A couple of questions ...

So there were a couple of debates this weeks, and we have to say that DeSantis probably lost the week because he failed to put Luke away. Remember that in a tie in a debate, DeSantis basically loses; he needs to win people over everytime he opens his mouth. I still go back to Drew Weston's somewhat slimy but probably necessary book "The Political Brain". If Mr. DeSantis had lead his segments with a personal statement or a story about a real Pittsburgher, maybe he would have gotten more traction. But we have to remember that for all his technical experience and ability, this is his first race, his first effort at reaching out to the public. He is doing ok now, and I suspect people who hear him up close sense his sincerity and concern. But there are only so many people he can reach personally.

The Ethics Board is starting to fence with the Mayor on the issue of how much of a contribution from private companies for charitable events is acceptable. The Board wants the Mayor (and others) to only accept tickets from the charity itself. The Mayor wants to report any contribution made on the Mayor's behalf over $500 on his annual ethics form (so that he could get into a golf tournament). The Ethics Board is going to create a subset, a committee of two Ethic Board member, plus one member chosen by the Mayor's office, and one chosen from council. Annual Ethics Form. That is a document I would like to read. Maybe he records his hot dog receipts there.

I have been wondering lately about all the negative publicity that the Mayor has been receiving. I don't know how many Pittsburghers read the New York Times, but I did hear (second hand) one person say that "no thinking person could vote for Luke". Ravenstahl has had very little positive press recently, and it seems like every week he is linked to something bad. The 70% positive approval poll number is cited often, especially by the Mayor's supporters. Has anyone done a poll recently? You gotta wonder how much of a toll all these negative stories are taking on the Mayor's popularity.

Are the casino revenues part of next year's budget? If so, maybe someone better get around to amending the budget. Maybe that's what the Mayor will say in Harrisburg next week. We aren't going to have the casino bucks, so let us keep the parking revenue.

I wonder if Mark DeSantis will sneak into city hall next week and try out the Mayor's chair.

Are you better off than when that do-nothing Bob O'Connor was Mayor?

The bag of Health and Politics wants bloggers to start writing pro-DeSantis posts, instead of anti-Ravenstahl ones. See, the thing is that Mark doesn’t give us new material everyday, while Luke generally does. And Luke’s material generally leads me in a negative direction.

Maybe because I don’t like incumbents who brag the Mayor’s statement/question during the PG forum about being better off than we were 13 months ago annoyed me. I know it is the sort of thing an incumbent has to say, but it bothers me on a visceral level. Maybe I just don’t like incumbents. The Mayor also recently said something about reaching out to people more than any other recent Mayor (I know, I’m not even going back through my own posts to get the exact quote, I only have a minute here). My point is that the Mayor is not thinking about what he is saying, he is just mouthing political phrases. If he were thinking, he would realize he is disparaging Bob O’Connor, his immediate predecessor of 13 months ago. I wish the press would pick up on that. By the way, this was most recently mentioned by Jason Phillips on the Comet, previously on Chad Hermann's TWM.

The Mayor could say something like "Are you better off now than you were 23 months ago, when Bob O'Connor came into office and I now continue his work?" or "I reach out to more people than any other Mayor in recent history, besides Bob O'Connor, of course". No politician likes to share the limelight, but the (interim) Mayor is comparing himself to others, and saying all others fall short. Bob O'Connor can't hurt Ravenstahl politically, unless Ravenstahl says something negative about O'Connor.

Bear with me, this analogy is going to get a little strained ….

Bear with me, this analogy is going to get a little strained ….

I guess a political campaign is a bit like an extended job interview process. Job interviews might seem more rational; you don’t hire from a pool of only two applicants, and you don’t automatically choose an applicant just because they wear a blue suit instead of a gray suit. But then most managers get less information about their job applicants than we get for candidates, and most managers have no better skills at assessing people than any one else.

Anyway, we have the two applicants, Ravenstahl and DeSantis. We know a lot, by now, about Luke Ravenstahl, although only a few of us have voted for him, and at the time of that vote the biggest factor was his familiar name, and the fact that he is a democrat. We know next to nothing about Mark DeSantis, few of us have met him, and few of us know what he stands for.

If you haven’t gone to Mark DeSantis’ website, I urge you to do so. He tells us what he wants to do about the city’s problems. Now, we only have his word that this is what he will try, but when do we have anything more from any new politician or job applicant?

You can look at Luke Ravenstahl’s website as well, but unless something has changed in the last week, it has not changed since April, since Peduto dropped out of the primary. In fact, the Mayor has said publicly that he wants to lay low for the next few weeks. He is taking your vote for granted, he does not feel he should have to work any harder to convenience you to vote for him. UPDATE: the Mayor's campaign site has been updated. It *looks* like it has the same little movies as his policy content, when I get a chance I will look.

In terms of resumes, obviously Mark DeSantis has a longer one, with work at the White House level. It is reasonable to point out, though, that he has never held elected office. Ironically, Interim Mayor Ravenstahl has a year’s worth of OJT, that really should count for something. Technically not the incumbent, he nevertheless has been doing the job. Do you think, if he had run for Mayor in 2005, he would have surpassed Bob O’Connor, Bill Peduto, or Michael Lamb in the primary? But now, by accident, by virtue of being a compromise Council president, he is the Mayor of Pittsburgh.

