From the email inbox, a reader writes:
“Love your opinion piece [based on Allegheny Institute Policy Brief Vol. 25, No. 20] on Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) and agree completely.
“To add to the inefficiency is remarkable low utilization of the buses, and excessive stops which are three-times global best practices,” the correspondent observes.
“Never waste a crisis, and PRT should be cutting many routes, reorienting other capacity to serve the county, and quit defending the broken status quo.”
As the Allegheny Institute has been advocating for decades.
Speaking of cutting, the Tribune-Review reports that “Allegheny County officials are bracing for gaping holes in the county’s budget as federal spending cuts could impact health care, housing and infrastructure.”
County Manager John Fournier tells the Trib “the county will be unable to scrape together enough money to replace the vanishing federal dollars.”
County Controller (and presumptive Pittsburgh Mayor) Corey O’Connor tells the Trib that the situation is a “wake-up call” that Allegheny County cannot be so reliant on the federal government.
“We have to start controlling things ourselves,” O’Connor said. “It’s about growth. It’s about economic development. It’s about moving more people into our region, so we don’t have to rely so heavily on the federal government.”
Well, shazam! What an epiphany! Get outta town!
But as the Allegheny Institute’s Alex Sodini and Eric Montarti point out in Policy Brief Vol. 25, No. 23 (published today), “the county’s regulations, such as paid sick leave requirements and an eagerness to use economic development incentives that abate or divert property tax revenues are not going to help in this endeavor.”
And neither “will the county’s reluctance to do regularly scheduled assessments.”
The think tank scholars’ bottom line:
“High taxes and an expansion of government reach is not going to encourage business and population growth.”
That’s elementary. Pity that so many iterations of county government have failed to grasp the obvious and snoozed their way into the pickle that Allegheny County now finds itself.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
