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SoCalDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Mon Jun-20-11 12:54 PMOriginal messageShould a governor be allowed to sell assets of the state they govern? Edited on Mon Jun-20-11 01:01 PM by SoCalDemYears ago when Indiana sold the toll road to Spain, I posted the article, it drew little interest, but now people are starting to pay closer attention.It's not only sales to foreign countries (like the Dubai parking lot/meters sale/lease in Chicago). Local officials sell off parks, buildings, power plants, etc. too.These elected officials are transitory people in the lives of a community/state, but the long-term/permanent damage they do can last forever, and is often irreparable.People elect others to do a job for the community/state , NOT to hold a fire-sale, auctioning off assets to the highest bidder so they can plug holes in a budget mess they caused themselves.Would Mom & Dad "sell/lease" the bathrooms of your home, and install a coin-slot so you had to pay every time you entered the bathroom?Infrastructures require maintenance, upgrading, and taking federal (or state tax) money to build them, then ignoring them for decades and then offering them up "for sale" ( a 75 -99 yr lease might as well be a sale), is not helping the community.One person (often serving only 4 yrs) should NOT have the power to sell off assets built & paid for by the people they claim to "serve".They should have to put stuff like that up for a special vote, and the details should be spelled out in 6th grade language so that anyone could understand exactly what the result of such a thing would be..Finding out what a prior governor (or city council, or county commission, or whatever) did with community/state assets, too late to undo it, is ridiculous.there is a place for private ownership and there is also a place for community/state ownership. Ask anyone who lives in a place where they once had municipal ownership of services, and then they were sold to private companies, how much "better-worse" their services are now. You can choose to not use a toll road or to not park in Chicago, but you often have NO choice about which company delivers your water, power, natural gas, trash pick up, sewer service etc. If a community owns & operates these services the cost will almost always be less than when a private entity buys & operates them.Somewhere along the line, people forgot that there is an expense to upkeep, and selling off an aging "whatever" to the highest bidder is not an effective way to solve that problem. It may solve the problem for right now, but upgrades/rebuilding WILL be done by the private owner, and the costs passed on to you through higher prices & lost community/state revenues...and in the end you lose because you pay higher prices, and the money goes NOT TO YOUR COMMUNITY/STATE, but to a private company or foreign country..
SoCalDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Jun-20-11 12:54 PMOriginal messageShould a governor be allowed to sell assets of the state they govern?
Would Mom & Dad "sell/lease" the bathrooms of your home, and install a coin-slot so you had to pay every time you entered the bathroom?
SoCalDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Mon Jun-20-11 12:54 PMOriginal messageShould a governor be allowed to sell assets of the state they govern?
I've been thinking about this for awhile now. I would use that money as a "cleaning fee" since no one in this home knows how to clean the bathroom, except me. It's my bathroom and you don't have to use it. So if I charge a $3 service fee for 24 hours of use, what's the big deal?
