Sometimes, Pittsburgh City Council gets it right.
The city has eased restrictions on food and retail street vendors with mobile licenses. No longer will they have to move every four hours or be limited to metered parking spots.
And soon, and well in advance of next April’s NFL Draft, the Tribune-Review reports they’ll be able to operate in more parking areas, vacant lots, parks and properties in business districts.
“Vendors are still barred from operating within 150 feet of a brick-and-mortar business or a stationary vendor selling the same type of merchandise, unless the competing business grants permission for the other vendor to be closer,” the Trib says.
It’s a move that’s long overdue. And, as long as city officials allow the police to restore and keep basic law and order, it should go a long way in at least beginning to restore a modicum of vitality in the Golden Triangle and elsewhere.
But let’s just hope it’s not some kind of NFL Draft-related ruse that is voted out of existence after the draft hoopla passes.
But too often, Allegheny County Council gets it exactly wrong.
As WESA-FM radio reports it, after a year-long delay, the council has approved higher fees for pollution permits. To wit:
“The federal Clean Air Act’s Title V requires polluters to obtain operating permits every five years. In Allegheny County, those fees fund the health department’s Air Quality Program, which enforces air quality regulations. But the fee structure hasn’t changed since 2021, leaving the department with a multimillion-dollar structural deficit. The program faced a $1.8 million deficit in 2024,” the radio station reports.
“Increases for the fee schedule approved [Nov. 18] range from $1,100 to extend an installation permit (a 46.5 percent hike) to a $50,800 fee for permitting new sources of pollution – a nearly 600 percent increase. Fees for asbestos-related permits will also go up,” WESA reports.
It took that full year to drum up the required two-thirds super majority support on County Council.
While we understand the need for government to cover the costs of shepherding commonsense regulations, it appears county government does not appreciate the effects of such massive increases on companies seeking to cover their costs.
The simple fact of the matter remains that the more you tax something, or “fee” something, the less you get of it. And on the likely outside chance that industries decide to still locate operations or expand them in Allegheny County, you can bet they won’t eat such increased regulatory costs, they’ll pass them on to their customers.
Or as WESA reminds us of U.S. Steel’s initial reaction to such onerous fee increases, they would “not lead to reductions in emissions or improve the overall air quality for county residents,” but rather “squeeze businesses that are already dealing with increased operational costs.”
And that squeezing is tighter than ever these days.
And in an era in which Allegheny County’s air quality is cleaner than ever and in overall compliance with federal standards, Allegheny County Council’s message to industry is quite simple and quite troubling: “Go elsewhere, you’re not welcome here.”
Maybe that’s the goal of the county and its ecocratic acolytes in the first place.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
