Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

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hn_throwaway_99

A 75 year lease is pretty standard in lots of these kinds of government contracts, and I'll explain why.

I work with a nonprofit that is negotiating a (standard length) 75 year lease for a piece of parkland. The nonprofit will have to invest many millions of dollars into buildings and improvements on this land (all publicly accessible). Without the 75 year lease, there is no way the nonprofit could run a capital campaign to raise money for the improvements - nobody would be willing to donate money if in a couple years the government could choose to change their minds and rip up the contract. This type of dynamic exists (someone else needs to make a huge upfront capital expenditure, and they need some sort of guarantee that they won't get "rug pulled") all over the place.

Case in point, in 2017 Austin leased part of the airport for another company to run as the "South Austin Terminal". The original lease was for 40 years, and then only a couple years later the city changed their mind and decided they wanted that land back to do a major overhaul of the airport, and they tried to get it back with some extremely shady eminent domain tactics (and they basically got their ass handed to them in court). I actually hate the South Terminal (it's confusing and not connected in any way to the major Austin airport), I'm glad to see it go, but I'm also glad the city can't weasel their way out of a bad decision just because they changed their mind: https://communityimpact.com/austin/cedar-park-leander/transp...

I agree that there needs to be some way to hold previous office holders accountable for decisions that affect a locale long after the original signers are gone, but just saying we can only have leases for 20 years or so isn't the right way to do it.

Your argument here is essentially "if the government wants to lease out the operation of a public good to the private sector then it has to be a long lease because otherwise who will put up the capital to take that on". And it's true!

But I think the underlying point is that maybe we just shouldn't do that? Our governments should be able to competently administer things like parkland and street parking. And the cost of giving up on them doing that is unacceptable because as you say, you can't do it without giving up control for an intolerable length of time. So sure it's necessary to do that if you're gonna do it, but that's precisely why you absolutely shouldn't do it, it's an absolute dereliction of duty.

Why should the government administer an airport terminal? It is ultimately a place for private businesses (airlines) to have reception and waiting rooms. I'd argue that the airlines should be buying their own land and building their own airports. Of course it makes sense (except maybe the busiest airports) for the different airlines to share a runway, and so it start to look like a public place. Airports are not public places though, and so I don't see why local governments should administer them (the FAA does have some safety operations at an airport).

While your typical playground makes sense for the city to administer, if the park is really a zoo it makes more sense for the city to not run it at all. However since the city benefits from the zoo it does make sense for the city to help the private zoo get started in a good location.

That's a great case for the abolishing the TSA and having private firms take over airport security.

Yeah, the reason I didn't include airports in my list is because I agree that the case that these should be government run is much weaker.

I don't really disagree that much with your point, but I'm also thinking it needs to go into the "Sure, and I'd like a pony" bucket.

Point being that municipal governments have tons of responsibilities: airports, parks, health districts, roads/sidewalks, etc., etc. There is just no way they can be competent in all these different areas, and indeed they aren't. There are good examples of non-profits that manage public resources much better than city government can, at a much lower cost (the Trail Foundation in Austin comes to mind for me). We shouldn't throw away the baby with the bathwater.

But why should the government be privatizing parkland management? Give away all the actual public oversight (via public meetings, talking to local officials, elections, etc.) for what benefit?

What if the government is, in fact, unable to competently manage the park lands for whatever reason? Then the benefits of such choice become obvious and quite alluring: why acquire competency if you can make someone else (who is already competent) to do it instead of you and also pay you for the privilege of doing this work? It's a win-win situation.

transferring control of parks to non-profits is a relatively common workaround to for a conservation-friendly government to ensure that parks outlast the current government.

if you keep protected areas within control of the government, there's always a concern that the next government decides to cancel those protections and sell that park off to industry or development. but if it's already "sold off" to a non-profit who wants to keep it a park, then it can't be sold to industry.

But in this case, wasn't the basic parking meter infrastructure already in place when the deal happened? It wasn't like the company had to invest millions of dollars and many years of development just to begin collecting revenue. I'm sure they probably did invest a lot in getting operations up and running internally, but as for the physical meters wasn't this more of a turnkey type of deal?

The parking company replaced all the old meters with the boxes and wrote an app, so they definitely did invest a bit. The boxes alone easily cost millions of dollars

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