I don't want to go through a litany of the Mayor's adventures. In my opinion, most don’t rise to the level of much more than errors in judgment, but as Doug Shields said, voters “have” to reflect on them as character issues. There was the $85,000 whistleblower payout to Commander McNeilly, and a Homeland Security grant may be in danger. But look, the Oakmont Golf thing (for example), with Tiger Woods, could have involved an embarrassing call to the Oakmont police for trespass. The airplane ride with Ron Burkle could involve a future call of a “I already scratched your back, now scratch mine” variety. The Mayor recently said he wanted to be able to do the kinds of things 27 year olds do. You don’t often hear someone, in what amounts to an extended job interview, tell their future potential boss(es) they intend to commit youthful indiscretions. That is a fair interpretation, although not the only one, of the Mayor’s statement. It's important to remember that this Mayor has come to the notion of honestly answering questions only recently and reluctently. He is on record as not wanting to diviledge personal financial information, and he seems to separate sporting event tickets from the notion of ethics. How the Mayor handles the ongoing parking tax fiasco will be a decent barometer of his progress towards maturity.

Mark DeSantis did take a long time to start running for the job. As I said, he’s never run before, and also sometimes it seems he is oscillating between just trying to make a good showing and trying to win. But he has mentioned (to me, at least) the promises he made to his board and his employees as part of the reason for the slow start. He appears not to divide his loyalties easily, which is both heartening and a little disturbing. Heartening because it shows depth of commitment, disturbing because at some levels politicians need to be a little slippery, especially a republican in a democrat town.

My personal take on Mark DeSantis is that he is big on symbols and symbolic government, which I suppose might relate him to the late Milton Friedman (because of Friedman’s study of expectations). That's not his only quality, by any stretch, but I find it intersting. His proposed reduction of wage and business taxes in a couple of years are pretty small, more symbols of the city's commitment to becoming more business friendly. But he also seems to have plans that actually and concretely tackle issues like attracting new businesses, unlike anything I have heard from Ravenstahl. I think a Pittsburgh with Mark DeSantis as Mayor and Pat Dowd on council (2 PhD’s!) would be one that would start to lumber toward modernity, embrace computing as it as not yet done and try to find some smart, long term solutions. My comparison point for Mark DeSantis is Michel Bloomberg, who is an actual democrat who ran as a republican. I think both men are smart technocrats who seek solutions, not slogans. Well , not many slogans for DeSantis, anyway.

The politics of parking indeed ....

Today’s Early Returns column has it just about exactly right. The Mayor has been handed a piece of political dynamite which could derail his career in many ways. The bill the council approved, to keep the parking tax rate at 45%, not only defies the state legislature. It also throws a wrench into a complicated set of negotiated taxes and deals made to get Act 47 going.

Now, I don’t believe Act 47 was ever designed to get Pittsburgh fully out of its mess. I personally believe it was simply designed to keep Pittsburgh afloat until there was a new governor. Act 47 seemingly has nothing to say about debt and pensions (except maybe lots a luck). Motznik’s bill actually has the virtue of addressing those problems in a tiny way.

But the state legislators from around here tend to represent either the suburbs, the city and the suburbs, or have no power. Suburbanites have been paying the $52 EMS tax to Pittsburgh if they work in city limits and the jacked up parking rates. They are going to demand to their legislators that they stop Pittsburgh from bailing out its debt and pension problems on the backs of those from suburbia who are foolish enough to work in the city limits.

The Mayor has to know the legislators are not going to be sympathetic when he goes to see them, but if he doesn’t sign this bill he is going to have to tap dance fast to explain why he didn’t, to council and a public tired of a financially distressed city.

Meanwhile, I keep saying the ICA team for sure, and maybe the Act 47 team, have to approve the Mayor’s budget. They may act as the legislature’s heavy, throwing the budget back to the Mayor with recommended cuts. They could do that for a while, tying up the Mayor’s attention.

The last paragraph of that part of Early Returns is interesting:
“One card the mayor could yet play: A Dec. 15 legal opinion by Solicitor George Specter finds that the city's "home rule powers do not permit it to exceed the rate restrictions adopted by the General Assembly in Act 222," which set the schedule for the parking tax reduction to 35 percent by 2010. There's nothing like a legal opinion to get council members to change their votes. We here at Early Returns just wonder why the mayor didn't use it prior to today's vote.”
So the Mayor can say that council has overstepped its bounds with this bill and refuse to sign. But maybe he’d better do that soon.

Mayoral Health

I am going to sound like that surrealistic “I LUV LUKE” blog, but I am concerned about the Mayor’s health (BTW, their URL is a lot easier to type than mine, I really should have gone with something that simple). He is reporting that he gave up coffee for 12 diet pepsi’s a day, which “keeps his energy up”. Er, … diet drinks have no calories. This is not energy, this is caffeine, unless some of them are decaf (hoping the ones he drinks after 3 pm are, or he might be up all hours). All that phosphorous is going to rot his teeth, too. These are probably 20 ounce bottles, I assume, since it’s hard to find the 16 ounce variety. No wonder the Mayor wants to go to a bar for a drink with his wife. The stress and caffeine is doing a number on him. He's self-medicating.

