The Art of Dancing with the Government in Business
A Public–private partnership has been described as government service or private business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies.
These schemes are sometimes referred to as PPP, P3 or P3.
These partnerships involve a contract between a public-sector authority and a private party, in which the private party provides a public service or building project and you might assume that there is some substantial financial, technical and operational risk in the project.
In some types of P3, the cost of using the service is borne exclusively by the users of the service and not by the taxpayer. While these types of arrangements do exist, they are very rare indeed. A local example might be the use of the City of Jackson Farmers Market. While indeed the taxpayers paid for the facility, however the purchase of goods from that location are borne by the users of the products brought there and the sellers in kind pay a small fee for the use. But even that is not a pure example because the governmental agency bears the burden of extra costs normally conceived as risk.
In other types (notably the private finance initiative), some capital investment is made by the private sector on the strength of a contract with government to provide agreed services and the cost of providing the service is borne wholly or in part by the government. Government contributions to this P3 may also be in kind (notably the transfer of existing assets such as land or land and buildings). In projects that are aimed at creating public goods like in the infrastructure sector, the government may provide a capital subsidy in the form of a one-time grant, so as to make it more attractive to the private investors. In some other cases, the government may support the project by providing revenue subsidies (TIFF), including tax breaks or by providing guaranteed annual revenues for a fixed period. There is usually a complex set of cash flow tools that guarantee the P3 as a good investment for financial institutions. All of these engines reduce the risk of failure in respect to the company and the project.
Several of these agreements failed in the nineteenth up to the mid twentieth century because of the complete reliance of funding that was placed upon the private sector. However, the agreements that are arranged today completely guarantee the project through the use of government funding till the end of the project’s life.
A perfect example of this marriage would be a hospital building financed by a private developer and then leased to the hospital authority. The private developer then acts as the landlord providing maintenance services while the hospital provides medical services. In some cases the hospital will actually finance the construction with the developer paying the hospital back with the rent that they receive. These agreements are usually long term.
Again the success of these projects is guaranteed through a continual flow of tax dollars.
A great many on both sides of the political spectrum find this as favorable because it guarantees redevelopment of specific areas of need. I believe the term that many will use is “progressive development”. Some of the programs that were created during the last part of the last century and the beginning of this century were the Jackson Coliseum, , the Jackson Civic Center, Pringles Park, the Sports Plex, the Farmers Market, the Jackson Downtown Parking (oops, that one only passed money), Jones Creek Golf, the train Depot, and the Carnegie Library. These all followed the line of thought that they were needed to draw traffic to the city of Jackson via the means of tourism and while a few of them directly competed against private industry they remain as direct drains upon the taxpayer, however, few will disagree with the need of these facilities.
In years gone by, we spent taxpayers funds as a means to improve the quality of life by introducing parks, such as Allen and Edgewood Park and Highland Lake Community Park and Highland Park (now Conger Park) to name a couple. During the last 40 years those parks expanded in size and scope to MusePark and North Park. Again few will disagree with the need of these facilities.
Today, while we are not moving into new territory (the JacksonFederalBuilding) we are looking at the expansion of the definition of “progressive development” and use of P3.
Now before I begin let’s take a quick look at the seeds that grew into the Progressive movement.
“All that progressives ask or desire,” wrote Woodrow Wilson, “is permission — in an era when development, evolution, is a scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”
Progressivism, at the local level, was sought to suppress red-light districts, expand high schools, construct playgrounds, and replace corrupt urban political machines with more professional system of municipal government all with the intent to call attention and possible correct the evils of local politics.
I believe that as prosperity flourished in early America and as urbanism grew in the largest of cities our so called efforts to improve society through “reform”grew. I adhere to the fact Progressivism was rooted in the belief, certainly not shared by all, that man was capable of improving the lot of all within society. Progressivism also was imbued with strong political overtones, and it rejected the church as the driving force for change. This all came from the commitment that government must play a role to solve our social problems and establish fairness in all matters. Therefore Progressivism by its means is anti theological and therefore self-serving (serving one’s own selfish interests, esp. at the expense of others).
Progressivism is similar to the term I have heard expressed as the “mothering theory”. This is where Mothering as defined by others “is the power of empathy in “Mother” for her “children.”
In an editorial a writer once said that the mother “would rather see her offspring corrupted and dependent on her, than have one of them suffer alone. Mother despises the ruling class because it reminds her of Father, and she fears he’ll liberate her children from her clutches–he might let them grow up to become independent of her mothering emotionalism…… Mother would destroy the upper and middle classes in order to reduce the pain she feels for her downtrodden poor.”
The writer continued by saying “Mother’s warring is far more brutal and extensive than Father’s because her violence is hysterical, irrational and frenzied while Father’s is calculated and controlled.”
The comparison to Father as the Right becomes evident in his discussion of War.
“The political Right’s so called killings worldwide these past sixty years are small compared to the savage carnage wrought by the Left. Mao’s cultural revolution in China, the Khmer Rouge’s Killing Fields, and Somalia are the latest examples of Mother losing control and slaughtering her children out of an emotional rage.”
When Mother rules in a society it signals that maternalism (emotionalism) has ascended to supplant paternalism (rationalism)–and civil society declines, accordingly.
So basically, God is dead, Father is dead, Mother rules.
While in some cases the Progressive movement made has had some benevolent aspirations here or there, the movement today is directed at a more likely alternative such as individual financial gain at taxpayer expense.
