[5] Homeless shelters and food banks are run by private organizations, who also provide treatment services, operate Head Start programs and work with child welfare agencies.
The United States Supreme Court upheld school voucher programs against an Establishment Clause challenge in Zelman v.
[4] Both for-profit and non-profit entities are tasked with various responsibilities related to the US foreign aid budget such as providing emergency humanitarian relief, development assistance, as well as post-conflict reconstruction efforts.
[7][4] Gillian Metzger writes: Adequately guarding against abuse of public power requires application of constitutional principles to every exercise of state authority, regardless of the formal public or private status of the actor involved: 'It surely cannot be that government, state or federal, is able to evade the most solemn obligations imposed in the Constitution by simply resorting to the corporate form' and thereby transferring operation of government programs to private hands"Even if private actors cannot be held accountable through the traditional constitutional mechanism, they may be bound by other regulatory or contractual requirements.
This kind of public-private partnership differs in significant ways from a common modern form, where publicly held services or resources might be handed over to a private company with few stipulations and for an indefinite period of time.
For example, in 2006 the LA Times reported on this pattern in an article stating that for "Indianapolis, New Orleans, Atlanta and other cities, privatization has been accompanied by corruption scandals, environmental violations and a torrent of customer complaints.
The municipality's public utility, JEA, decided to buy the water system for $219 million, projecting that this would actually save customers 25% on monthly bills.
The New York Times reported in 2004 that a consortium of citizen's groups had won a suit against the city of Los Angeles to repair 488 miles of sewer lines and conduct other maintenance.
Governments that implement privatization as part of their reforms use it as a mechanism to pursue a variety of objectives, both macroeconomic and fiscal.
Privatization can also be a mechanism for improving the fiscal position, particularly in cases where governments have been unwilling or unable to continue to finance deficits in the public enterprise sector.
Immediate economic questions such as “Won't privatization increase customers’ monthly water bills?” are accompanied by larger and longer-term questions relating to public health, employment, political control, environmental issues, and relations with other city services.