It’s good to hear he is running three times a week, to “clear his head”. I can absolutely understand, although at the moment I am restricted to an Airdyne type stationary bike because I partially tore a bit of knee ligament or tendon or something. The Mayor needs to cut back on the caffiene, get more sleep, eat more fruits and vegetables, keep up and even expand his running program and perhaps try some meditation. A few years of that and he will be as calm as Tom Murphy. Er … Well, maybe he could run a marathon, like he says he wants to.

One man interested in diets is Mark DeSantis. But the target of his weight reduction program is no one person, rather it is the city government. It is hard to believe that among recent Mayors the mercurial Tom Murphy was the leader in fiscal discipline, but there it is. Bob O’Connor and now Luke Ravenstahl seem(ed) to want to sneak some expansion in, under the Act 47 radar. A good test of the Mayor’s commitment to fiscal discipline will be his reaction *if* city council votes today to freeze the parking tax. I don’t know if that is something he could veto, if so, he should; if not, he should complain loudly. Meanwhile DeSantis, ever the believer in symbols, is willing to trim the Mayor’s office by half. Mike Huckabee, another republican, whose concern with health and weight lead him to lose one hundred pounds while in office, suggested that leaders don’t ask people to do something the leaders are not willing to do themselves (shades of Mooon Over Parador). Mark DeSantis won’t ask the city government to make do with less until he does. Of course, he may have to break his “no layoffs” pledge to shrink the Mayor’s staff (if he is elected), but I think they probably would be moving on anyway. If Desantis has to make do with half a staff, he might start drinking 12 diet pepsi’s a day…

The Mayor in the NYTimes

By now, all good Burghospree readers have seen the NYTimes story about the Mayor. Mostly it speaks for itself, but I want to interject just a bit. Around about the middle of the story the Mayor stipulates to five different controversies that he has largely brought upon himself. It is left to Doug Shields to mention *part* of a sixth, the police promotion/Lemiuex tournament-gate. Perhaps wisely Mr. Shields did not include the Mayor’s visit to the Ethics Board. And everyone pretty much knows that the Mayor has, in each instance except perhaps for “TailGate”, had to amend his story because the facts did not support his original statements. Yet the Mayor says he is not going to attend Steelers games because he believes the press will hound him continuously during the game. Which, by the way, means the Mayor missed Sunday’s game, I guess, and will miss one Monday night game the day before the election (big sacrifice).

Has anyone seen a TV or print story where the Mayor was approached at a Steelers game or on the golf course? There was Schultz’s blog entry about the Mayor at a Steeler’s game, but that was apparently happenstance. I’d be curious, and willing to trumpet loudly bad media behavior, at least as loudly as I complain about the Mayor.

So, in the story, the Mayor admits to several controversies only after he accuses the press of harassment. The media in Pittsburgh is reasonably respectful, presumably because it wants access to the Mayor’s office in the future. Yet in a town with two papers and three TV stations, there is enough competition that they have to report these stories.

Maybe it is a good thing the Mayor isn’t going to Steelers games for now. I still remember this quote from last March, concerning accepting tickets for multiple events, while staying under the $250 ethics limit:
“”So accepting a ticket from the University of Pittsburgh that night in my opinion in no way violated any ethics code in the city of Pittsburgh," he said.
"I don't necessarily keep track, but I don't believe that I've ever exceeded that amount with any corporation or any entity””

Maybe no one wants to give the Mayor a ticket right now, which might explain this closing statement form the Times story ““But asking whether I paid for my own seats at the Steelers game and requesting for me to show the hot dog receipts still seems ridiculous to me.””.

Strength of opposition ...

So, to me, the interesting thing about the opposition to the Mayor is the strength of it. I'm not saying that there is an anti-Ravenstahl majority out there, rather that the anti-Ravenstahl minority seems fierce. There are a few ardent supporters of the Mayor, such as Matt H and a few other anonymous commenter's. But the people who speak up against the Mayor seem very specific and determined. For example, there was a phone in poll on KDKA radio that I gather that ran 67% for DeSantis. There were the three letters in the Sunday's PG about the Tailgate affair. Of course, there is near universal Burghospree disapproval of Ravenstahl, but I wouldn't necessarily credit that.

What's amusing is that I remember that Bill Peduto had talked about the kind of negative poll numbers that would have been generated by attacking Ravenstahl. But the Mayor has created a near continuous series of attacks on himself. Just recently between the Northside meeting, asking DeSantis to leave a forum and then the Tailgate thing, the Mayor has found himself explaining situations nearly continuously. If Peduto had stayed in the race, I wonder if maybe the Democrats might want to switch their endorsement at some point. You know, the way things have been going.

Anyway, the anecdotal evidence is that those who oppose the Mayor are pretty firm in their position. Phone polls are notoriously unreliable, although they might be a decent indicator of who is going to vote. So maybe one hundred KDKA listeners are firmly going to vote for DeSantis. Maybe the radio voters and the letter writers are all republicans, but I don't think so. They have the feel of disillusioned democrats. Meanwhile the party faithful may be wondering what they have signed on for.

We will see how the upcoming debates go.

