I’m Dick Bishirjian, president.

We at the Academy believe that privatization training for public officials at the federal, state, and local levels nationwide and in foreign countries provides an important service.

Many public executives, particularly at the municipal level, are faced with what is, clearly, a crisis in public finance.

The crisis is made more difficult because the options available are few:

This quite naturally translates into public support for privatization. Since most public executives entered public service at times when resources were more plentiful, few have much knowledge of, or experience with, privatization.

Learning on the job is not the best way to learn about privatization, nor is that necessary.

We at the Academy intend to offer seminars for public executives on more than twenty privatization topics.

Beginning with the subject of airport privatization, taught by one of the masters of this discipline, Bob Aaronson of Lufthansa Consulting, we will offer courses on the privatization of correctional institutions, energy privatization, the valuation of public assets, outsourcing of computer services, private tollroad construction, water and wastewater privatization, and many more.

The course of privatization worldwide has been wide and deep. From Latin America, to Europe, throughout east and central Europe, Russia and east and southern Asia, the last fifteen years have been historic. And in the United States, privatization has resonated among Democrats and Republicans.

We are honored to be able to present our first guest lectures by the Honorable Bill Campbell, Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, and Gordon Bethune, President of Continental Airlines.

Mayor Campbell's address to the Council for Public-Private Partnerships addresses the issue of water privatization, and how Mayor Campbell was persuaded that privatization of his city's municipal water system is in the public interest.

Gordon Bethune gives a pungent address on America's Air Traffic Control system.  If you have flown in an American air carrier recently, you most likely spent a lot of time in the plane while it was waiting for air traffic control to approve takeoff. This isn't your airline's fault, it is the government. Air Traffic Control in the United States is controlled by the U.S. Government's Federal Aviation Agency, and, because Air Traffic Control is run by a government agency, it is inefficient, poorly administered, bureaucratic, and prone to breakdown. The greatest democracy in the world has chosen to give to government what ought to be operated by the private sector. President Bethune explains how, in other countries, but not the United States, air traffic control has been privatized.

We hope you will listen to Gordon Bethune and Mayor Campbell's speech, read a transcript of their remarks, or download it for later reading.

And we hope that you will log on to our Web Page and the many privatization seminars that we intend to offer in the months and years to come.

You may also hear a summary of Bob Aaronson's seminar that will be posted next month.

American Academy of Privatization's mrprivat.com is a production of American Academy of Distance Learning, a 501(c)(3) educational organization and is supported by tax exempt contributions.  If you would like to contribute to this program of lectures on privatization, please contact us at American Academy of Privatization, P. O. Box 41211, Norfolk, VA 23541. If your company would like to advertise on our Web Page or course templates, I hope you will E-mail me at dick@mrprivat.com

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