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localization
How Biden Can De-Reaganify Contracting Standards
We should’ve gotten rid of these Reagan-era restrictions long ago, but doing so now is more important than ever, with massive new federal funds in the pipeline for infrastructure and climate projects.
Dec 10, 2023
Ronald Reagan left highly visible marks on our capital city. The president who believed trees cause pollution now has his name carved into an edifice housing Environmental Protection Aagency offices. The infamous buster of the air traffic controllers union has an eponymous airport.
Even more disturbing? Vestiges of the Reagan era that are nearly invisible but continue to undermine progress towards a more equitable and sustainable economy.
Case in point: an obscure Office of Management and Budget (OMB) policy dubbed the “Uniform Guidance” that sets out rules for state and local governments when they use federal funds to pay private contractors. Republican officials in the Reagan administration seized on this policy as a weapon for blocking sub-federal actions they didn’t like.
Despite zero empirical evidence that an “efficiency above all” approach would improve contracting outcomes, the Reaganites succeeded in making it difficult for states and cities to attach labor and equity standards to contracts, for fear they would lose federal funding.
What, in particular, had the Reaganites so rankled? This was the 1980s, the era of a growing global movement to divest from Apartheid South Africa. Some U.S. cities and states wanted to join universities, churches, and other investors in refusing to do business with corporations that were profiting off the racist regime.
A report by Jobs to Move America and the Center for Media and Democracy delves into this history in depth, documenting the Reagan administration’s crusade to elevate contracting “efficiency” and “fair and open competition” above other interests, from fighting Apartheid to creating family-supporting jobs for those who need them most.
Reagan-Era Rules Reinforced Historic Racial and Economic Inequities
That Reagan officials lumped these issues together should come as no surprise. The Apartheid system itself was both racist and anti-union, designed to protect the privileges of a white elite class. And while the Republicans couched their arguments in free market rhetoric, the impact of their changes to OMB regulations reinforced our own country’s deeply embedded racial and economic inequities.
Despite zero empirical evidence that an “efficiency above all” approach would improve contracting outcomes, the Reaganites succeeded in making it difficult for states and cities to attach labor and equity standards to contracts, for fear they would lose federal funding.
The revisions also explicitly banned local hire programs, despite significant research dispelling the myth that such programs are anti-competitive and demonstrating positive benefits for disadvantaged workers and local economies. The Reagan-imposed ban meant, for example, that a largely Black city with high unemployment rooted in historic racism would have little power to prevent a contractor from bringing in an all-white, non-local engineering crew for an infrastructure project in their municipality.
We should’ve gotten rid of these Reagan-era restrictions long ago, but doing so now is more important than ever, with massive new federal funds in the pipeline for infrastructure and climate projects. Public funds are precious, and we all have an interest in ensuring that the benefits of these investments are equitably shared.
Biden Administration Proposals for Undoing These 1980s Holdovers
Fortunately, Biden’s OMB is moving in this direction with recently issued proposals for updating the Uniform Guidance. In a detailed public comment letter, nearly 150 unions and other members of the Local Opportunities Coalition commend the administration for positive improvements in 11 areas. Top on their list: the welcome removal of the ban on local hire policies.
The coalition also highlights changes to allow the use of scoring mechanisms to give companies a leg up in bidding competitions if they commit to creating specific numbers and types of jobs, with minimum levels of compensation and benefits. They also note positive steps to explicitly allow hiring preferences for disadvantaged communities, the use of project labor agreements between employers and workers and other pre-hire collective bargaining agreements, bans on the use of contract funds for union-busting, and protections against employers misclassifying workers as “independent contractors” to skirt labor laws.
How the Administration Could Go Further to Ensure Public Investments Benefit Workers and Communities
The Local Opportunities Coalition also recommends a few key ways the Biden administration could strengthen their proposals. For instance, they could explicitly allow states and cities to require that contractors (and their subcontractors) pay living wages and clarify that local hire policies can apply to both infrastructure and service contracts.
In a separate comment letter, several pro-worker and Wall Street accountability groups also applauded the Biden administration’s progress while suggesting that OMB officials also make explicit that state and local officials have the flexibility to consider additional equity factors to ensure public funds actually help workers instead of lining the pockets of wealthy executives and shareholders.
Specifically, they urge support for procurement policies that give preference to companies that refrain from wasteful spending on stock buybacks, excessive CEO pay, and private equity-driven leveraged buyouts and drastic cost-cutting.
“Discouraging these practices will help ensure that corporate recipients of public funds provide high-quality services with broadly shared benefits,” notes the letter, signed by Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, the Institute for Policy Studies, Communications Workers of America, Jobs to Move America, Take on Wall Street, and United for Respect.
The OMB is expected to finalized changes to the Uniform Guidance in early 2024.