Odds n'ends n'@

The Burghospree is buzzing again, and not just because of the return of B94. The Mayor's Yukongate scandal apparently has legs online. Chad Hermann over at TWM has apparently coined a term “TailGate”; we will see if anyone in the MSM picks it up. Bob Mayo, for his part, has two interesting downloads at his blogsite. First, he (or WTAE) stepped around the problems the PG has with getting a copy of the Homeland Security grant (for the Yukons) from the city by getting a copy of the application form from an HS website (Bob cautions us that it is a large file: Cable Modems eat one megabyte files in 30 seconds, if that). The application truly mentions little about vehicles, except to say that the money can not be used for general purpose vehicles. I’m sure the actual grant spells out how the vehicles can be used. Which leads us to the second download, two to three minutes of the Mayor and Chief Harper being interviewed (outside in front of the Mayor’s Impala, in the heat). The Mayor’s performance was reminiscent of the promotion’s affair (“I knew nothing”), but Chief Harper was especially fun as he hypothesized a crisis such as a homicide and no vehicles available to the detectives. Should they wait (an by implication let suspects get away) or should they use a Homeland Security SUV? Of course, it is some distance between a homicide investigation and a Toby Keith concert, or even a trip to DC.

A reinvigorated Char has also talked about who knew what and when in TailGate, and about Nate Harper. For my money, Yaronne Zober’s role in this thing seems blown out of proportion. Over a year ago he witnessed a signing of a grant. He has since ridden in the SUV to DC and I think maybe somewhere else. But remember, the Mayor died in the interim. He may have forgotten some things while trying to deal with other pressing issues.

On another subject, I heard, very much second hand, that former Duquesne University President and ICA team member John Murray had seen the Mayor’s proposed budget, and noticed that the Mayor was “adding personnel here and there”. Dr Murray apparently didn’t approve and thought this boded ill for the future of the city. It would be interesting if the current ICA or Act 47 team rejected the Mayor’s budget, even while the US Attorney was slapping the wrist of the Police Chief. It was too bad that Dr Murray didn’t comment on Mark DeSantis’ proposed budget, or if he did I didn’t hear about it.

In other important news, RiffTrax had released a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” thingie. RiffTrax is the latest Mike Nelson venture, essentially Mystery Science Theatre 3000 without the robots.

A tale of two news stories....

There’s a weird race to a bottom between two news services I look at. Yesterday evening KDKA reported that when the four intelligence unit SUV’s arrived last March, Chief Nate Harper immediately thought of the Mayor. Sergeant Wallace apparently started protesting immediately. Although KDKA does not say so, we can assume the protests only got as far as the Chief’s office, since the Chief apparently was the one who put the Mayor together with an SUV. Only in August did Sergeant Wallace go over the Chief’s head to Public Safety Director Michael Huss (and was reprimanded).

Tangentially, I wonder if Nate Harper is becoming the designated administration fall guy. The Mayor reprimanded him in the hiring thing, and now he is being volunteered as the person who was informed that the Mayor was breaking the rules and let it happen anyway. Will he be offered up to the US Attorney as the rule breaker?

Today the PG reports that Mayoral Chief of Staff Yaronne Zober witnessed the signing of a federal grant with Homeland Security, in April of 2006 (the PG sees KDKA’s last March and raises them April 2006). In witnessing the signing is implied the idea that Mr. Zober understood the rules for use. And Mr. Zober has ridden in the SUV, to Harrisburg and to DC. The PG lists the grant Mr Zober witnessed as around 60 grand. For four SUV’s? Sure. The PG also complains that the Mayor’s administration won’t let them look at the grant. The PG uses the phrase “citing national security” in the title of their story, but the quote from the Mayor’s office reads: “"The City of Pittsburgh cannot release them, they are 'Official Use Only: Sensitive Homeland Security Information,'" mayoral spokeswoman Alecia Sirk wrote in an e-mail response to questions.” Interestingly, the FOP continues to volunteer how this could endanger the grant. They have been very visible on this particular story, aggressively complaining about how the grant is being endangered by the Mayor's behavior, and commenting about how the chain of command leads to the Mayor.

It should have been common sense, I would have thought, whether to use that SUV. If there is a chance people will find out, you should *not* use something bought with federal money. I have to think if the Mayor was older, he might have wondered how the financially distressed city bought four SUV’s. If he did ask, and he may have done, he should have maybe wondered, and asked, are there any restrictions on using this vehicle?

There is also the issue of humility. The Mayor has many chances to set an example. He could ask for the city to buy a Ford Escape Hybrid, as Senator Dick Durbin has bought for himself, to set an example. He could have requested a different *car* from the city motorpool. I don’t know if the Mayor was being relentlessly practical about the larger passenger capacity of an SUV, but he could think about different considerations as well.

The boy who would be Mayor/Fiscal redux

I read somewhere, maybe in a blog, that the Mayor had put 300 miles of extra mileage on the Yukon. Maybe, maybe not. But this is a direct quote from the PG: “Chief Harper said that when the mayor's car was in for repairs, or when he needed a larger vehicle, the bureau often sent over the Yukon.” (emphasis mine). And apparently the police sergeant who complained, had tried through channels to have something done for “at least a month”. The chief almost sounds proud of giving the Mayor “the best vehicle available”, but her superiors sound perhaps frightened of a capricious Mayor’s firing power: “"They basically said, to the best of their knowledge, the mayor can take any vehicle he wants, because he's the mayor."”. That last was the statement of James Malloy of the FOP.

We haven’t heard anything about the Mayor’s bodyguards recently, it might be time for some reporter to ask about them again. Before the US Attorney’s investigation seals the records.

