A Tarentum resident says he recently heard Allegheny Institute Research Director Eric Montarti on Colin Dunlap’s KDKA Radio talk show discussing the hundreds of millions of dollars in economic benefits that VisitPittsburgh claims Pittsburgh enjoyed from April’s NFL Draft.
The tourism agency has refused to release the full studies.
“I have since attempted to find out all I can about VisitPittsburgh and its obligations as a not-for-profit tax-exempt organization [under Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code] and the tax funding it receives.
“I contacted state Attorney General Dave Sunday and got a letter telling me to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
But, “I explained that I was more interested in [if] the [nonprofit] is violating the law by [not releasing the economic impact studies it commissioned] from the NFL Draft,” the correspondent wrote.
“Why is no government entity concerned about that?!”
That’s a darn good question. But, thus far, “mum’s the word” has been the word from VisitPittsburgh and all its government pimps.
That said, why should the public be forced to file a FOIA request with a public agency using public money to pry free a public document? That’s absurd.
Another correspondent, a long-dedicated Libertarian, noting the Allegheny Institute’s recent Policy Brief (Vol. 26, No. 30) and companion op-ed on Transit Revitalization Investment Districts (TRIDs), says TRIDs are “an example of government attempting to solve a problem that it created.”
If he was talking about continual government economic interventions to cover up the lie of each past failed government economic intervention, I’d wholeheartedly agree.
But he’s not. Here’s what he’s talking about:
“Government subsidies to suburban (low-density) development are the root of the problem,” he says.
“There are around 80 row-houses on my street in around 1,000 feet. In the same distance in my parents’ old neighborhood, there are around 20 detached suburban houses.
“I asked Duquesne Light why I should pay the same electric rate as the suburbs since the electric company must run lines four times as far for the same number of customers.
“I was told that the PUC does not permit electric companies to charge different rates for different development patterns. This is undoubtedly the same for water, sewer, and gas lines,” the writer noted.
“Apply this also to road paving and other infrastructure and you can see that, when government mandates and subsidies are applied, densely populated areas end up subsidizing sparsely populated areas.
“I call it rate-leveling,” he opined.
“Without government mandates and subsidies, most people would end up living in densely populated cities without the need for cars or even mass transit at a high enough population density.”
While I have had the greatest respect for the writer for more than 30 years, I don’t believe most people, even without “government mandates and subsidies,” would accept the creeping crud of rot that densely populated cities offer.
That’s not an “offer” at all but a prison sentence – to everything from high crime, to substandard public education and infrastructure, to an attack on freedom of choice and a continuing attack on taxpayer wallets to reverse the rot that, in most cases, is not reversible through government’s urban command economics.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
