Experiments in Reinventing Government

About the Book

The past fifty years have witnessed the increasing size and inefficiency of many aspects of the United States government. They also give testimony to the accelerating involvement of the government in many aspects of American life, particularly in economic and business activity. Since the beginning of the deregulating Reagan Administration in 1980, government spending, ownership, and intervention have been seriously questioned, sparking the dawn of the public vs. private debate. At the heart of the debate is privatization, or the transfer of goods and service delivery from the government to the private sector. It means relying more on private institutions and less on government to satisfy societal needs. With privatization, the government can cease the challenge and complexity of providing goods and services to the public, and begin the more manageable task of simply ensuring that they are provided. Privatization helps guide the ship of government to a more efficient and effective management strategy of steering rather than rowing. This book takes you into the government of the fifth largest city in the United States, Philadelphia, and reveals: (a) the concept of privatization, how it originated and how government and others perceive it; (b) the advantages and disadvantages of privatization; (c) what environments and initiatives allow privatization to work most effectively and those that inhibit it – when it is most appropriate and likely to succeed; (d) Philadelphia’s stance and approach to privatization and how the government there implemented privatization initiatives, how they turned out and what lessons were learned; (e) based on the above theoretical and empirical analysis, the DOs and DON’Ts for state and local governments to consider in the future when experimenting or executing privatization initiatives.

About the Author

David Maturo was born and raised in the heart of South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated Maxima Cum Laude from LaSalle University with a B.A. Degree in Economics and a B.S. Degree in Finance in 1994. Wanting to apply his education to serve the community that served him, Daniel enrolled in the University of Delaware's (UD) nationally renowned Public Policy and Administration Program. There he received a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) degree, specializing in Fiscal and Resource Management, with high honors in 1996. He was the only UD graduate nominated for the Daniel B. Goldberg Scholarship for government finance in 1996 and was awarded the Henry R. Folsom Award in 1997 for excellence in the University of Delaware's MPA program as well as outstanding and practical research in his master's thesis. He worked for the City of Philadelphia for a couple of years before venturing into the private sector. He currently resides in Southern New Jersey in a suburb just outside Philadelphia.