Staring at a nightmare of intertwined problems seemingly of Gordian Knot proportions, Pittsburgh's Superintendent issued a plaintive call for help in the form of ideas about how to solve the conundrum. Joining in a non-helpful way, the Post-Gazette  weighed in editorially praising the school for not raising tax rates for twelve years, ignoring entirely the tremendous ongoing decline in enrollment over the period and the increases in other revenue that have allowed the schools to keep spending well above $500 million.

Here's an idea for the Superintendent. Send to the Board a proposal to set aside $10 million to create a thousand $10,000 scholarships that can be used by parents who wish to send their children to non-public alternatives.  With the current spending of over $21,000 per student that would represent a savings for taxpayers. And if the recipient students perform better academically, which most probably will, it is a win-win for taxpayers and students. If demand for scholarships is greater than a thousand, arrange to expand the program year after year.

But here's the problem that will have to be confronted. With declining enrollment, school employment, including teachers, would be reduced. No doubt there will a lot of screaming by the unions and their supporters about the cuts. If that happens, the parents of school children in the City will be able to see what is really important to the Board-their kids' education or kowtowing to unions. 

The Board will be under intense pressure from unions and the indefatigable defenders of the public education monopoly who have long since forfeited any moral claim to their anti-choice positions. Years after year and decade after decade miserable academic performance and wasted potential of so many students lives.  Where do they go to get back the opportunity derived from a good education? 

The truly remarkable part of the story is that the union and the defenders of public monopoly education apparently feel no responsibility or remorse. For the unions, it is understandable if not defensible. They are about their members and their power.  Students are and have always been secondary.  Maybe some individual teachers would like to put students first but they toe the union line when they have to choose between the students and union loyalty.

Bottom line, the Superintendent should make this such an important priority that she will threaten to resign if the Board refuses to consider the idea. 

And the cries for the Governor to find new revenue to fix roads and bridges -and fund mass transit -grow louder.  This while the Governor wants to protect taxpayers from higher costs.  He knows other problems are looming large such as the whopping increases in pension funding that will be required over the next few years. Where will that money come from?  There are projected Federal Medicaid funding cuts. How will that be made up?

It is marvelous to watch the crowd that supports an outrageously expensive and inefficient mass transit system and wants the state to pour more money into it grouse about transportation needs. Indeed, the Governor, against his own better judgment and the strong case that was made not to bail out the Port Authority, has committed $35 million a year in additional state tax dollars for the Authority.  No one knows where that money is coming from.

What is really galling about the latest round of caterwauling regarding the Governor's inaction on raising taxes and fees for transportation is the assent given explicitly or tacitly by the same complainers when the previous Governor was moving hundreds of millions in highway funds to underwrite the Port Authority's egregious spending.  That money was wasted rather than fixing road problems.

Moreover, why was it that the people who are now so exercised about the Governor's inaction could not contain themselves at the prospect of tolling I-80 to raise funds for transit? Anyone who bothered to look at the law could have known that tolling I-80 for any purpose other than funding maintenance and improvements on I-80 was not going to happen. Yet the then Governor, the Legislature and all the spendthrift supporters of mass transit all thought it was  great idea and that somehow the presidential administration would get it approved notwithstanding the law.  Mirabile dictu, it did not cave to political pressures from the former Governor. Years were wasted in dealing with cost issues and seeking funding sources. And then the sharp economic downturn put on hold any meaningful discussions.

Road work does need to get done. How about we ask the Feds to lift the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements?  That would lower costs dramatically. Not that it will ever happen. But the state could eliminate prevailing wage requirements on projects not using Federal dollars. Where is the clamoring for something sensible like that?   Why is it always the taxpayers who must make the sacrifices? Why not some concessions from those who drive the costs far above where they would be in market based system?

If an exam with 132 questions was administered at any of the schools in western Pennsylvania and the student correctly answered 85 of those questions, the resulting percentage would be a 64%.  On most grading scales that would be a "D": if the student was previously and "F" student, then there is progress. 