You may remember the two detectives assigned to the Mayor, one at night and one during the day, were on track to make more than the Mayor by the end of the year. I guess Mayoral protection detail must automatically pay time and a half (and maybe double time for overtime), because otherwise these gentlemen would have to each work maybe twenty five extra hours a week, guarding the Mayor when he is out in public, to stay on track to double their salaries.

This is relevant because the Mayor is complaining that he is a regular 27 year old, and like a regular 27 year old, he likes to go out and have the occasional drink and go to concerts. In fact he says "that is what 27 year olds do and I shouldn't be any different". He thinks this is something the city “should” embrace, as he has embraced this lifestyle. In the next sentence he talks about looking at “issues that are of importance and what we've done as an administration over 13 months I'm very proud of where we're at”.

We should be looking at issues of importance. We should also be willing to accept, if perhaps not “embrace”, the night life of the Mayor. But the Mayor seems to expect respect. Respect will not come from having an active night life. And so far, for at least some people, the Mayor’s daylight record is mixed. The Mayor inherited a city in financial distress that is now showing small surpluses that were designed into the five year Act 47 plan. A major initiative, Pittsburgh Promise, has really gone no where. There was the traffic light contract, the bidding process for which was run in an at least unusual, not to say shady, manner. There was the firing of directors, which at the end of the day achieved almost nothing. There is the Penguin’s arena and the casino, but I don’t see exactly where or for what to give the Mayor credit for there. In fact, he has missed some opportunities, in my opinion, to step and maybe negotiate and resolve traffic issues around the North Shore.

These are all issues to debate in the election. Speaking of which, the Mayor asked his opponent, Mark DeSantis, to leave the room yesterday morning at a candidate's forum, when the Mayor was to speak and then take questions. This doesn't seem to be in the spirit of a free exchange of ideas. Of course, the Mayor could just be following the lead of George W Bush, who also likes to have election events controlled.

I was asked, by at least one person, what my opinion of the DeSantis fiscal plan for the city is. I read it more carefully over lunch yesterday. It seems like it really is DeSantis’ markup sheet for the Mayor’s budget, which also means that it probably makes better sense if you have the Mayor’s budget to read along side it, damnit. But maybe I am wrong.

I think DeSantis’ fiscal plan is as notable for what it doesn’t mention as for what it does. He has already allocated casino tax revenue and non-profit contributions in an earlier plan, so he largely ignores them in this plan. I know he wants to use tax cuts to entice business to locate in Pittsburgh, but he needs to be oh-so-careful, cutting taxes in a distressed city. His tax cuts are across the board, won’t benefit any group more than any other (except perhaps businesses), and they are small enough as to be close to not much more than symbolic.

The plan is only an overview, but the point is the direction it points to, one of fiscal austerity, so that the city can survive without bankruptcy and can start to make meaningful contributions to its pension funds and debt, eventually recover and leave state oversight. Maybe city council would refuse to pass a lot of it, maybe they would have other helpful ideas. Even if we keep some of DeSantis’ plan, we would be headed in a better direction.

Don't watch that policy, listen to this scandal ...

I swear to god that the Ravenstahl administration is keeping little mini-non-scandals in its back pocket, to overshadow DeSantis' announcements, like Desantis’ proposed fiscal policy from yesterday. I guess the Ravenstahl campaign/administration figures to make the Mayor's immaturity work for him. "There he goes again, isn't it cute?" Another scandal for the Burghospree to tut-tut over.

I guess only Rich Lord could tell us how he found out, but he reports today on the Mayor’s use of a police Yukon paid for with Homeland Security money to go to a Toby Keith concert and for other "personal use". Seems like the other "personal use" could be interesting, but we only find out about the concert, which we already knew the Mayor had attended. The police sergeant who complained apparently isn’t talking, so the report must of come from someone else, and our public safety department, in rare reversal of policy, confirmed the story sufficiently that Mr Lord could report on it. What was it that Danny DeVito said in the second Batman? “Played this city like a harp from hell”?

In other news, Chris Schultz informs us that what I will call the first official PDF of the whole … Frackin’ campaign is available: http://www.post-gazette.com/downloads/20071002_desantis_plan.pdf. It is a PDF version of the DeSantis press release on fiscal policy. I can’t say whether it was produced by the DeSantis campaign or the PG, but I suspect it was the later. Enjoy the download, take it with you on your laptop or pda, trade ‘em with your friends …

fiscal policy

Apparently Mark DeSantis released his plan for Pittsburgh’s Financial Recovery today. This one seemed like a quiet release to me. I had to search on “DeSantis” on the PG website at lunch time to find an article on it, though it was (is) front and center on the “DeSantis for Mayor” website.

In the introduction for his plan, DeSantis suggests that the Mayor's five year plan is heading the city into bankruptcy. Considering that the Mayor seems to be expecting the state to bail out the pension and possibly the debt issues, he might have a point.

DeSantis' plan is divided into six parts, which I will just highlight. First is an annual 1% reduction in spending, second is doing more with less as a culture, third is merging as much city and county services as possible, fourth is auctioning off city owned properties (those tax lien things), fifth is reducing pension liabilities and debt and six is reducing business taxes.

A lot of these ideas would not survive contact with city council. In the real world, a republican mayor would have to make some compromises. But these proposals may help DeSantis raise money for his campaign, because they will appeal to the business community (even the part, or maybe particularly the part about not going bankrupt).

