Quite a city of juxtapositions we've become. Our school boards and our public health services are all being farmed out to privatized management. The streets are policed by several private security outfits. We've tried and will no doubt try again to grant taxing authority to tourism magnates.
But what hasn't been privatized has been taken over by the Feds.
Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman and U.S. Department of Justice officials announced a long-awaited agreement on Tuesday for federal oversight of the city's notoriously shoddy and dangerous jail. The 49-page consent decree amounts to a blueprint for reforms and staffing fixes at a jail facility where 38 inmates have died over the past seven years, where escapes are commonplace, and where safety and sanitary conditions are routinely compromised, critics say.
Signed and submitted to U.S. District Judge Lance Africk for approval, the document marks Gusman's office as the latest local agency in New Orleans to succumb to outside oversight.
But despite having either sold everything off or turned it over to outside direction, the cost of everything just keeps going up and up and up. Funny how that works.
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