One of the more striking aspects of the dust-up between the Peduto administration and City of Pittsburgh unionized garbage collectors was this little nugget, as reported by the Post-Gazette:
“Employees demanded better protective gear, such as masks, to protect them from potential coronavirus exposure and hazard pay to help cover co-payments on medical visits in case they are injured on the job.” (Italics added.)
Translation: Taxpayers should cover something approaching the full cost of these unionized city workers’ health insurance.
The simple fact of the matter is that garbage collection in the city long ago should have been contracted out to a private company, which is the norm, not the exception in most local government jurisdictions.
Indeed, we have great empathy for any public sector workers who continue to perform their duties in these extraordinary times. And every effort possible should be made – funds available and supply-chain willing – to protect their safety.
But for unionized Pittsburgh refuse workers to use the coronavirus crisis to shake down taxpayers for such a premium when tax coffers have begun gasping for air is beyond the pale.
Even in correcting a major constitutional slap, the Wolf administration can’t get things quite right.
Fast on the heels of a narrow state Supreme Court ruling that Gov. Tom Wolf had the right to close gun shops as “non-life-sustaining,” the governor quietly reversed course to allow them to re-open, but with some commonsense guidelines.
Those would include firearms buyers making appointments in order to better comply with “social distancing” guidelines and taking other protective measures.
Such measures were suggested, in dissent, by Justice David Wecht, in self-quarantine after a family member was exposed to coronavirus. The justice was necessarily vociferous in his criticism that Wolf’s order was a de facto contravention of the Second Amendment.
The reversal of such an egregious edict, however, was buried in a longer list of revisions to the “non-life-sustaining” restrictions. Neither did the Wolf administration announce the reversal.
The Second Amendment deserved better on both counts.
Sadly, more than a few folks out there subscribe to that axiom of never letting a crisis go to waste.
Consider this entreaty, found recently in The Verge, described as an American technology-news online magazine:
“The coronavirus pandemic presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for cities to remake their streets by taking space away from cars and giving it to pedestrians and bicyclists — permanently.
“With public transportation ridership cratering, demand for Uber and other ride-hailing services fizzling, and people everywhere looking to get the hell off their couches and feel a little bit of breeze on their skin, the time for cities to take a bold stand against cars and parking is undeniably now.
“Rapidly building out a network of protected bike lanes would let residents — especially those under ‘shelter-in-place’ rules — use their bikes for necessary trips to the drugstore or supermarket, while also avoiding public transportation.
“Closing certain streets to car traffic can also help promote social distancing, since it’s undeniably easier to maintain six feet of recommended distance from someone else when you’re not confined to a narrow sidewalk.”
Perhaps – perhaps – as a temporary measure. But, sad to say, we can only imagine there are more than few in our Greater Pittsburgh midst (do we really need to name names?) that would attempt to make such restrictions permanent public policy.
It behooves public policy makers to use their power, wisely, to address the public health crisis at hand – not to recklessly exploit the situation to engage in social re-engineering.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
