The privatization path

THE SAN FRANCISCO Recreation and Park Commission will vote May 20 on a move to privatize the Randall Museum – and there's far more at stake than the future of a small but valuable piece of San Francisco culture.

The model the privatizers have put forward represents a new method of stealing public resources, and if it succeeds, it could become a blueprint for turning over all sorts of civic treasures to private interests under the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom. The Board of Supervisors needs to kill this deadly virus before it starts to spread.

The way the current plan would work, the private Randall Museum Friends would be given a "license to use" the museum property, which is owned by the city. The Recreation and Park Department would no longer control much of anything at the site – the RMF, which meets in secret, would hire the new director, set policies on admission and event fees, and decide the future direction of the museum, which mostly serves children. The RMF claims that by taking over the facility, it can save the city money – and it's likely Newsom, who is trying to close a vast budget gap, would be happy to be able to cut museum funding, currently around $900,000 a year, and let private donors make up the difference.

But the RMF has presented no detailed plan for operating the museum, no financial plan for funding it – nothing that would tell the public what this privatization deal would bring. (All that, the group's spokesperson Genevieve Antaky told the Bay Guardian, would be worked out later, after the deal is approved.)

This entire concept of handing over use licenses allowing private groups to take over public facilities is horrible and should be outlawed before downtown takes it up and tries to turn it into a path toward wholesale privatization.