Back in 2011, reports began to emerge that conditions in the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans had deteriorated after part of the staff had been privatized. According to reporting by The Detroit News, “contract workers [were] responsible for incidents in which a veteran suffered a broken neck as a result of improper lifting procedures and another veteran had a gastric […]

Crain’s is reporting that, buried in Governor Rick Snyder’s budget proposal is a section that will shift public funding and delivery of mental health services to private corporations. The move is being fought by patient advocates and the Michigan Association of Community Mental Health Boards. Gov. Rick Snyder’s $54.9 billion fiscal 2017 budget calls for privatizing the $2.4 billion public […]

The primary justification for Emergency Financial Managers or Emergency Managers in Michigan from the very earliest iterations (and continuing through to today) is that some cities and school districts were just too full of corruption and ineptitude and that the state needed to swoop in and save the day. However, this easy answer has turned out not have been the […]

Once upon a time, Michigan prison kitchens were run by state personnel. Because of this, the kitchens were excused from what was seen as redundant inspections by another government agency. However, with Gov. Snyder’s ongoing experiment in outsourcing and privatizing every government service that he possibly can, our prison kitchens are now run by private, for-profit corporations that are beholden […]

3,707. That’s how many reported issues were found relating to the for-profit private prison food vendor Aramark in just an 8-month period. A new report from Progress Michigan shows just how widespread the problems were and, just as important, the utter failure of the Snyder administration to correct them. After reviewing over 25,000 pages of emails between the Department of […]

After scandal after scandal (after scandal after scandal), the Michigan Department of Corrections While the Detroit Free Press takes a victory lap for this development, the true heroes were Progress Michigan who tenaciously kept the story in the news including spending the money needed to procure thousands of pages of documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. Here’s Progress Michigan’s […]

Another day, another scandal for Aramark, the food vendor for prisons in Michigan. With each new scandal, Gov. Rick Snyder’s dogged persistence in continuing to outsource this state government service to a private, for-profit company is called deeper and deeper into question. This time, maggots were found in potatoes in a kitchen at the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility near […]

The privatization of prison food services to the for-profit group Aramark has generated a seemingly endless litany of scandals and more are likely to come as Progress Michigan plows through the results of their exhaustive FOIA request. The scandals so far have been thoroughly documented here at Eclectablog. Although this collosal failure at privatization would lead most good leaders to […]

For-profit prison food vendor Aramark is back in the news again with revelations that its employees served food that had been in the trash and were rinsed off, reheated, and served to inmates. Aramark has a long history of patently absurd violations of state rules and, frankly, the norms of society, all of which have been documented here at Eclectablog. […]

Another day, another report that for-profit prison food vendor Aramark has done something truly outrageous. Honestly, these stories have become so commonplace that writing them is like a wicked case of deja vu. This time it’s serving cake to prison inmates that had been partially eaten by rodents. The news comes out of emails obtained from a FOIA request by […]

Ed Buss was hired about five months ago by the Snyder administration to oversee the work of Aramark, a for-profit vendor who the Snyder admnistration outsourced prison food services to. Buss was brought in to clean up some messes that Aramark had made. What messes? These messes: Running out of food Making unauthorized food substitutions in violation of their contract […]