Public policy failure can be measured in many ways in Harrisburg. But the only way to measure the Pennsylvania Legislature’s failure this week to even begin to reform foundering public employee pensions is with scores of yardsticks.
Worse, Republicans, who could not muster enough votes in the GOP-controlled House, blamed Gov. Tom Wolf for his failure to deliver any Democrat votes.
Let that exercise in transference sink in.
Those who can’t get the job done should not blame those who have no intention of getting the job done.
“Personnel matter.” How many times has that phrase been used to obfuscate likely unpopular public policy decisions?
The latest example comes in the case of Henry Sciortino, the terminated former executive director of Pittsburgh’s Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, the public agency that long has been overseeing the city’s finances.
Sciortino also happens to be under investigation by the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office and federal authorities for his alleged questionable practices while at the helm of the ICA.
Now comes word that a new iteration of the ICA board of directors has agreed to pay Sciortino $48,000. All the board will say is that the money represents a “compromise and final settlement of dispute claims.” The board declined to elaborate, calling it a “personnel matter.”
A public board. Public money. The public has every right to any and all information regarding this payout.
EQT is betting that the fortunes of the shale gas industry are waxing, not waning, with the acquisition of nearly 60,000 acres of natural gas holdings in Washington, Westmoreland and Greene counties in Pennsylvania and in West Virginia.
It’s a nearly $700 million bet. And that should have a positive ripple effect through the marketplace.
Surely the specter of a number of “cracker” plants coming online in the Upper Ohio River Basin has something to do with that. But confidence in the future shale gas market can be as powerful a signal as any transaction.
Surely adding to the confidence that the fortunes of the shale gas industry once again are on the rise is word that Range Resources plans to increase drilling on existing well pads.
Nowhere is the natural, but still painful, churn of the economy on display more than in Beaver County.
That, of course, is where Shell is in the beginning stages of building one of those ethylene “cracker” plants that’s projected to deliver a major economic boon to the region.
But it’s also where Allegheny Technologies Inc. announced this week that it will close its Midland stainless steel facility. ATI cited excess global capacity. More than 250 jobs will be lost. The facility had been on idle status since January. It had operated in one form or another for more than a century.
But perhaps, just perhaps, there’s some residual good news in the announcement. An ATI spokesman told The Beaver County Times that the company has no plans to tear down the Midland facility. Hope springs eternal.
Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Financing Agency is lending $8 million to a company renovating the old Sony plant in Westmoreland County’s East Huntingdon Township. It was part of a package of $23 million in statewide loans announced by Gov. Tom Wolf on Monday.
Never mind that such loans are patently unconstitutional. From Article VIII, Section 8, of the Pennsylvania Constitution:
The credit of the commonwealth shall not be pledged or loaned to any individual, company, corporation or association nor should the commonwealth become a joint owner or stockholder in any company, corporation of association.
Never mind, too, that this particular site long has been a money pit for tax dollars — public dollars diverted by government bent on picking winners and losers and typically picking the latter.
Yet government continues to thumb its nose at the Keystone State’s charter. It’s shameful “public policy” from public servants who should know better.
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist for the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
