In this tough economic climate the last thing a business needs is more competition…from government. An editorial in the August Chronicle tells a local story that is far reaching. At the federal level, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy recently issued new guidelines (A-76) for government outsourcing. The new A-76 is not only no longer based on the premise that the government should not compete with the private sector, and no longer includes the language that has been on the books since it first appeared in the 1955 Eisenhower Bureau of the Budget Bulletin that was the predecessor of A-76, but “competitive sourcing” actually codifies the right of government to compete with the private sector. Moving back to the article, it rightly points out that, “it’s not only unfair for government to compete against the private sector, it’s also costly to the local economy.”