Friday, February 12, 2016

“Could our city become the next Flint?”, The Colorado Springs Business Journal, February 12-18, 2016, p. 19.


Are we the next Flint?

What happened in Flint, Michigan was bound to happen somewhere, sometime. The origins of this disaster can be traced to the Reagan revolution that brought about the mantra that the government isn’t the solution, but the problem. This mantra embodies three important principles.

The first is that there is a direct correlation between how much services we receive and how much taxes we pay. The less taxes, the less services (small government).

The second is that government bureaucracies are less efficient than private ones, and therefore we should outsource to the private sector whatever we can.

The third is that all public goods—from roads to natural resources and defense—should be privatized in one way or another: either sold off or users should pay fees (Milton Friedman and the Chicago School).

The first principle is indisputable: CS comes in seventh among the 15 lowest-taxed cities in the US (Nick Wallace, SmartAsset). You might have noticed the unplowed streets with any snowfall, and the need for a tax increase to fix potholes.

The second principle is more problematic since it’s unclear if the issue is the inefficiency of bureaucracies, private of public, or that public are worse than private ones. But we should notice that at times inefficiencies relate to redundancies that save lives than to simple laziness.

The third one is the most interesting, as we have seen it play out in Flint. Should all decisions about and public goods themselves be privatized? We agreed during the Iraq War to hire Blackwater “mercenaries” to help fight the war; we also procured the private services of Cheney’s Halliburton (that eventually moved its headquarters to Dubai).

Were these moves the most “efficient” or merely the most expedient?

The lead-poisoning in Flint reminds us that the only way privatization works is if it’s accompanied by strict regulation—to ensure the health and safety of those affected.

But the age of deregulation that began with the Clinton Administration and has continued into the Bush and Obama Administrations has brought about not only the banking bubble and the Great Recession, but now the cruel effects of water poisoning in Flint.

What the headlines make clear is that perhaps the water problems in Flint were ignored because its population is poor and made up of minorities. Here is an example of how the outrage over income and wealth inequalities isn’t simply a philosophical query but instead relates to conditions that lead to health hazards.

As the facts are still being uncovered, it becomes clear that first, we cannot trust outsourced government performance—when cutting costs is achieved at the cost of people’s health—and second, that we shouldn’t wait till it’s a catastrophe to pay attention. Regulators and journalists, politicians and activists should heed complaints and investigate before it’s too late.

What about the health hazards perpetrated by our own Utilities? We finally got City Council (its board) to agree to close the Martin Drake power plant within 20 years. In the meantime, is our health at risk? Are we listening to Leslie Weise, an attorney with special expertise in environmental issues? Will she become a sainted crusader when the health issues associated with Drake become national news?

The community within a mile or two of Drake is more than 30% minority, more than 29% below the poverty level, and of such overall low income that one wonders if their health means less to CSU and its Board than the health of those living in more affluent sections of the city. Air quality around Drake doesn’t meet EPA standards; but CSU is reluctant to act.

Colorado Open Records Act has been used on numerous occasions by attorney Weise and others, but CSU’s attorneys redact most documents and refuse to share their findings about the level of toxins that plague the Drake area. Isn’t it their civil duty to be as transparent as possible? As we saw in Flint, time is not a luxury sick kids and their parents can afford.

Likewise, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment seems to be uninterested in shutting down the plant or holding CSU to the standards enjoyed by the rest of the state, granting extensions and more studies. The EPA is also slow to respond to mandates than one would expect of a regulatory body.

Is this similar to what happened at Flint? What will it take for more vigorous and timely regulation of our city-owned CSU? Councilman Leigh, if you recall, was politically blackballed and threatened with lawsuits.

Would CSU behave this way if Drake were in close proximity to the Broadmoor? We can avoid following in the footsteps of Flint.

  

Raphael Sassower is professor and chair of philosophy at UCCS. He can be reached at rsassower@gmail.com See previous articles at sassower.blogspot.com



 
outsourcing, health hazards