To say the plans seems draconian seems inadequate. Actually, I overstate a bit, but I can’t imagine any city workers cheering at this budget, although it does promise no layoffs. Instead, DeSantis suggests a hiring freeze, and using attrition to “rightsize” the city workforce. City workers would end up working harder and would see smaller raises than under Ravenstahl. I suspect that some slots would be refilled no matter what, but I also believe DeSantis has a better chance at making this work than a democrat like the current Mayor would. DeSantis is also proposing lowering some taxes starting in 2011, to improve the business climate in the city. That’s tricky in a city like ours, with so much debt, but we need to do something besides having our Mayor go on Letterman to promote the city.

Again, there is not a PDF available, but the cut and pasted press release ran 7 pages in Word. Certainly better than either the Mayor’s campaign website, or his pseudo campaign site; www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us.

Still trying to understand ...

I am still trying to get my head around the Mayor’s budget. That bit about paying for capital projects with revenues is admirable, but troubling. No one else is doing it?

Bear with me for an exercise, to work this out. I give you Joe Pittsburgh, homeowner. He makes a decent living, say he takes about five grand a month home, after taxes (heh). He has a home equity loan, a mortgage on the house, student loans, car payment, credit cards, etc. He has made some flashy improvements on the house, a Heinz deck and PNC hot tub, but he’s been ignoring some structural stuff, and he’s not too sure about the wiring, and afraid to look at the roof and the foundation. Even his fence could use some work. His mom is in a nursing home, and has a fund for her care with annuities coming in. He’s not too proud of it, but he diverted some of the annuities back a few years when he was having trouble making ends meet, and he might have to transfer mom into a state-funded home if he can’t make up the money (if the state will take her).

Joe does make a good living, like I said, and recently he’s been careful, so he built up his savings account to ten grand. He’s decided no more spending on credit cards or taking out home loans. He has a few hundred every month extra, after paying all the monthly bills, so he will do any work on the house from that or from his savings account.

The thing is, Joe owns a really old house. You never know what might break next.

So let’s say Joe decides he needs some wiring work done. That’s maybe a thousand, maybe a fifteen hundred. Easy enough, a bit out of the savings account, a bit from the monthly surplus, and hopefully we build the savings account up again. And if Joe decides to sell the house, he’s probably brought the value up, maybe by two hundred fifty to five hundred, by replacing old wiring. In fact, he improved his crappy credit rating by a little bit.

Suppose the issue of the roof comes up. That’s a big ticket item. Just a minimum fix will cost maybe $7500. The minimum fix helps with the value of the house too, and the credit rating, by maybe $3750. Which means if Joe borrowed $3750 of the amount, he would come out essentially even (sort of, I have to qualify the analogy some for that part to work).

Before I qualify the analogy, though, let me extend it a bit more. Suppose something else happens, which Joe didn’t have in his monthly budget and which involves no structural upgrades to the house. Suppose he has a root canal, or his car gets demolished in an accident, or he accidentally beats up a neighbor, who sues him. His savings may take a beating in any of those situations, and paying for any of them does not improve the value of his house.

I believe I argued before that some capital improvements can help improve a city’s finances, by encouraging businesses to move in. If Route 28 is widened, could businesses on the near Northside make the case to Stanton Heights residents that their commute will be easier? So the Casino (and strip bar) will have a wider pool of qualified applicants to hire from, productivity may improve and the Casino (and strip club) may charge less because their costs are lower. They make a hirer profit and contribute more taxes. Which the city can use to pay down the loan it took out to widen Route 28. Which is why you take out loans for capital projects.

Except for Mayor Ravenstahl.

Of course, I may totally misunderstand this.

A tale of two events ... and a "hmm"

I wasn’t at the Mayoral Forum last night, I can’t say what happened. And I assume the Mayor is still the front runner in the race, after all, this forum won’t even be presented to the public on TV, and the audio portion is not going out over the limited airwaves of DUQ until October seven. But what I take away from the newspaper accounts is a “hmmm” moment.

In the book (and movie) “Presumed Innocent” the attorney Sandy Stern scores a home run with his cross examination of a pathologist, but scores a “hmmm” moment earlier in the trial with his cross examination of the former district attorney. He catches Raymond Horgan in an act of hypocrisy, in this case of accusing a trusted subordinate of bad behavior he himself engaged in.

From the Post Gazette’s coverage of last night’s forum:

“In the first debate of Pittsburgh's mayoral election, Republican challenger Mark DeSantis repeatedly said he would listen to the people in formulating city policy.
He said it so often that it drew a laugh at one point from incumbent Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who, for his part, said he already listens.”
…
“Mr. DeSantis throughout said he would go to the people to hear what they want regarding economic development and building in the city. He took a jab at Mr. Ravenstahl's absence this week at a North Side meeting on the new casino.
"If you're going to call a meeting and engage in dialogue, you have to be there and hear what the residents have to say," Mr. DeSantis said.
Mr. Ravenstahl blamed his staff for a flier that erroneously implied he would attend the meeting. He was on a business trip to Boston at the time.”

The Mayor already listens, unless he is on a trip to Boston, or took a trip to New York, or played in a charity golf tournament. He blamed his staff instead of assuming the blame himself for an error. The Mayor also said he would put his one year record up against any previous Mayor. I assume he didn’t mean to dis Bob O’Connor.

