All of the tools they once had are gone, because they are dealing with a corporation with no ties to the community and lawyers on staff. The company has no reason to make any changes to help the district out and every financial incentive not to.

A low-ball bid with clauses that jack the price after the first years or so when the school board can’t afford to forget the whole thing.

If someone has the courage to search a bit, they’ll find a big Republican donor behind the “winning bidder”.

People seem to forget that the complaint you hear most often when the public sector intrudes on the “turf” of private companies is that private businesses can’t compete with the public sector because the government doesn’t have many of the expenses of the private sector.

Somebody’s campaign contributors are making money off of this, of that we can be sure.

I just googled on that, and found a lot of other people asking the same question… but no real answers. Halliburton or otherwise, it has to be some sort of cronyism.

I have a good friend, otherwise extremely bright, who is obsessed with the superiority of private enterprise over public works… in all circumstances whatsoever. I just don’t get it. I’m all for private business when it works better (and I’m rather fond of my own small bit of one-man free enterprise). But in a large number of areas, and this is one of them, the public interest can be better served by public institutions. Businesses are built specifically to benefit their owners; only government has the responsibility of serving the public. Some things need doing whether or not they are profitable; tax collection is one of them.

Just wondering, does Halliburton have a collection agency under their umbrella of services?