Consider it an example of government at its worst.
On Monday, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC) voted overwhelmingly to once again include the final leg of the Mon-Fayette Expressway in its long-range transportation plan for the region.
It tabled the matter in March when a number of local elected leaders – including the Allegheny County chief executive and even the mayor of Pittsburgh — questioned the financial and operational efficacy of building the northernmost part of the toll road that would link Route 51 in Jefferson with Interstate 376 at Monroeville at a cost of more than $2 billion.
The Allegheny Institute says the 13-mile extension, which officials say will take 15 to 20 years to complete, doesn’t come close to passing cost-revenue (benefit) snuff.
What’s so striking about the SPC’s reversal is the rationale employed by county Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald. He once favored scuttling the project, instead using the money for other transportation projects he thought more worthy.
But when Fitzgerald, et. al, discovered redirecting funding would be no easy task – requiring state legislative intervention – he accepted the “use it or lose it” mentality so endemic to elected and appointed government leaders:
“We found out from the Turnpike Commission that if we don’t use this money … it will be sent to the other end of the state,” he told the Tribune-Review. “While I still believe there are probably better uses … I will be supporting this project at this point to move forward.”
Translation: The Mon-Fayette Expressway is a lousy use of taxpayer money. But because the region would lose this money to another part of the state if it’s not spent on this highway project, it’s OK to waste taxpayer money on a boondoggle.
What a poor excuse on which to base public policy.
“To govern means to rectify,” Confucius wrote.
Our elected and appointed leaders had a golden opportunity to do just that with the final leg of the Mon-Fayette Expressway. They consciously have chosen not to.
As KDKA radio talk show host Marty Griffin put it this week, “This is not an example of how government works, it’s an example of how government fails.”
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
