From our friends at the Mackinac Center comes news that the Michigan Department of Management and Budget is evaluating bids for a privatization expert that will work with the state Department of Treasury to find and develop privatization opportunities in state government. From the RFP materials on the DMB website:
The State is looking for new ways to partner with private sector firms to extract more value from the State’s assets with minimum up front expenditure of its own funds. As such, the State is seeking a Contractor to provide strategic and financial consulting/advice on a wide variety of public private partnerships over the next three to six years. [. . .] The State anticipates approximately 12 option assessments to be completed per year. Approximately one-third of the option assessments will be relatively straight-forward, one-third will be of intermediate complexity, and one-third will be multi-faceted in complexity.
Reading further, it sounds like they’ll draw up an annual list of a dozen or so potentials, of which a handful or so will move forward to implementation. Given Michigan’s economic and fiscal conditions, this should have happened a long time ago. But for Michigan taxpayers, better late than never. “ Reason’s Annual Privatization Report 2008 “ Reason’s Privatization Research and Commentary