Our relatively new mayor here in San Diego wants to solve our fiscal crisis in part by outsourcing as much as possible and by laying off municipal employees. The new requirements of the GASB that the cost of long term commitments be shown on city, county and state financial statements should add impetus to outsourcing. Private contractors have been at an unfair disadvantage because they have had no choice but to consider long term employee costs when bidding a job, whereas the similar costs of government employees have been hidden.
And that's the whole problem. The idiots that make up local government have no one to answer to but the voters. The investors don't count and the voters are stupid. Sooner or later those investors go away. Can you imagine a world without municipal bonds? I can't. That is DEFINITELY where we are headed. No reliability, no money.