As a businessman, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam knows what people in business know. One day, the state will have a downturn, and expenses may have to be cut.
Many people in academia and government don't think that way. They don't worry about budgets, bottom lines or the future. They just figure in their fields the money will always continue to flow.
Haslam, several years ago, proposed looking into outsourcing with an eye on saving money for the state. Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), the contractor selected by the administration to handle any outsourcing, says it could - for example - save the University of Tennessee system up to $6.8 million in the first year through its plan.
The state has left it up to each state school as to whether it wants to use JLL's services, and JLL has promised there would be no layoffs if the school uses the company and that current employees would have equitable pay and benefits if that occurs.
Despite the reassurances, government and higher education employees - most who don't bother themselves to think about the state's bottom line - don't want to outsource services at their school. They - and unions that represent some of the employees - claim they don't know enough about how employees, new and old, would be treated over time.
We believe that's Haslam's purpose in the first place. An economic downturn, with no savings from outsourcing, is likely to force layoffs at state schools. It's happened before. And, as many people in the job market before the Great Recession understand, many of those jobs don't come back.
At the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the Faculty Senate unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution against outsourcing, and a state public higher education employees union released a statement questioning the practice.
In Chattanooga, City Council members Demetrus Coonrod and Russell Gilbert, prompted by requests from representatives from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (which has not made a decision on the issue) and Chattanooga State Community College (which says it has no plans at this time to outsource), sponsored a nonbinding resolution Tuesday offering the sense of the council on the idea.
Since the governor has given each school carte blanche on the outsourcing decision, we don't believe the City Council needed to weigh in on this at all.
Nevertheless, while we understand the concern over employees, and especially with their longer term futures, none of us has a crystal ball with which to see an economic downturn. Haslam has been trying to offer a way in which any such occurrence would be less difficult.
Some people, though, never see the forest for the trees.