Back in the 1980s, Reagan’s efforts to crush the anti-Apartheid divestment movement ultimately failed. With demands for sanctions mounting, Congress passed a law in 1986 that gave cover to this effective means of solidarity with the South African trade unionists and others who successfully brought down the racist regime.
By scrapping the remnants of Reagan’s ideologically driven contracting standards, the Biden administration can build on this proud history of using the public purse for the greater good.
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'Save the News' Campaign Urges Immediate Covid-19 Relief Funds to Sustain Local Journalism in Time of Crisis
"Americans need access to information about their local communities more than ever, and yet layoffs and furloughs are only increasing as this pandemic continues."
May 18, 2020
In response to the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the news industry--forcing tens of thousands of layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts in recent months--the nation's largest labor union for media workers launched a new "Save the News" campaign on Monday and urged Congress to provide relief to an industry that should be considered an essential service in a democracy.
"Americans need access to information about their local communities more than ever, and yet layoffs and furloughs are only increasing as this pandemic continues. Congress needs to act to save the news before it's too late."
--Jon Schleuss, The NewsGuild
The NewsGuild, a sector of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), represents over 24,000 workers in North America. In a statement announcing its new campaign, the union noted that "local news outlets have been damaged for years by tech giants siphoning away advertising revenue and private equity ownership groups hollowing out the industry with extreme cost-cutting measures."
"The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the devastation of the local news industry," the statement continues, acknowledging advertising revenue declines as well as job and wage losses. "At the same time, readers are turning to local news outlets in record numbers in search of accurate, up-to-the-minute information about how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting their communities. Those journalists who remain have been hard at work providing life-saving public health information to readers, with many outlets offering their Covid-19 coverage for free as a public service despite financial strains."
The union's new campaign "will involve a six-figure digital ad campaign, direct lobbying on Capitol Hill, and a new website where--among other things--laid off and furloughed journalists will chronicle the industry's plights," according to the Daily Beast. The new website also details a three-part plan for federal lawmakers to provide relief to local news outlets, calling on Congress to:
- Providing direct grants to workers to subsidize the incomes of employees at local print and online news outlets;
- Expanding access to the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for local news outlets that currently may be ineligible because they are owned by larger companies; and
- Directing federal spending on community outreach advertising to local newspapers to replace lost revenue.
"I am humbled to see so many members of our industry unite under one cause: protecting local journalism," NewsGuild president Jon Schleuss said in a statement. "Americans need access to information about their local communities more than ever, and yet layoffs and furloughs are only increasing as this pandemic continues. Congress needs to act to save the news before it's too late."
\u201cSince 2004, the U.S. has lost ~1,800 newspapers, many of them small papers outside major cities. That's why, today, we're launching #SaveTheNews, a historic advocacy campaign making the case for why news must be included in future recovery efforts. https://t.co/puWmWUAYem\u201d— NewsGuild-CWA (@NewsGuild-CWA) 1589807942
"The window isn't closed," Schleuss told the Daily Beast. "But it has gotten worse [in just the last month] and it is going to get worse every day."
As the Daily Beast reported:
The campaign, bluntly titled "Save the News," is unlike anything that NewsGuild-CWA has done in decades, officials say. And it puts the union in delicate territory: asking for direct assistance from the very political entities and officials that it covers. Schleuss acknowledged the discomfort that can come when an industry premised on telling other people's stories of suffering now is being forced to chronicle and promote its own. But with newspapers hit hard by slash-and-cut-minded ownership and ad revenues being lost because of the economic downturn caused by the spread of the coronavirus, there are, simply put, few remaining options.
"It has been a challenge for our industry in marketing ourselves that we aren't telling the stories that what we have done has positively impacted communities," Schleuss said.
Journalist John Nichols wrote for The Nation last week that "the federal government has a long history of providing support for diverse and independent local media, going back to the founding days of the republic--a subject Robert W. McChesney and I explored at length in our 2010 book, The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again."
"But the current crisis is so extreme and coming on so rapidly," he added, "that it requires immediate attention that draws on existing proposals for sustaining journalism, as well as new ones."
Nichols acknowledged efforts by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the New York Times to track the impacts that the pandemic has had on the news media industry as well as calls from advocacy groups and congressional lawmakers (pdf) for using federal coronavirus relief funds to support local journalism.
"Journalism cannot survive, and certainly not thrive, without resources. And those resources are not coming from a 'free market' that has stalled out," Nichols warned. "There has to be a federal fix, and that means that Congress must include muscular support for journalism in stimulus measures." Among the calls Nichols highlighted was a proposal from Free Press Action, a media reform group with which he and McChesney have long been associated.
