The news is not good for Curt Eiseman, the assistant director of quality control and inspections for the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Pittsburgh.
And we are forced to wonder if there’s more bad news to come.
The Post-Gazette reports federal prosecutors have charged Eiseman with one count of bribery for allegedly soliciting and accepting “more than $5,000 in home items from a luxury housing developer during his tenure as a city building inspector.”
Neither the name of the developer nor the Downtown development involved have been made public. As a matter of transparency, both should be named. Now. Unless, that is, the investigation is ongoing.
Well?
Eiseman’s alleged crime occurred in late 2018 and early 2019 when, as a city inspector, he “oversaw the permit process for the conversion of a commercial building … into luxury apartments and hotel rooms,” the P-G says.
Eiseman joined the URA in March 2020.
Indeed, we realize that the alleged bad actions of one alleged bad actor should not be used to automatically paint a broad tarnish upon any organization.
But given the circumstances, it should prompt an independent top-to-bottom review of not only city permitting activity but also any and all URA activities involving Eiseman, if not others.
Sound public policy demands it.
Sound public policy also demands that elected officials don’t act like ignorant impudents. And we’re being kind. Witness some of the end-of-year activities of Pittsburgh City Council.
The council is considering ordinances that would ban fur sales, horse-drawn carriages and foie gras.
The general rationale is that animals raised for their fur, that horses used to pull carriages and that geese and ducks overfed to produce the French fatty liver delicacy supposedly are subject to “tremendous suffering.”
What’s next? Banning meat, poultry and seafood?
But as a 124-year-operating Downtown furrier (one who likely would flee to the suburbs in the fur ban were to pass) told a reporter, the kind of industry abuse in general being alleged would have a deleterious effect on the quality of animal fur; no furrier would stand for it.
As the operator of a horse carriage service told KDKA Radio this past week, his horses are treated like family. Why in the world would he harm his proverbial seed corn?
Another stated rationale for banning horse-drawn carriages is that such rides supposedly are not compatible with urban environment, possibly leading to an increase risk of injury to drivers and riders (per a P-G report).
But by that rationale, the bikes that city government has so embraced should be banned too, right?
And as for foie gras (whose humane production methods, by the way, have improved by leaps and bounds) Baylen Linnekin, executive director of the Washington, D.C., nonprofit Keep Food Legal, put the matter into proper and succinct context more than a decade ago in Reason magazine:
“Simply put, people have a right to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the food of their own choosing. Foie gras is raw milk is soda is Happy Meals. The issue is the same, even if the name of the food is not.
“And neither California nor any other city or state—nor the federal government, for that matter—has the constitutional authority to traipse over an individual’s right to make his or her own food choices.”
That, of course, would include Pittsburgh City Council.
At the council’s Wednesday meeting, the foie gras legislation was advanced for final consideration. But the fur and horse-drawn carriage legislation was, without explanation, continued for consideration into the new year.
Lest we forget, this same City Council also has introduced legislation to give itself a 7.1 percent raise – from $81,137 a year to $86,970 annually.
Councilors argue they’ve fallen behind, especially because raises were muted during years of state financial oversight. But never has a singular group of ignorant impudents deserved a raise less.
Add to today’s detailed bill of particulars such past “winners” as “affordable housing” edicts (that will result in less and more expensive housing) and a “single-use” plastic bag ban (whose particulars are recklessly arbitrary and capricious), to name just two, and you have a Pittsburgh City Council so hell-bent on finding “solutions” that gang-mock reality, common sense, fair play and sound public policy.
Taxpayers should not stand for such a self-dealing clown show.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
