Privatizing public jobs is voodoo economics.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Michael Hallinan For The Register-Guard

If you say something often enough, people will accept it as fact. That's why the Bush administration and others endlessly repeat their message about outsourcing government services and running government more like a business.

It is assumed that if you can get a contractor to provide a service for less, you'll save taxpayers' money. If only it were that simple.

The truth is that outsourcing government services can and does cost the taxpayers more.

One small example: According to the Veterans Administration, `38 percent of the outsourced contracts generated positive savings of $18 million, 35 percent of the outsourced contracts generated negative savings (sic) of $31 million, and 27 percent had no cost savings."

There are often significant costs when work is privatized - that is, conducting a competition, transitioning the work and administering the contract. Outsourced contracts that the Veterans Administration said cost the same as in-house work were in fact money-losers.

In other words, more than 60 percent of all VA service contracts in the 2002 fiscal year lost taxpayers' money.

Government has always had socioeconomic goals beyond efficiency. The Buy American Act, for instance, encourages the growth and development of American businesses. There are preferences for businesses owned by veterans, women and American Indians.

In hiring, there are preferences for veterans. The federal government has made many strides against discrimination in its own hiring, as well by contractors. Many other requirements ensure that employees receive due process.

These extra responsibilities are by design not cost-efficient. Rather, Congress has decided that government is about more than just the bottom line. Government has a mission to make this country a better place, not just a source of profit for the few.

Rather than admit publicly its disagreements with these policies, the Bush administration is using outsourcing to undermine the laws that make government do more for the people.

President Bush thinks the only way to improve government is to competitively outsource 425,000 more government jobs - 8,000 of them right here in Oregon. Many outsourcing competitions will result in one large contractor handling an entire function of government without the socioeconomic "burdens" of government. These functions had been performed previously by government employees and small contractors under the socioeconomic policies that have been part of our law.

In 1992, there were approximately 2.2 million executive service employees, and we had a federal budget of just in excess of $1 trillion. Today, we have 500,000 fewer executive service employees and a projected 2005 budget of $2.3 trillion.

During that same period, the contractor and grantee work force went from approximately 4 million to more than 8 million. And this administration wants to reduce the cost of government by using more contractors! Talk about fuzzy math.

In 1962, President Kennedy assigned David Bell, his budget director, to study the blurring line between public and private in government work. The Bell Commission concluded that government officials (that is, civil service and appointees) must do the work and have the competence required to account for all work of government. It warned that unless corrective action was taken, there would be a brain drain of officials. They would be replaced by contract and grant employees, who are not constrained by official pay caps or ethics rules.

Bell raised an interesting question: "Is a business still a private business when its sole source of income is from the government?"

If we are to have a fair and open discussion about the true costs of government, this shadow government that has burgeoned over the decades needs to be brought into the light. President Bush has consistently fought every effort by Congress to account for the true cost of outsourcing government services.

We need a fair and honest review of all work - contracts and civil service - performed for the government. We need to do away with artificial personnel ceilings. We need to re-establish effective union and federal partnerships that have improved government. We need to take advantage of small business contracts where they make sense and actually save money.

We need to send a message to President Bush that we are tired of the greed and cronyism his administration has foisted upon our nation. If we don't, the government "of the people, by the people and for the people" will be lost to the bottom line.

Michael Hallinan, an employee of the Eugene District office of the federal Bureau of Land Management, is president of the American Federation of Government Employees, Local 1911.