The Port Authority of Allegheny County’s chief of operations is out – after 14 months on the job. But there’s no explanation.
All the county’s mass transit agency would say is that Maurice Bell, hired in January 2019, left the agency on March 31. And the Post-Gazette says the authority would not say if he left voluntarily.
“Anything else would be a personnel issue,” a spokesman told the P-G.
Sorry, but Bell was a very highly paid public employee at $182,700 annually. The public has every right to know what happened. That it took the authority nearly a month to reveal that Bell was gone makes the situation even worse.
And that lack of an explanation only fuels questions – from the vetting and hiring process to what Bell might have done (or not done) on the job.
Again, Bell was a public employee. He was paid with public dollars. And that public deserves an explanation for what appears to have been a very expensive failure.
Free produce!? That’s the vision of a Pittsburgh City Council effort to grow crops within every council district.
The idea, in a nutshell, is to partner with a nonprofit (or nonprofits, plural, perhaps) to identify appropriate garden space to begin community gardens.
It’s an alluring, if not altruistic, goal. And that’s particularly true not only in this time of pandemic but as a matter of standard course.
There, however, should be some cautions.
District 4 Councilor Anthony Coghill notes how the effort “can be an example of ‘Hey, we can grow food in the City of Pittsburgh’ and, of course, give it away.”
Give it away? How better to devalue the effort.
In the least, there should be a modicum of buy-in from recipients, be it sweat equity in the community gardens or modest prices for those who benefit from the effort.
As Ramit Sethi, a contributor to Business Insider, reminded a few years ago:
“Understand that people value what they pay for. You’re not doing them a disservice, you’re actually performing a profound service for people who want to take action.”
Council President Theresa Kail-Smith, a major advocate for community gardens says she told her colleagues:
“I don’t care how we get there, I just want to get there; I want to put down the books, put down the legislation, pick up some shovels, get the plants and get some things done for the community.”
No matter what?
But the example she then cites sets up a curious dichotomy:
“My mother lived through the Depression. She’s 98 years old,” Kail-Smith said. “She said ‘Get your canned goods, get your pantry started, get your garden started. That’s what I would tell people.’”
So, does it really take a $45,000 “cooperative agreement” with a third party (in this case, a nonprofit) to get the job done? Or is it through the rugged individualism exhibited through the wise words of Ms. Kail-Smith’s mother?
A trio of 5-gallon buckets, holes punched in the bottom and filled with dirt wouldn’t be a bad place to start for individuals looking to grow garden produce.
Meanwhile, in other public policy news:
The state Department of Health has devised what by any other phrase is a “snitch form” to report all manner of alleged business infractions related to how those businesses operate during this protracted coronavirus pandemic.
As one astute state representative noted, “The State” can set up this kind of snitch system — and another that sics state police on operating businesses that might not have officially sanctioned waivers — but it refuses to answer the media’s right-to-know requests about the pertinent details of the waiver program.
Talk about a dangerous public policy.
A recent report by Lux Research of Boston suggests the touted “Hyperloop” system that would move people and cargo (including in Pittsburgh) through high-speed tubes won’t be ready for prime time for 20 years, at least.
Developers, which dispute the study, had been predicting commercial operations for the 700 miles per hour low-pressure system would begin in a decade. But Lux cites the lack of a test facility for necessary government oversight and a lack of financing make that unlikely.
The bottom line, according to the research company:
“Lux has found that, while the Hyperloop concept is technically feasible, it will require significant development to become cost-effective,” the P-G reported, citing a company news release. “As proposed Hyperloop projects are seeing increasingly large estimates in cost per mile, … key variables in operating costs are unknown … .”
Meaning: “Hyperloop projects are a long way from proving economic feasibility.”
For public policy makers, it’s a fair warning should anyone have designs on tapping taxpayer pockets.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