Last night I went to Off-the-Record VII. I had never been before, it was enjoyable to see news celebrities and politicians make fun of themselves. Ken Rice can tell a pretty good joke or ten, and he is certainly enthusiastic if not always on key when he signs; he gets points for real effort. Dan Onorato … well, he was surprising nervous for a politician, when he was telling jokes. It was really quite endearing. Samantha Bennett and Dennis Roddy can mostly carry a tune (him maybe less so). Because the title was “Blogged to Death”, my wife expected the audience to be chock full of bloggers. I thought I might have seen one or two bloggers before hand, and I meant to approach people afterwards, but my wife was getting cranky so out we went. If you were there and wondered about the guy with the gray beard and the bow tie (but not guy with the tux, who wears a tux to satirical theatre?), that was me. Just like the picture.

HEY!

Imagine John C McGinley (Dr Cox of “Scrubs”) making that shrill whistle.

So there’s a plan to get rid of property taxes by sending sales taxes through the roof. And Jim Motznik wants to keep the Parking tax at 45% because those mean parking lot operators won’t lower the cost of parking. And the Mayor didn’t show up for a meeting (who knew the NorthSide was that pissed … besides DeSantis who had his own personal dustup at a campaign announcement).

*shrill whistle*

Let’s pay attention. Micro loans? Three year tax abatement on new companies that locate in Pittsburgh? Merge URA and City Planning? Any of this ringing a bell? We need to focus. Is any of this good? Do you think it might help the city?

The funny thing is that the Mayor is touting his one year’s experience in the Mayor’s office and presumably his three years on council as proof of experience. Now admittedly Mark DeSantis can say he wouldn’t invite people to a meeting and then not show up. But surely DeSantis has a bit of experience himself, at a level with real money.

*Damn*.

I got distracted myself. I was just thinking about Boston’s Harbor Point, which the Intern referenced on the Burgh Report . I wonder if they will put a fence around that, whatis, Oak Hill?

Anyway, please pay attention to DeSantis' economic plan, there will be a quiz in November.

That’s it, you can disperse now.

Small loans, big ideas

So there is a DeSantis economic plan out. And by the way, a quick look at the Mayor’s campaign website reveals that the last piece of interesting news was in January, shortly before Bill Peduto quit. And according to his website, May 15th is still fast approaching. By the way, is anyone esle insulted at the name of the website "lukeformayor"? What, can't we spell Raven ... er.. stahl?

Of course, there is a new Mayoral budget out, available for the media, but not on the City website (or his campaign website). But this post is not about that, I’ll start again…

So there is a DeSantis economic plan out. No details really, but as I write this at 6:45 in the morning, I don’t think I could handle details. Still, there are nuggets of interest in the broad description.

It starts slow, de-politicize the URA, get abandoned and now city owned properties back on tax rolls, buy from local startups (we probably buy local now, although the North Hills Office Depot might not count), etc, etc, yada, yada. Some of the proposals might seem like they are catering to more affluent people, like the suggestion to develop housing suited to mobile tech workers, but that is a suggestion aimed straight at improving the city’s tax base. I’ll skip over some of the other proposals, interesting though they may be (Live/Work/Learn/Play zones: Lawrenceville? Live in a house with no yard, work at Red Zone or Red Ball or Red whatever, then after work go over to the friendly neighborhood crack house, and take the free Jackson Hewitt tax cheat class?).

The clearly interesting proposals are the three year tax abatement for new companies and the Micro Loan proposal. The three year abatement plan is quite interesting. Employees of start up companies might have to take a wage freeze after three years (assuming climbing profits), but let’s face it, if anew company is going to fail, it will likely be in the first three years. Pittsburgh might never see any business taxes paid. USX might re-name itself USZ and claim to be a new startup. Heh. Actually, this is a pretty good idea. I guess the state can’t tell the city to collect all its taxes, so we can actually control this. And taxes in three years is light years better than no taxes at all, from everyone’s perspective (even the State’s).

The Micro Loan thing, didn’t that Indian guy win a Nobel Prize in Peace or Economics or Literature or Chemistry or Sumpin’ for that? It’s got to be a great idea! Even if they are doing it in Philladelphia (McNabb!). Actually, that this is an idea modeled on a Philly plan is a good thing. Philly is in a similar financial mess/state oversight thing as us, so if this institution passed muster with the state legislature, it must be OK. Now, Vinnie and Guido might have to come over to the Mayor’s office and complain about demarcation (yes, that is really is all I have; bad mob jokes – in fact, I was going to have DeSantis hire Vinnie and Guido, since they know how to run a business).

There’s a lot of reliance on public/private partnerships here. It feels a little like the faith based initiatives of the current federal administration, although I say that partly because I have nothing else to compare it to. These are ambitious suggestions, but on the other hand we need some ambition in this failing city. The Mayor has us getting by in his budget, DeSantis might help us pull ahead.

By the way, good luck finding this story on the PG website. I literally had to search on "DeSantis" to find the story with today's date. They changed their website again, and the was a story about a nutso proposal by a state legislator about killing property taxes and raising the sales tax to 9 percent (10 here).

