Sounds like the well worn "sabotage and save" tactics used in the UK to deliver schools and hospitals into private hands. First they are starved of funds, salar

Sounds like the well worn "sabotage and save" tactics used in the UK to deliver schools and hospitals into private hands. First they are starved of funds, salaries lowered to bring in incompetent and corrupt administrators, then a string of consultants to bleed them further, before eventually they are declared "failing institutions" and sold off cheap to cronies who will "invest". Hurting people in order to rush in and save them is obviously quite a common maneuver in politics (think false-flags), whereas in psychology it's "Factitious Disorder" (Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy). Doing it on the scale of a whole town so that a company can ride in and "save these poor people" with jobs seems quite audacious, but it's an improvement over what happened to Aboriginal Australians when mining companies needed their land.