Economic hard times make all of us review our spending and how to cut costs. That is true at home, at church, in our businesses and in government. Government tends to be the last of these groupings to seriously look at truly restructuring how it delivers services and how it spends taxpayers’ money. But across the United States federal, state, and local governments have have all turned — successfully — to privatization as a means of providing better government services more efficiently. In these keynote remarks before the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, Jefferson Institute President Mike Thompson provides an overview of the privatization debate and its use (and non-use) in Virginia and Fairfax County.