Unless dealing with bond ratings, letter grades are rarely handed out to cities and towns.  As Pittsburgh waits to hear if the state will release it from Act 47 distressed status, the team charged with recovery (in place since 2004) published its rescission report that shows what Pittsburgh has accomplished: debt levels are down, there is labor peace, a trust fund has been established for retiree health care liabilities, there is a financial management system in place, and the City has pledged a revenue stream to deal with pensions.  Just as those successes are heralded by the coordinators, they also express "continuing concerns" on most of those big ticket items: dealing with escalating benefit costs, funding capital needs, and executing collective bargaining agreements in the future.  Unlike 2007, when the City petitioned to get out of Act 47, the recovery coordinators are now in favor of rescission. 

The team shows 132 initiatives that have come from the recovery plans and funnels them into one of four categories:

• Completed: Action has been achieved or achieved to date and may require a recurring action to remain complete. (85 or 64% of initiatives)
• In progress: Demonstrable progress made to achieve completion, but the action is not complete or it may require a long term effort. (38 or 29% of initiatives)
• Not applicable: Opportunity has passed or it is out of the City's control. (9 or 7% of initiatives)
• Incomplete: No demonstrable progress has been made. (0)

Obviously there is a lot of leeway in this typology, even realizing that if DCED would accept the status of each initiative as gospel only 64% of them are actually done to the point of completion (or how something that is "completed" would require "recurring action").  If DCED looks at the initiatives "completed" or "in progress" as "good" then the City has made positive strides on 93% of the work. 

But there are some head scratchers for sure. The Act 47 team considers the City's establishment of a debt policy "completed"; whether the City sticks to it is another matter altogether, hence the recurring or further action.  Same holds for the three decades long promise of money to the pension fund. Does anyone believe that "[pursuit] of City-County consolidation of departments" is "in progress"?  Or that the City is not "incomplete" on any of the initiatives? 

In order to have distressed status removed, a municipality has to have a positive operating fund balance for at least one year, have eliminated accrued deficits, retired obligations that were taken on to eliminate the deficit, and get the recommendation of the coordinator.  Pittsburgh has satisfied the first two, never had the third, and has the fourth.  It also has the situation where even if Act 47 goes away the oversight board stays in place. 

Oh, if the district only had more money to waste-er, spend. $21,000 per student just isn't enough.  Maybe another foundation funded effort will "stem the tide" as the superintendent described her job. One would have thought the previous superintendent had solved the academic problems.

Can it get any more ridiculous? Program after program, Promise scholarships and scores do not improve, enrollment declines, and some of the high schools have more security than an airport.  One would think common decency would take over the mindset of Pittsburghers with regard to public schools. But no, it does not happen. They are content to keep on with same old same old and crush any chance at a respectable life these kids should have.

Understanding that family life is important, too many kids are being raised by women who do not have the ability (or maybe even the interest) to enforce the discipline required to have learning occur.  But there is no excuse for denying options to parents who would like an alternative school where discipline is enforced and a chance of learning exists.   Kids can be taught in 7 hours a day if activities are focused and excuses are not permitted.

The disease that affects Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg and other large school districts is progressive statism augmented to a lethal degree by political correctness and intellectual vapidity in our universities.  This school situation ought to be viewed as a moral failing, but to liberals moral failing means tax rates are too low and air quality regulations are not strict enough.  Yet more evidence of a societal unraveling.

County Council wants to hold a meeting next month to look at the real estate holdings of UPMC because, according to one Council member, "People have been asking a lot of questions about this [topic]" and "It's a good idea to have this meeting and air it out properly in front of everybody."

That's probably what the Councilman's brethren on City Council were feeling back in June when it held its own post-agenda hearing on the topic.  That hearing was peppered with a lot of language about living wages , transit cuts (they were pending at the time), and how non-profits impact the City budget.  It was stressed that the purpose of the hearing was not to single out any one entity.   It is a strong bet alot of these themes will come up again next month.

At the June meeting the City heard from officials from the County's chief fiscal office about how that office wanted to make sure that all exemptions were merited.  That has not changed-we even pointed out that where any non-profit has property that is not dedicated to a charitable purpose it ought to be taxed.  The officials presented their findings from a report by the County Controller which projected the amount of revenue taxing bodies could receive if all exempt properties were taxable, even though it is doubtful that any taxing body would tax the property holdings of another level of government. 

