A case of retraction on the left. If we held people to their positions, nobody would ever get elected! :>)
December 21, 2003 New York Times
Dean Opposes Privatizing Public Services but Issue Is Thorny
By JODI WILGOREN
DUBUQUE, Iowa, Dec. 20 — Howard Dean has repeatedly declared his blanket opposition to privatization of public services during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, though as governor of Vermont he at times went on record supporting privatization.
On Friday, when a voter asked his thoughts on private prisons, Dr. Dean volunteered a sweeping statement: "I oppose privatization of public services."
He told the woman, a corrections worker in Burlington, Iowa, that "private prisons do a worse job than public prisons."
Then he added, "The answer to your direct question is: I oppose privatization of public services."
But in a 1998 letter to a constituent concerned about the privatization of a government-run day care center, Dr. Dean wrote, "Over all, I have found that private contractors can perform the same service for less money while maintaining a high level of quality."
He wrote that he could not intervene in the case but added that Vermont "relies on the outsourcing of certain state functions in order to save taxpayers money."
Five years earlier, Dr. Dean wrote to Leon E. Panetta in the Clinton White House to lobby against the repeal of an executive order paving the way for government outsourcing. "Privatization, undertaken with fairness and carefully monitored, can deliver better public services at lower costs," he said in that letter.
Jay Carson, a campaign spokesman, said Dr. Dean told him on Saturday that the 1993 letter to Mr. Panetta and the 1998 constituent letter were written by aides and did not reflect his thinking. Mr. Carson said the former governor could not recall privatizing any jobs in Vermont.
But union leaders said contracting by the state increased when Dr. Dean, in 1995, capped the state workforce at 7,000 to keep the budget balanced. In 1999, as a commission appointed by Dr. Dean looked into the role of outsourcing in the state, his administration secretary, Kathleen Hoyt, was quoted by The Burlington Free Press as saying of contracting, "Sometimes it's the most sensible thing that can be done."
The comments on privatization during the 1990's jibe with Dr. Dean's fiscally conservative reign in Vermont, while the broad denunciation of privatization reflects the more liberal positions he has taken during the presidential campaign, in part to woo labor.
His answer in Burlington, Iowa, on Friday echoed a line from his announcement speech in June in Burlington, Vt.: "The tax cuts are designed to destroy Social Security, Medicare, our public schools and our public services through starvation and privatization."
Several of Dr. Dean's rivals for the Democratic nomination have asserted that he has moved to the left on issues like trade, government entitlements and tax policy to appeal to voters in primaries. Opponents tried to use the privatization issue against him during the fierce lobbying for union endorsements in the fall, particularly the endorsement by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, whose support Dr. Dean eventually won.
James P. Hoffa, the president of the Teamsters union and a supporter of a rival candidate, Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, wrote to the president of the federation, Gerald W. McEntee, two weeks ago, criticizing Dr. Dean's record on privatization.
On that same December day, the president of the Vermont State Employees Association wrote to his members asking them to vote for Dr. Dean for president. The letter acknowledged that the union had had disputes with him but cited his support for legislation limiting privatization.
In a November letter to Mr. McEntee, Dr. Dean pointed to the same bills, which allowed Vermont employees to present alternatives before state agencies could contract out, and said privatization had proved inefficient.
"Frequently, taxpayers end up paying more and getting less while private interests profit at public expense," he wrote. "My position is clear: I am opposed to the privatization of public services at the local, state and federal level."
The privatization question on Friday was typical of questions — about Medicare, trade, guns, even chiropractic — that Dr. Dean fielded in a two-day swing through Iowa, all stemming from negative advertisements or mailers about him circulated by other candidates and interest groups.
"To hear these guys talk, I'm against Nafta, I have an AK-47 under my pillow, I'm married to Osama bin Laden — oh, and I'm against Israel," he joked at a pancake breakfast on Saturday at a middle school in Clinton. "Do not believe this nonsense."
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