\u201cPrint, broadcast and digital newsrooms are hollowing out as journalists are laid off, furloughed and abandoned. News deserts are developing amid the #COVID19 meltdown. The future of journalism is on the line, and with it the future of democracy.\n https://t.co/ZqP9sX7r8O\u201d— John Nichols (@John Nichols) 1589370229
As Common Dreams reported last week, Free Press Action's proposal, What a Journalism-Recovery Package Should Look Like During the Covid-19 Crisis (pdf), encourages both immediate relief to protect local reporting jobs and longer-term policies that "could create a bridge from this emergency period to a future of sustainable journalism that serves and represents local communities, especially Black and Latinx communities that have been disproportionately harmed by the current crisis and poorly served by dominant media."
According to Nichols: "Two things distinguish Free Press Action's recommendations. First, they focus on sustaining journalism, rather than bailouts for the big media companies--and hedge-fund investors--that were making a mess of things even before the pandemic hit. Second, they bring realism and precision to a discussion that to this point has lacked clarity."
Specifically, the advocacy group's proposal says that "Free Press Action does not support measures to treat large newspaper or broadcasting chains as small businesses under recovery efforts such as the Paycheck Protection Program. Such policies put deeper-pocketed interests in competition with smaller businesses that have much less access to legal and banking resources."
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As Covid-19 Devastates Already Struggling Industry, New Blueprint Sets Forth Bold Vision to Save Local Journalism
"Congress must act now to save jobs and ensure crucial economic and health information reaches the people harmed most by this pandemic."
May 11, 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic continued to devastate local news outlets across the United States--even as some have seen audience and subscription boosts--the group Free Press Action on Monday unveiled a proposal to provide crucial financial relief to newsrooms and reporters while envisioning a more sustainable future for the industry.
The proposal, What a Journalism-Recovery Package Should Look Like During the Covid-19 Crisis (pdf), calls for Congress to allocate direct and indirect subsidies to journalists through the end of 2021 and to substantially increase federal funding for public-media institutions to protect local reporting jobs.
Free Press Action also put forth medium- and long-term policies that "could create a bridge from this emergency period to a future of sustainable journalism that serves and represents local communities, especially Black and Latinx communities that have been disproportionately harmed by the current crisis and poorly served by dominant media."
\u201cJust now, @FreePressAction releases a comprehensive series of policy recommendations that Congress should adopt to save local journalism and put tens of thousands of reporters back to work.\n\nhttps://t.co/aGR88S5Dtu\u201d— Tim Karr (@TimKarr@mastodon.social) (@Tim Karr (@TimKarr@mastodon.social)) 1589207057
The policy recommendations come about a month after Free Press Action joined with over 45 groups and scholars to urge federal lawmakers to "include the journalism sector in the congressional assistance packages revitalizing affected industries." In a joint letter (pdf), they emphasized the importance of community-specific news during a pandemic and how the current crisis has affected the media industry.
"Congress must act now to save jobs and ensure crucial economic and health information reaches the people harmed most by this pandemic," Craig Aaron, Free Press president and co-CEO, said in a statement Monday. "To get through this emergency, we need trustworthy news and reporters on the beat. Wishful thinking about new business models or philanthropy won't be enough."
Aaron, co-author of the new recovery package, explained that "our proposed policies focus on directing relief efforts into the hands of local outlets and working journalists--so they can keep people informed during this crisis and its aftermath--and lay the foundation for sustaining community-centered news in the future."
In a series of tweets Monday, Aaron detailed some of the group's recommendations and promised there is more to come:
\u201cWe also advocate for more government ad spending on local media and outlets serving communities of color and audiences in languages besides English.\n\nPlus we propose policies to fund libraries for digital subscriptions and support giving individual tax credits for subscriptions.\u201d— Craig Aaron (@Craig Aaron) 1589208782
\u201cAnd watch this space for more soon from @freepress and @freepressaction on longer-term strategies for creating a First Amendment Fund, taxing online ads, de-consolidating local media, and exploring the concept of media reparations. Stay tuned ...\u201d— Craig Aaron (@Craig Aaron) 1589208782
The proposal says the federal funding for local journalism "should be appropriated separately and in addition to money dedicated to small businesses" in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act President Donald Trump signed in late March. The plan also underscores the necessity of "strong guardrails to ensure money is spent locally and directly benefits newsrooms and their communities."
"Free Press Action does not support measures to treat large newspaper or broadcasting chains as small businesses under recovery efforts such as the Paycheck Protection Program," the proposal continues. "Such policies put deeper-pocketed interests in competition with smaller businesses that have much less access to legal and banking resources."
Proposal co-author and Free Press Action research director S. Derek Turner said Monday that "the local-news industry will continue to face massive business headwinds," calling for efforts to bolster local reporting even after the pandemic passes.
"Given the dire nature of the crisis, our proposal prioritizes getting important news and information in front of more people while targeting funds toward news that serves the local audiences that have been hardest hit," he said. "But if we, as a country, value high-quality local news, then bringing lasting relief to news deserts and meeting community-information needs everywhere will require a substantial public investment over a long period of time."
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