California Legislature—2013–14 Regular Session

House Resolution No. 29

Introduced by Assembly Member Gomez

February 4, 2014

House Resolution No. 29—Relative to outsourcing public services.

WHEREAS, Public services and assets are the fabric that binds
our communities together. They are also a ladder to the middle
class; and

WHEREAS, Faced with severe budget problems in the wake
of the Great Recession, state and local governments across America
are handing over control of public services and assets to
corporations that promise to operate them better, faster, and
cheaper; and

WHEREAS, Outsourcing these services and assets often fails
to keep these promises, and too often it undermines transparency,
accountability, and shared prosperity and competition - the
underpinnings of democracy itself; and

WHEREAS, Outsourcing means that taxpayers have less say
over how future tax dollars are spent and have no ability to vote
out executives who make decisions that could harm the public
interest; and

WHEREAS, Outsourcing means taxpayers are often
contractually limited to a single for-profit corporation; and

WHEREAS, Outsourcing frequently means that wages and
benefits for public service workers fall and the local economy
suffers while corporate profits rise. The American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has found
that of the 5.4 million people working for federal service
contractors in 2008, an estimated 80 percent earned below the
living wage for their city or region. For-profit corporations are
three times more likely than the public sector to employ workers
at poverty-threshold wages; and two million private sector
employees working for federal contractors earn less than $12 an
hour - too little to support a family. That is more low wage workers
than are employed by McDonald’s and WalMart combined; and

WHEREAS, Outsourcing means that taxpayers often no longer
know how their tax dollars are being spent. Meetings and records
that used to be open to the public can become proprietary
information when corporations take over; and

WHEREAS, The Taxpayer Empowerment Agenda is one model
that may help ensure transparency, accountability, shared
prosperity, and competition in the operation of public services and
assets; and

WHEREAS, Planks in the Taxpayer Empowerment Agenda
would require governments to post information about their
contracts online and require contractors to open their books to the
public, ensure that governments have the capacity to adequately
oversee contracts, to cancel contracts that fail to deliver on their
promises, prohibit law breaking companies from getting
government contracts, require contractors to pay their employees
living wages and benefits, require competitive bidding on contracts
that guarantee company profits at the expense of taxpayers, and
give public service works the opportunity to develop their own
plan on how to deliver cost-effective, high-quality services; and

WHEREAS, Recent polling shows that taxpayers oppose the
outsourcing of public services and assets to for-profit companies
and support these common sense controls to ensure that their
interests are protected; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, That the
Assembly opposes outsourcing of public services and assets, which
harms transparency, accountability, shared prosperity, and
competition, and supports processes that give public service works
the opportunity to develop their own plan on how to deliver
cost-effective, high-quality services; and be it further

Resolved, That the Assembly urges local officials to become
familiar with the provisions of the Taxpayer Empowerment
Agenda; and be it further

Resolved, That the Assembly intends to introduce and advocate
for responsible outsourcing legislation.

Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies
of this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.