a way to privatize our schools that makes sense educationally? Assuming that policy constraints would require state funding and oversight, there are many possibilities for reform. We can go beyond the various voucher proposals that promise to improve public schools through competition. Let’s think boldly about a voucher system in which almost all schools would be privatized.

If the foregoing seems outlandish, think about the food stamp program, where vouchers are given for the purchase of food from the private sector. Let’s do the same thing for education by providing vouchers for the purchase of education from the private sector. In fact, why not call these new vouchers “education stamps”?

Wilson should be congratulated for opening the door to a wide-ranging discussion on how privatization can improve our decrepit system of public education and other critical state services.

DAVID V. ANDERSON

Santa Monica