The trib at first simply refused to open at 8:15, butthen revealed a fairly easily accessed story.

parking on a 45% rate

Before I start this post, let me say about my previous post, I wonder if Mark DeSantis is thinking to himself some variant of “Wish I’d thought of that” in regard to the Mayor’s proposal to borrow no money next year for capital projects, instead paying for them through revenues. I mean, it may not be feasible, but it sounds like the sort of thing a Republican might propose. Maybe the Mayor got a hold of some DeSantis proposal and got it out before DeSantis could. Heh.

So there is a report in the PG about how Motznik is proposing and the Mayor is supporting a freeze in the parking tax, keeping it at 45%. They both acknowledge that the State Legislature will have to change a law for this to go through. Motznik actually proposes using whatever additional revenue stream to help pay down debt and go into the pension fund (sounds DeSantisian).

Motznik feels this ought to encourage the legislature to vote for the change in the law. The one legislator interviewed, Nike Turzai, claimed the measure has no chance. Perhaps other legislators will see Mr. Motznik's logic, perhaps not. The ICA/Act 47 teams are certainly on notice. It's hard to see how they will look at this. Will they approve the Mayor's budget with a warning?

The funny thing is how the two candidates different proposals are swirling around each. Any PDF's on your economics, gentlemen?

The budget, in theory...

I have kind of sat on the city budget issue, not posting on it yet, only a few snarky comments here and there. I guess it would be interesting to see the budget in person, to go downtown and request a copy or get a PDF of it. I don’t know if such a PDF exists. It must have been printed from something. It may have already shown up on the city website, but the previous year’s budgets on the city website look like abridged versions. None of them have five year plans, which again would be interesting to see, although apparently I’m not supposed to. Well, even if I could read it I probably wouldn't understand it.

So based on my current limited information, I really have only two thoughts. First is that we ignore the under-funded pensions at our peril. If we think that acting surprised is somehow going to motivate the state to help us out, well, I just don’t see that dawg huntin’. Also, the notion that pooling with cities around the state will work seems a great stretch. Cities will fully funded pension funds have no incentive to pool, and pooling with other cities that have under-funded funds makes no particular sense. Maybe I just don't understand what's in that plan. Considring I try to keep up with news, that indicates a problem with communicating the plan.

My second thought concerns what the Mayor noted himself: Paying for capital projects through revenues is apparently quite unprecedented, here, around the state, around the whole frickin’ country. Why? Frankly, I don’t know myself, but I can speculate a couple of reasons. One is that capital projects can be quite large, especially if they are to be done right. You could paint your house on the cheap, painting a wall here one month, a wall there one month. But that would be a pain, it increases the chances it won’t be done right, etc. Similarly doing city projects like street resurfacing on the cheap increases the chances they can’t all be done and they won’t be done right. Bascially, we have no safety net too if we spend the whole capital budget and then have a flood or a fire. We can borrow in that situation, but how quickly? Capital projects are supposed to improve the infrastructure such that the quality of life or the ability to do business is improved, more people or businesses move in and the tax base increases. That’s another reason why the projects are often financed by debt. Now, you don’t want to take on debt to meet payrolls or pensions, and cities don’t. But for buildings, equipment, roads and bridges, it makes some sense to finance through debt.

The Mayor’s own statements on being unprecedented worry me. The city’s finances are too shaky to do unprecedented things. And his lack of statements on pensions worry’s me. The fact that some on Council now oppose letting the parking tax fall to 40% worries me, in terms of what the Act 47/ICA people, and the State legislature behind them, might do. And it annoys me that council won’t get the budget until after the election.

The ride home ...

The ride home yesterday, on bike and bus and bike, was actually uneventful. I left a little later than I planned to from work. I crossed Fifth at Morewood, and while I did a pretty packed 500 rolled by (this was around 5:45). I rode to Centre and Graham, and got on a 71A bus with three or four people on it. It stayed that way, with one person getting on and three or so exiting before Negley and Hampton. Possibly the most exciting moment was crossing Negley. The rest of the ride through Morningside, gradually up the foothill of Stanton Heights and on to the city steps of Martha, was just as hard as I remember it.

I’ll probably try this again next week sometime, but I don’t think I will be looking forward to it. Still, maybe I will be able to feel somewhat virtuous.

A couple of Caveats to "Tales of the Commute"

I was thinking about gas used today by my family. This morning, early, my wife took the younger step daughter’s (Hayley) Chinchilla (Tequila) to the veterinarian to have her teeth filed (Tequila, not Hayley). The vet being in Gibsonia. Then my wife drove to work, to get there at a reasonable hour (she usually takes the bus). My step daughter drove to Gibsonia this afternoon to get Tequila (the chinchilla, not the beverage). They both drive small SUV’s, getting around 22-23 MPG, according to the Fed’s. My wife is driving home after visiting her mom in the assisted living place. Actually, the older step daughter is going too, she usually picks up my wife, but not today. The older step daughter drives (everyday) a three or four year old Honda Civic automatic that probably gets better mileage than my ’97 Hyundai Accent stick.

So at best my biking is something of an offset against these activities.

And I wanted to say that part of my job here is controlling the keys for a CMU building or two. That includes the master building key(s). That is one reason why it is a bad idea for me to make a practice of leaving early. Now there are some other master keys around, but the people who hold them either leave early themselves or are often not in their offices. So biking/bussing all the time would end up involving some long days.