Mk VII said:
our experience with privatizing the railroads is that they retreat into "that's commercially sensitive information, Mister Voter, we ain't gonna tell it to you".
Mister Voter: Wrong answer.
If the contract is renewable at short terms, they have no incentive to invest in anything that won't pay dividends in the short-term, like investigative computer tools that take years and billions to develop and can't talk to the neighbouring department which bought a different one, and maybe don't work even then.
You get enough private companies involved, they might just come up with a commercial product for it, rather than various agencies all having private solutions developed.
If you keep fining them, they say, "we can't make a profit out of this contract, we're not interested in renewing it". And neither is anyone else, at the price the citizens are prepared to pay.
They're paying for bureaucratic solutions now. I dont' see how this could end up costing them more money.
Or they call the city one day and say, "we have no money left, either pay us a shedload of extra money or you won't have a functioning service on Monday morning, and it will be your elected ass, Mister Mayor, that will be on the line as far as the voters are concerned".
How is this different when the police union illegally strikes?
You wave the contract in their face and sue them for every penny the corporation and the main shareholders have. Spin it right and you'll have people mad at the contractor, not the Mayor.
You pay them on a monthly or quarterly basis. You definitly don't give them a years budget up front. You don't hire a fly by night 'company', you hire one with multiple accounts and experience in the field. If you're going to be hiring a new company, at least hire one with previous security experience.
If I got that I'd answer "No" and see about calling up some volunteers who could be paid with the unpaid budget from the defaulting contractor to cover the important stuff for the time it takes to find another company. Heck, maybe call that SRC company that Lawdog posted the ad for. Sure, I'll pay a premium, but I'd at least have officers capable of responding to traffic accients, robberies, and other violent disturbances(minor matters can be put on hold for a bit). Advertising that the temps are more heavily armed and trained than the old guys should keep any explosions of violence from happening.
Oh, and I'd be following biere's solution as much as I could. The police department would mostly be the 'clean-up' unit.
R.H. Lee said:
And if you think traffic enforcement is driven by revenue generation now, just wait until you privatize it. Corporate America has already demonstrated that there are no considerations more important the the bottom line.
Who says the contracter gets the money from the fines? What's wrong with him getting a bounty from each, as long as there's some control to prevent corruption like writing fake tickets? Besides, if they get too overbearing, people stop speeding and such and revenue goes back down unless you have a steady stream of people ignorant of the enforcement level passing through. Then you have locals pissed off at the cops, voting no to their contract renewal, or the local traffic board raises the speed limits. If they have a highway passing through or something so they have a steady stream of 'outsiders', well, it's already an old tradition to pay for the public police force with ticket revenues. Even if it doesn't supposably go into the same 'pot', the ability to transfer funding from the school to the police because $200k from fines is going to the school makes it almost impossible to say that fines don't fund the police.