While privatization has made national news in recent months (the Halliburton CEO reportedly makes $12,000 a minute), it isn’t just a sensational story for the tabloids.

It’s a story that should concern all of us, and not just those of us who are public employees.

Privatization, as practiced today, is an insult to good government.

For the past 30 years, some politicians have been able to make political points out of attacking all government entities. Everything from the largest federal agencies down to the lowliest local improvement district is fair game.

Republicans and some Democrats successfully made government the boogey man and allegedly ended the era of "big government." It was a ruse, accomplished by replacing civil servants with private contractors. While government at all levels was "downsized," the government consultant industry was growing like the ’90s dot.com bubble.

It was a political shell game. Cut public employees, politicians said, and you’ve cut the "size of government."

But they didn’t bother to add this: Lard government with over-priced private contractors, and you get the bonus of campaign contributors. What once was called cronyism and corruption by honest politicians like Teddy Roosevelt had been transformed, hocus-pocus, into "reinventing government."

Here at the New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) we became very concerned when we saw some frightening things pop up on our radar screen.

We knew we were losing state employees, but much more was happening.

State bridge inspections were being done by harried contractors, nursing homes were inspected by the unqualified, a former governor suggested that toxic waste be monitored by the people responsible for producing the poisons.

Meanwhile, state jobs were unfilled in the name of a "hiring freeze," while private contractors were hired by the boatload.

The whole concept of a civil service system—put in place to stanch corruption and to ensure the most qualified got public service positions—was being undermined.

On its face, this isn’t something that might concern the average voter. In fact, taxpayers might believe privatization is good because many voters have been convinced that the private sector can do anything more efficiently than government can.

PEF has spent years documenting government waste—but the waste we found wasn’t created by public employees—it was created by politically connected contractors and their political cronies in high places.

The brother of a former U.S. senator is a lobbyist for a company that does nursing home inspections. The same firm was investigated for forging physician signatures on bogus inspection reports, filed by unqualified inspectors. Corruption is one thing, but putting our most vulnerable residents at risk through fake inspections is even worse.

But even assuming private contractors do a good job—which is a huge assumption—we at PEF have been unable to find any evidence that the primary purpose for privatization has been fulfilled.

In short, privatization is not more economical. It’s more expensive.

In New York state the Fiscal Policy Institute documented that the state was wasting a minimum of $500 million a year on privatization, most of it on engineering and information technology services. This study confirmed earlier studies by the state comptroller and KPMG who found that consultant engineers hired by the Department of Transportation cost between 50 percent and 75 percent more than state employee engineers.

PEF supported several pieces of legislation that were intended to open up the books on privatization by requiring that contract information be readily available to the public. Contractors and their political patrons fought this. Incredulously, the state claimed it didn’t know how much it was spending on private contractors. PEF waged a campaign to ensure that taxpayers know how much is spent on private contractors. We won and the public now knows how much each state agency spends on consultants.

PEF is now asking for cost-benefit analysis legislation. This would seem like a "no-brainer" for the business community to support if it, in fact, believed in efficiency and effectiveness.

We are asking the private contractors to walk the walk, and they are fighting us on this. Why? Because the private sector doesn’t want to compete for the service. It only wants the profits. That’s why the profit for the taxpayer is in letting the public employees provide the public service.

Ken Brynien is president of the New York State Public Employees Federation and an AFT vice president.