Tip of the Bad Contract Iceberg

More than a year ago we started hearing complaints from Corrections employees about the horrible quality of the food provided by private contractor Aramark to the state's prisons.

The Aramark contract meant eliminating dozens of state jobs for cooks and other food service workers in the prisons, so we discounted the complaints as the usual state employee grousing.

Then the Northpoint prison erupted in riots and our sources were calling and saying "we told you so! just watch - they're going to hide the evidence."

And of course, they were right.

The state agreed on Wednesday to turn over its original report on the August riot at Northpoint Training Center after nearly two weeks of denying requests for the document by lawmakers.

The Department of Corrections released an investigative report of the fiery mêlée on Nov. 20, but not before it was edited to allegedly address security concerns. At the time, officials did not disclose that they had altered the investigative report.

Legislators are hoping the original report will help them determine if food provided by a private contractor was partly to blame for the Aug. 21 riot that destroyed several buildings at the prison outside of Danville.

Read the whole thing.

But this is much bigger than one major riot that destroyed an entire prison complex. This is the opening wedge that exposes how in department after department after department, experienced and efficient state employees are dumped in favor of sweetheart contracts with private companies. These companies rake in the taxpayer dollars to toss worthless crumbs to the citizens state government is supposed to serve.

How many millions of tax dollars are wasted on contracts for uneducated, untrained minimum-wage workers making do on a shoestring while company execs luxuriate in profit?

When people complain about "lazy state workers," they're really talking about the abused, non-union serfs employed by criminal private contractors. How many burnt-out prisons is it going to take to wake us up to the real price of private contracts?