On Thursday, Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced plans to privatize the district’s facilities operations in an effort to save the district $75 million during the next five years.

In the following commentary, State Sen. Bert Johnson, a Democrat from Detroit, argues against outsourcing.

As state and municipal budgets continue to contract, elected leaders from the Governor’s office and the state Legislature to city councils and school boards must be ever more vigilant in finding ways to balance their respective budgets.

Gov. Rick Snyder spoke often during his campaign of “value for money” budget priorities. To date, there is only rhetoric to base judgment of Snyder on, but I do agree that we must get the most out of each public dollar we spend.

Where Snyder and I experience a divergence of opinion on this issue is in the ‘outsource-or-bust’ mentality that he and many in his party cling to.

But Snyder and other leaders, including Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb should be mindful that outsourcing to corporations, based out-of-state, and by nature out-of-touch with the needs of local populations, is not the answer to our budget problems.

Years ago, Detroit Public Schools’ food system was outsourced to a company that has, since the beginning of their contract, done a poor job managing food services in the district.

An out-of-state company called First Student outbid the Detroit-based, minority-owned Safeway Transportation by roughly 1%. But in the real world, we don’t deal solely with numbers on a page. First Student has a history of complaints from around the country, including but not limited to violations of health and safety standards, sexual harassment of children and lack of punctuality in delivering children to school.

Source:-http://www.freep.com/article/20110128/OPINION05/110127079/Guest-commentary-Outsourcing-services-wrong-move-state-cities-schools?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Opinion