As San Diego prepares to outsource many city services, CPI and our allies are working to enact and enforce critical protections of service quality and workers’ healthcare. Contracting without sufficient standards, monitoring and disclosure can dismantle vital services, drive up costs and shift good jobs to low-wage jobs with no health insurance.
Yet the City continues to set up contracts that lack the oversight needed to stem the tide of contractor duplicity.
City staffing for administering contracts is being cut in half (from 2008 to the 2012 budget proposal). Highlighting the risks of contracting out services to private companies, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the city has paid $1.9 million to settle a lawsuit by a software contractor it fired because of delays and cost overruns.
City officials who claim that a push toward privatization honors the will of voters who approved Proposition C in 2006 are mistaken. The ballot question read:
Shall the Charter be amended to allow the City to contract services traditionally performed by City civil service employees if determined to be more economical and efficient while maintaining the quality of services and protecting the public interest?
San Diego voters agreed to contract out services only if the quality of those essential services would not decline.
