Wednesday, May 02, 2007
No Champagne Yet
The newspaper reports today concerning the City of Pittsburgh’s finances presents this sobering picture: the City has a surplus, but the big bills are coming due, and soon. As a result, the surplus, pegged at $80 million, is going to be put into a “taffy pull” as officials are going to debate what to do with it. Should it go to crumbling infrastructure, police, pensions, or debt? All are necessary goods and have worthy arguments for getting a share of the funds. Yet everyone, from the Controller to members of both overseers, have pegged 2009 or 2010 as the year when, if at all possible, the “other shoe” drops yet again.
Here’s the deal: the Mayor is going to try and sell the General Assembly on “a story of six or eight years of spending cuts and low taxes when [the City goes] hat-in-hand” looking for state pension aid or the ability to move into the statewide pension pool. First, why would the state need to hear a story of low taxes? They mandated the reductions, phase-outs, and swaps in the package in 2004 when they created the oversight board. The City did not lower the parking tax or the business privilege tax. And while actual spending has decreased and stood at $401 million last year, there’s still a lot to be done to get that number down to a per-capita level more in line with better performing cities.
Second, the state has yet to deal with the mass transit and transportation fix or to really look at the coming pension avalanche with school and state employees. What makes the Mayor optimistic that Pittsburgh is going to get agenda time and attention by 2009?
All parties involved seem to be on the same countdown. Let’s see what they do with that time frame.
Here’s the deal: the Mayor is going to try and sell the General Assembly on “a story of six or eight years of spending cuts and low taxes when [the City goes] hat-in-hand” looking for state pension aid or the ability to move into the statewide pension pool. First, why would the state need to hear a story of low taxes? They mandated the reductions, phase-outs, and swaps in the package in 2004 when they created the oversight board. The City did not lower the parking tax or the business privilege tax. And while actual spending has decreased and stood at $401 million last year, there’s still a lot to be done to get that number down to a per-capita level more in line with better performing cities.
Second, the state has yet to deal with the mass transit and transportation fix or to really look at the coming pension avalanche with school and state employees. What makes the Mayor optimistic that Pittsburgh is going to get agenda time and attention by 2009?
All parties involved seem to be on the same countdown. Let’s see what they do with that time frame.
