Slippery Bill Haslam Caught in a Web of Lies

Bill Haslam and his billionaire cronies have a plan to privatize Tennessee state prisons, parks, higher education facilities and services, hospitals, and military installations, "including everything from security and custodial work to financial accounting and business operations.  

Today's News-Sentinel has more details on the Haslam plan, which is costing the state more for private consultants than the state employees assigned to come up with the implementation plan.  You might call it the Blackwater Model, after the corporate welfare contractors and mercenaries in Iraq who got filthy rich while military personnel could not feed the families back home.

From today's story:

NASHVILLE — Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration is paying more each month to three consultants retained to develop plans for privatizing management of all Tennessee government-owned real estate than it paid in salaries to four state employees assigned to the effort, state figures show. 

The team is operating under the title Strategies for Efficiency in Real Estate Management, or SEREM, and is led by Terry Cowles, who is director of the governor’s Office of Customer-Focused Government. 

It was set up earlier this year and has a goal of implementing a broad new outsourcing plan by July 1, 2016, according to SEREM documents initially obtained by WTVF-TV, though Haslam insisted last week the idea is to just explore options for saving taxpayer dollars and that he has no bias toward privatization. . . .

This news comes even as Haslam has repeatedly denied that any implementation plan has been approved.  Can an implementation plan exist without state approval??