And the epithet is “quokerwodger” (KWOK’-er-woe-jer) – a political puppet; a person or organization controlled by someone else and acting on their instructions.
The word comes to mind as word made the rounds last week that the Allegheny Conference on Community Development is “rebranding” itself as the “Pittsburgh Regional Alliance.” That – taking a conference offshoot as its new moniker – to, it says, better reflect the work that the conference hopes to recharge.
But given some of the Allegheny Conference’s shenanigans over the past 30 years, we are left wonder if this “rebranding” will just be an expensive new glossy lipstick smeared on the same old pig.
Indeed, we were encouraged this year when the conference issued a quite strident statement against the onerous jobs- and business-killing Allegheny County parental leave proposal that County Council likely will near-rubber stamp this week.
But we never will get the foul taste out of our mouth over the Allegheny Conference’s support for the Regional Renaissance Initiative (RRI) of 1997. Dubbed (correctly) as “The Stadiums Tax,” it was soundly rejected by voters in 11 Southwestern Pennsylvania counties (who were later end-arounded by pols who instead raided the Regional Asset District).
But there was a larger problem with RRI – giving a new and unelected body taxing and spending authority with no accountability to the public.
Then there was this little gem from 2018: Pittsburgh, Allegheny County and Allegheny Conference officials colluded to establish a shell organization in an attempt to circumvent the commonwealth’s Right-To-Know Law to hide how much public money they were willing to throw at Amazon to establish a second headquarters outside of Seattle in Greater Pittsburgh.
A Common Pleas judge called out all three for their behavior. And as this scrivener wrote at the time: “It’s pretty clear that city, county and conference officials, in the name of acting for the public benefit, acted against it. And that’s shameful behavior by those claiming to be ‘public servants.’”
In both cases, the Allegheny Conference was a “quokerwodger” incarnate. And though its opposition to the parental leave nonsense is encouraging, we have serious doubts that, rebranded as the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, it will be able to resist continued manipulation by a new generation of the usual suspects.
Writes a wag with whom we regularly converse:
“If memory serves, the current occupant of the [Pittsburgh] mayor’s office was, up until last January, the [Allegheny] county controller. One would think that he, in his previous job, would have noticed the lack of pension funding and the looming budget crunch that was caused when ‘emergency funding’ expired. I don’t recall him raising the alarm about those issues at that time. …
“Also, the fact that the Post-Gazette is reporting that City Council members need ‘better training on how the city’s budget works’ gives you some idea how financially illiterate politicians are.
“Which brings me around to the economic lunacy that pervades County Council. From decades of underfunded pension liabilities, to a 36 percent tax increase — and onward to the current parental leave/expanded sick time mandates — these people really are financial illiterates. Add to that, the reassessment mess.
“I would suggest that we start a GoFundMe page to buy all of these people striped canes because they are not wolves, they are more accurately legally blind.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
