In 2008, Mayor Richard M. Daley famously privatized Chicago's parking meters in order to get the city out of a pretty bad budget hole. In a similar but less ridiculous move, Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed in his budget address last week to outsource operations of 311, which "will save taxpayers a million dollars each year."
That's right, if the mayor get his way, you'll no longer speak to a city employee when reporting a pot hole or a sanitation code violation. It's unclear who would manage Chicagoans' 311 calls, but if the past 20 years of American companies outsourcing call centers is any indication, the requests could be managed by a third-party overseas.
Over the past couple of years, Emanuel's office has touted a program called "Open 311," which allows residents to make and track service requests online. Unlike a lot of technology efforts rolled out by the city (see Ventra), it actually works quite well. Given that there's already an effective system to make 311 requests to a robot online, it's not surprising that Rahm wants to outsource phone requests to a company that isn't necessarily based in Chicago.
In any case, $1 million in savings for a cash-strapped Chicago is barely even a drop in the bucket. Emanuel's budget proposal also includes a $550 million hike in property tax revenue that aims to help the city climb out of one of the biggest pension crises in the history of the world. Interestingly enough, outsourcing the city's 311 call center would presumably eliminate the positions of more than 50 city employees—all of whom will receive pensions.