County governments all over North Carolina are saving money by privatizing services. In an effort to assist in the exchange of information about these activities, the John Locke Foundation conducted a survey of all 100 counties asking county managers to tell us about governmental activities that they currently supply privately. We also asked them if they had problems in the past with a privatized activity that had caused them to return the activity to government provision.
Appendix A of this report contains the results of that survey. Appendix B contains the survey instrument. We asked managers to report their privatization activities in one of four categories: competitive sourcing, public/private partnerships (PPP), contracting out, and asset sales (see the descriptions below). We encouraged managers to respond by providing them with a hard-copy survey form and an online survey. We followed up with a reminder letter and phone call.
We received responses from 44 out of 100 N.C. counties, which we list in Appendix A. With a few exceptions, we list the information in Appendix A as we received it from the county. We have also listed county contact names and phone numbers for those who might want more detailed information about a county’s privatization activities.
We have supplied a copy of this report to all 100 county managers and county commissioners in the state. We hope this report will stimulate more discussion of privatization among the counties and that counties that did not participate in this year’s survey or did not have privatization activities to report will participate in the survey next year.
RB83 First Annual North Carolina County Privatization Survey
