Here’s a recent study by the Project on Government Oversight that was on my list to share but, somehow, got stuck in a stack. It’s a study of the costs of government contractors providing privatized services (“Bad Business: Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on Hiring Contractors“). It concludes that private contractors end up costing the public considerably more than if the work were done by federal employees. But, of course, those extra costs going into someone’s pockets as profits.

Service contract award dollars have dramatically increased in recent years based on the assumption that shifting work to the private sector saves taxpayer dollars. POGO’s report compares total annual compensation for federal and private sector employees with federal contractor billing rates in order to determine whether the current costs of federal service contracting serves the public interest. Previous analyses have only focused on employee salaries and compensation and not federal contractor billing rates. POGO’s study shows that the federal government approves service contract billing rates that, on average, pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the full compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services. Given that one-quarter of all discretionary spending now goes to service contractors, a reassessment of the total federal work force, with a focus on contractor billing rates, could save taxpayers billions of dollars annually.

AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said the study confirms “privatizing services leads to cost overruns and in most cases a lower quality of services.”

The only ones benefiting from privatization are the private companies and the campaign coffers of the politicians who push for privatization. Study after study shows that privatization does not deliver the savings for taxpayers promised by its proponents.

An interesting bit of ethics advice from Florida, where the Palm Beach Daily News reports advice from the County Commission on Ethics on the issue of contributions to “organizations used for years to aid town employees and their families, such as the Palm Beach Police Foundation, the Fraternal Order of Police, the Palm Beach Firefighters and Paramedics Education Fund.”

The commission issued an opinion indicating the code of ethics allows public employees to accept donations for scholarships and employee emergency assistance, among other programs, as long as they do not solicit donations from town vendors, officials or lobbyists. Other conditions stipulate that public employees and officials can’t solicit or accept “anything of value” with the promise of using their position to reward the gift-giver for the donation, and, that gifts cannot directly benefit that employee/official, a family member or another employee.

I wonder whether the question of gifts to similar organizations in Hawaii has ever been considered by state or county ethics commissions?

The Hartford Courant reports on questions concerning consulting work for energy companies by Dan Esty prior to taking over as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Esty is married to Democrat Elizabeth Esty, who is campaigning for a seat in Congress, and additional questions have been raised about whether energy companies may have sought to influence her husband by making legal contributions to her campaign.

And a provocative column in the Washington Post, (“‘Good government’ rules that aren’t“).