Northumberland County voted Tuesday to hire a Philadelphia area company, Allied Barton Security Services, to provide security at the county’s administrative buildings and courthouse.
The idea of hiring private contractors may bring to mind notorious incidents involving rent-a-cops asleep while purportedly guarding nuclear power plants. To be fair, Northumberland County did not hire the company involved in that case.
But, the high-profile black mark does illustrate the potential danger of lax oversight that comes with turning control over to a contractor. Northumberland County officials say the private contractor has agreed to interview the eight security guards now employed by the county. None has been promised a job, other than the county’s director of security. Hiring Allied Barton will save them (and taxpayers) $56,000 a year. Those savings almost certainly come out of the diminished paychecks received by guards.
The county’s security department is unionized, Allied Barton has been the focus of nationally-watched struggles with labor, including a struggle to establish a union local at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where guards are employed by Allied Barton.
Guards at the art museum have voted to join a union, but Allied Barton has appealed that decision to the National Labor Relations Board. Guards there complain of inadequate pay and insufficient training.
We hope the county’s security director is in a position to provide the oversight to guarantee that the county’s cost-cutting does not jeopardize safety. If the concerns raised by labor agitators can be allayed (and we are optimistic that they can be), the push to reduce the size of government by outsourcing jobs could be an effective means of driving down the cost to taxpayers without harming public service.
We hope the county, and other municipal and school district officials take a long look at similar opportunities. Most schools, long ago, turned to private firms for bus service. Northumberland County relied on a private company to operate its nursing home before eventually selling the facility to the same firm.
Smaller could be better, as non-essential tasks are assigned to private firms, elected officials and administrators can focus exclusively on the important business of governing.
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Pushing to privatize
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