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Privatization Not Always The Solution For City Budget Cuts

DETROIT (WWJ) - While financial troubles for cities like Detroit deepen, the Journal Law Society at Wayne State University hosted a symposium Friday afternoon to take a look at the issue behind the headlines.

WWJ's Marie Osborne says that often the solution for local government  is to look toward privatization of services.

Columbia Professor Elliot Sclar argues the private sector is not always better.

"A powerful movement  is afoot in this country, that very much pushes the notion that the problem in this country is government and that if we had less government or no government we would do better," said Sclar. "I've traveled to the places that have no government, or very little government, I don't think the American people would want that."

He says that in the long run, cities will not save the money they think they will by steering toward privatization.

"There are ways to get at that, and the problem is - it's being sold as snake oil, that somehow if you privatize services these problems would go away. They won't go away, in fact there going to get worse, it's going to cost you more, said Sclar.

"Because all these other things work, we can then spend the rest of our day, working on making a living, creating new products and doing things. In places where these things don't work, people will spend three hours a day doing nothing but getting clean drinking water," said Sclar.

Sclar says that if there are problems with public services - they need to be addressed swiftly and effectively in order to avoid privatization.

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