It’s a start. But it requires one important tweak.
As the Tribune-Review reported it, “Allegheny County’s Government Review Commission voted unanimously on Wednesday to release a draft that outlines a recommended four-year property reassessment schedule.
“The reassessment would take place in the first year of each county executive term,” the Trib notes.
It’s a protocol designed to take politics out of the process. It was pure politics that led to a totally out-of-whack property assessment system that thumbed its nose at fairness and the state Constitution’s Uniform Taxation Clause.
Allegheny County Council has proposed regular reassessments every three years. And that continues to strike us as the better, more responsive, time frame to account for ever-changing market conditions.
It would be laughable – if it wasn’t such a serious matter, that is:
City Controller Rachael Heisler has flagged the city Urban Redevelopment Authority for missing documentation on nearly $600,000 in expenses, paid for with federal Covid bailout money.
“The bulk of the missing documentation was attributed to staff turnover and the lack of record-keeping policies,” the Post-Gazette reports
The audit “raises serious questions” about the URA’s “stewardship of large amounts of federal grant money in the past, most of which remain unanswered,” Heisler says.
Per the P-G:
“Damara Carter, the URA’s chief financial officer, wrote in her response [to the audit findings] that the organization is developing standardized documentation and retention systems, which will include checklists, a new folder structure and calendar reminders that staff will be fully trained to use.”
That’s all well and good. But that kind of standard stuff should have been the standard for the URA from the get-go. Unless the URA can account for where that $600,000 went, and pronto, this matter should be referred to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office for a full investigation.
It must be determined if this was a matter of sloppiness in record-keeping or more. Or, put another way, is it malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance?
Sportico now values the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise at $8.7 billion, up 34 percent from a year ago.
That places the Steelers at No. 17 on the 32-team valuation list.
The Dallas Cowboys top the list at $15.5 billion while the Cincinnati Bengals are 32nd at $7.4 billion.
Do remember this number (and any updates in the coming years) when the Steelers, their lease soon to be up at Acrisure Stadium, come begging to the city-county Sports & Exhibition Authority (SEA) and various taxing authorities for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars (or more?) in public money for stadium upgrades.
That $8.7 billion valuation for the Black and Gold sounds like pretty good collateral for a private bank loan, don’t you think?
Better yet, with that kind of borrowing collateral, it would be the perfect time for the SEA to unload the football stadium, sell it to the Steelers and let the franchise rake in the profits from that supposed cash cow and allow it to do the supposed economic-generator magic that the team insisted it would do when it snookered the public to pay for its new playground 30 years ago.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
