The Post-Gazette reports that the same City of Pittsburgh that stalled nonprofit groups from acquiring blighted city-owned properties – a practice rebuffed by the courts – now is jacking up the sales prices of dilapidated homes in wild excess of their values.
And Pittsburgh City Council is proposing legislation to crack down on “predatory” corporate interests seeking to buy, rehabilitate and resell other housing stock?
We guess there are predators, then there are predators, right?
Speaking of an organized racket (ahem), the P-G also reports “after more than a year, some Allegheny County taxpayers still haven’t received [property] reassessment appeal results.”
“(S)cores of property owners … are still waiting to get results … amid battles over what common level ratio to use to calculate the value at which properties should be taxed.
“In July, David Montgomery, solicitor to the county board of property assessment appeals and review, said board members had been meeting every two weeks to finalize 2022 and 2023 challenges after deciding in May to use a 63.5 percent ratio to determine value.
“But many property owners still haven’t seen the fruits of that labor.”
More’s the pity that no local or state elected officials have the courage to do the only right thing in this long-running cluster cluck – order a full reassessment (and thereafter, regular reassessments) to fix a property assessment system held together for too long by hay-baling string secured by chewing gum.
Their steadfast refusal to reassess, and the polemic rationalization employed to defend their nonfeasance, has been a preposterous public policy whose perversions grow by the day.
The Center Square website reports (as has the Allegheny Institute’s Eric Montarti) that amid declining ridership rates, Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) “has become more dependent of federal funds to remain afloat.”
“Pittsburgh Regional Transit budget still treading water,” went the headline last week.
Of course, PRT ridership remains a shadow of its pre-pandemic numbers. And the continuing paucity of riders only makes PRT’s long out-of-whack finances only more out-of-whack.
In general, PRT’s costs are about 25 percent higher than the nationwide average.
All this said, we are struck by what appears to be PRT’s response to Montarti’s years of research that shows the mass-transit agency’s costs are far higher than peer transit agencies and, in some metrics, comparable to far larger agencies.
Though there’s no direct quote to point to, The Center Square reports thusly:
“[PRT] officials say the difficult topography of [Pittsburgh] and the system’s age – measured in centuries and not decades – makes comparisons a game of apples-to-oranges.”
Talk about deflectional hubris. PRT would have us believe that no other cities and regions have mass-transit systems measured in a century-plus?
No other systems have, golly gee, hills?
Not to be flippant but this applies perfectly here: Denial is not just a river in Africa.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