The officials also pointed out that the County's record keeping on parcels that are exempt-remember the County is in charge of property assessment for itself and the City, as well as all other municipalities and school districts in the County-exhibited "poorly maintained exemption data".  That has likely not changed either-in fact a newspaper series on the topic reported as far back as late September that the record keeping was shoddy.  The Councilman chairing the December hearing, when asked about how the County failed to do a mandatory review of exempt property once every three years (based on legislation sponsored by the Councilman) said that it "must have fell through the cracks" and that Council "would have to sit down with [the Executive] and talk about that". 

Will County Council use the forum to prod officials as to how the system has improved since then?

School closings, teacher contract concessions, and "difficult choices", many of them related to the loss of students to charter schools and a failure to rightsize operations.  Oh, and a $300 million borrowing just to keep the schools operating.  And that is with a School Reform Commission running the show for the Philadelphia School District.   This year the District will spend $2.5 billion on educating 146,000 K-12 students, and just under half of that budget comes from the state.

The fiscal situation in Philly is pointed out, not only for the implications it has on statewide taxpayers, but because one member of the state's second largest district, Pittsburgh, recently opined that "bigger must be better" and suggested that there be a merger of the 43 districts in Allegheny County since "We're working on an agrarian model that's so out of date it's not funny."  A consolidated Allegheny County district would have roughly the same enrollment as Philadelphia's school district, based on calculations of PA Department of Education data. 

Unless the state were to just consolidate the districts in Allegheny County, which is doubtful since school districts are not governed according to county borders, or the board member goes back to the Nordenberg report that suggested consolidating only the County and the City and leaving the other municipalities and the school districts in the County alone and amends it to gain some interest nearly five years later, the cast a wider net approach so we can spread financial problems over a larger area is a non-starter. 

There has been one merged district, Central Valley, in the last five years and that came as a voluntary arrangement.  It was upheld as a model when the previous gubernatorial administration pushed the idea of cutting the number of districts from 500 to 100 in order to reduce "back office" costs and improve educational offerings.  But our work found that the largest district in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, had more "non-teachers" per 1000 students than a sample of other districts in the County, the exact opposite situation one would expect to see. 

Pennsylvania has largely trended the way the U.S. has with the number of school districts: much of the consolidation came in the 1950s and 1960s; by 1972, according to the Census of Local Governments, the significant drops in numbers of districts had stopped and this year the totals in PA and the country are slightly smaller than where they were nearly four decades ago. 

Take the fifty states and the District of Columbia and measure the strength of their teachers' union based on resources, political activity, state policies, and the perceived influence of power.  That's what a recent report by the Thomas Fordham Institute attempts to do.  One of the key areas they focus on is collective bargaining: what is the legal treatment in the state?  Are strikes legal? And can the union automatically deduct dues and collect agency fees from non-members?

With mandatory collective bargaining, no prohibition on teacher strikes, and permission to withhold and collect dues and fees, the Keystone state gets a ranking of fourth most powerful teachers' union in the report.  It was bested by Hawaii, Oregon, and Montana. 

In the top ten strongest states, all have mandatory collective bargaining and all permit automatic dues deductions or agency fee collections.  Two states-New York and New Jersey-prohibit teacher strikes and one, Washington, neither permits nor prohibits them. 

Now look at the states ranked at the bottom (having the unions with the least amount of power).  One state, Oklahoma, permits collective bargaining; in Florida it is mandatory, and in Arizona and Mississippi it is neither permitted nor prohibited.  Only Louisiana permits strikes and South Carolina is silent on the issue.  States in this group where collective bargaining is prohibited (Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, and South Carolina) also prohibit any type of dues deduction or fee collection. 

As City officials prepare to make their case to the state that they have progressed to the point where they can shed Act 47 distressed status, just up the road at Pittsburgh Public Schools' headquarters they are asking whether the District is in such financially bad shape that it will be "bankrupt" in three years.  One board member asked "By 2015, are we broke, out of business?" to which a consultant replied, "correct".

