To me it seems like the best of both worlds. Local government has more limited control with their technical incompetence while private industry doesn't have the ownership leverage to run you around. I want the people I vote for to have control, but I sure as hell don't want them managing, staffing the people for, and maintaining the infrastructure. You can call it "skimming profits", but I just call it IT outsourcing and any reasonable local government should lest they all write their own software and have their own large IT departments. You didn't "already pay for" future maintenance with your past taxes.