I visited the canyon this past summer, and I have to say the entire operation seemed very well run. Probably because it’s one of the more popular parks and generates a lot of cash. But the rooms, transportation, and facilities were all top notch. Pretty suprising for a gov’t operation.

Actually, I am part-owner of a (very) small business that puts on medieval and ancient days for schools, so we deal with “government” also, but on a very petite, local teacher level.

Love your blog.

I really think its sad that the USA and State of

Arizona has come to what it is. I enjoy the Coyote,

keep up the good work Warren. USA and AZ need more like

you!

Tractordriver

Public sector employees typically react with great hostility to normal people who go to the politicians to seek answers. By “normal” I mean people without political or union connections. Statements along the lines of “all will not go well for those who …..” are quite typical.

FWIW – here in Oz most public sector employees seem to consider that “profit” remains a (very) dirty word. They typically operate within a personal world-view that says that they would get paid much more in private enterprise, and would do the job much better than those already there. However, they choose to labour mightily for the “common good”.

The view that private enterprise might be allowed to do something, with profit, that is currently undertaken by unionised public sector employees is anathema.\

I have had public sector employees tell me that they expect/require us to make losses on government contracts, as part of our “contribution” to the greater good.

Stay away from them if you can…

Obviously, the traditional way of getting government to listen is to make some big campaign contributions or hire some politicians to sit on your board . . . but you don’t need the business that badly. [Same difference for a NFP structure -- you need to hire some useless political hacks and play the fake charity game to get government money.]

On the flip side, I’d ask whether it’s worth antagonising the state administration (ie the ongoing public servants) by pressing politicians on the issue at a time when you evidently don’t have a real opportunity for getting the business. After all, public servants tend to stay for whole careers, not just elected terms, and they’ll be able to use public money and time to undermine you. Which is exactly what they’ll do once their political bosses start demanding briefing papers and talking points to defend against comments in the press.

What you might consider is to find a line into the current opposition party and subtly work that angle until the next election. Of course, that depends entirely on whether you can stomach them or any of their local candidates.

Barring that, you wait until the problem grows too large for them to ignore, then step in as usual.

It’s a rotten old business, isn’t it?!

As an aside, you really should lock in longer term contracts like a decade. Reminds me of the grazing permits when they spanned years, there was an incentive to invest. But when the duration was shortened, they grazed to the point of destruction to get their money out of it.

I think you’d have a much easier sell. We aren’t an evil for-profit corporation, we are a friendly non-profit here to help out where we can.