That's a bit strong.  Districts cannot go bankrupt in Pennsylvania as they are not permitted to file by the state (only municipalities can).  But there are new provisions in state law under Act 141 that prescribe how the state, through the Department of Education, is to deal with school districts facing financial distress.  We wrote about the legislation before it was singed into law this past June. 

Act 141 applies to all districts in the state except for Philadelphia.  A district can fall into either "moderate" or "severe" distress and for a district deemed as such (the law says there cannot be more than nine at one time) the state will appoint a Chief Recovery Officer who will write a recovery plan.  The plan has to be approved by the district's board, and there are procedures for what happens if approval is delayed.  There are a variety of tools for getting a district back to sound financial footing from reopening of budgets, examining contracts, exploring charter schools, and other options.  Exit from financial recovery depends on the progress of the district and the determination of the Secretary. 

Is Pittsburgh headed here?  Who knows?  There might be other options on the table, but as the Superintendent noted "We believe there's a way forward. It may not be something we thought of before. It may not be something that comes to the mind readily. It may not be something that's easy to arrive at."

Back in 2007, Allegheny County commissioned a consultant to give ideas about what to do with the parks system.  Among other things, including creating a non-profit like the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, there was a belief that the County should be pushing for private sector involvement in the parks for "operation, maintenance, and renovation" and, in addition to tennis courts and swimming pools one facility for attention was the North Park boat house. 

There was a major dredging project at the lake that was completed this year.  A master plan for the lake area was published by the County in April that solicited public input on how to improve the overall area, including the boat house.  That report mentioned "alternative uses for the building could include a concessions area or park café with an outdoor dining terrace overlooking the lake, bike and boat rental facility, fishing/bait shop, and satellite nature center office.  The plan put the price tag for a "boathouse feasibility study" at $50,000. 

According to the County Parks department website, a project that is part of a larger non-profit organization already handles kayak rentals at the boat house and they plan more hours in 2013.  So that would appear not to be needed for study.  And this week County Council is expected to take up whether a private operator should operate and manage a full service restaurant at the boat house.  It is not clear if the feasibility study mentioned in the master plan from April has been completed: it does not appear on the Parks website.  But it appears that when the master plan mentioned a "park café" this is probably what was in mind.  If Council approves the proposal without the feasibility study in hand, and has a non-profit and a private entity entertaining folks at the facility, does the money still have to be spent? 

Call it "the week that was" in news items related to projects on the drawing board, soon to get off of the ground, or those that failed to live up to promises.  The common thread is that all of them somehow involve tax increment financing (TIF) as a funding tool.  TIF allows development on a specified parcel (or parcels) of property to move forward by an authority issuing bonds for certain aspects of the project and then allowing, with the agreement of the taxing bodies where the development is located, that a good portion of anticipated taxes on the new more valuable development to be funneled to repaying the bonds instead of fully to the taxing bodies' accounts.

We read of a failed development in North Versailles for townhomes and how the Mall at Robinson may not be throwing off enough money or produced enough corollary development (more retail?) to pay off debt; that the long-talked-about apartment village in Castle Shannon will go before Castle Shannon Borough and the Keystone Oaks School Board this month with one school official noting that the revenue split (75% for the bonds, 25% for the district) won't bring a lot of dollars to the District, but they will get a lot of earned income tax dollars from people who will occupy the apartments (unless, of course, those prospective residents are already ling in the District and will simply move to the new location); the empty lot in uptown Mt. Lebanon, where the first swing and miss at development with a TIF came about a decade ago and is now in the hands of a second developer; a multi-use development in Sewickley; and, not to be left out, the Market Square development in Downtown Pittsburgh.  We wrote an editorial in June about the resurgence of TIF in the area.

With these new developments, and a lot of ones already done over the years, are taxpayers getting significant benefits through the elimination of blight, the creation of new job opportunities, and increased tax value?  If those questions are to be answered, don't look to the Commonwealth: as we pointed out this year, the state hasn't produced an evaluation on TIF even though it was a requirement in the 1990 law that permitted its use.