How well does San Francisco’s city government monitor the former government services that it allows to be privatized? Does its monitoring practices imitate that of Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, or Maine…that is, none at all?

That alarmed question, among others, came up while reading the recent Progressive States Network (PSN) report on privatization. Privatizing In The Dark: The Pitfalls of Privatization & Why Budget Disclosure Is Needed, with a 50-State Comparison Of Privatization Trends made me feel as if privatization was to government health what deliberate bleeding of “bad blood” was to curing bodily illness.

That negative impression of privatization derives from the PSN report’s mentions of how Texas’ Accenture meltdown and Ohio’s Coingate scandal were high profile examples of the politically corrupting influence of contracting out government services. The most disturbing part of PSN’s report, though, comes from reading that most state governments don’t think terribly deeply before letting a private company handle public assets. What do I mean? If you’re a government thinking of paying somebody else to do something you used to do, would it hurt to do a basic cost-benefit comparison between the projected privatized service and providing the same service in-house before you make a decision? Apparently, way too many governments are satisfied with not doing a comparison and reaping from contracted-out services savings of 5% or less.

The PSN report’s information and conclusions will probably come as no surprise to readers of the SF Bay Guardian’s anti-privatization issue of awhile ago. But for city officials wanting a second, non-Bay Guardian-based opinion, Privatizing In The Dark is necessary reading…especially given that a privatization-mad Mayor sits in Room 200 of City Hall.