From the Department of Government Intervention to Cover Up the Lie of the Last Government Intervention:

A pair of Pennsylvania state lawmakers, among others, are urging the state Public Utility Commission to reject a series of rate increases requested by the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority (PWSA).

While they cite a few coronavirus pandemic-related issues, including a high unemployment rate, in opposing the hike — and also seek a massive federal infrastructure bill to pay for what the PWSA ignored for years — their real nub of the rub, so to speak, is found in this lawmaker-penned Tribune-Review op-ed:

“While the middle of an ongoing pandemic and economic crisis is not the right time to seek higher rates at PWSA, this proposed increase would be too high at any time.

“PWSA rates are already unaffordable for many customers and raising them further without dramatic customer-assistance plans to protect our neighbors will have the greatest impact on those who are already struggling to afford their water bills.

“Instead of raising rates, PWSA should get creative, as we all have to do during this time, to ensure their most vulnerable ratepayers are not spending more than they can afford for the cost of a vital service.”

OK, let’s “get creative” – privatize the PWSA once and for all.

You’ll recall that for decades the PWSA was guided by political machinators who gave not one whit about its “most vulnerable ratepayers.” They sucked money out of the authority and constantly deferred maintenance and upgrades that have left it in the world of hurt it is.

Those same political machinators have repeatedly poison-pilled commonsense proposals to privatize the PWSA with wild-eyed claims that “the most vulnerable ratepayers” would be priced out of any service by that dastardly bogeyman of all dastardly bogeymen – the quest for profit.

Never mind that profit-questing creates greater efficiencies that best serve all customers at fair rates.

There are no government fairies that can sprinkle magic dust over the PWSA to fix it. But the magic of the private marketplace would be an important step in righting the authority’s still badly listing ship.

 It’s past time to unleash it.

As the City of Pittsburgh struggles to find ways to close an estimated  $100 million budget hole brought on by declining tax receipts during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, home sales data are suggesting something just as serious – flight from the city to the suburbs.

Pittsburgh’s finances have been pummeled by precipitous drops in a variety of tax collections. It has spent tens of millions of dollars in reserves. And while Mayor Bill Peduto warned in August that some city worker layoffs could be ahead without federal aid, there apparently have been none (though the mayor says he did order some belt-tightening).

Now, new home sales data is suggesting a deepening challenge for the city. As the Post-Gazette reports it, city home sales are dropping as suburban home sales are rising. It’s a phenomenon playing out nationwide.

As the P-G tells it:

“Ten years after the former working-class community (of Lawrenceville) took a leading role in the biggest real estate boom in Pittsburgh history, Lawrenceville is for the first time experiencing an overabundance of houses for sale and it appears the city’s hottest real estate market is showing signs of cooling down.

“Recent data from the real estate listing service West Penn Multi-List shows other city neighborhoods are suffering from lower demand from homebuyers, too. Sales also have begun to slow for condominiums in Downtown and the Strip District, and for housing located on the South Side and Central North Side.”

But demand for single-family homes in places like Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair and Shaler “has soared in recent months,” it says.

Pinning down a single cause is difficult. It could be a combination of things – from the pandemic, to an increase in the real estate transfer tax, to a failed public school system, to lawlessness in the streets, to onerous “progressive” public policies, to continual kowtowing to labor unions, etc. and et al., that are turning off a cohort of the populace.

But whatever the reason, it’s not a positive sign for the erstwhile Steel City. Not positive but also not surprising, that is.

Meanwhile, in news related to the Pennsylvania Department of Corporate Wealthfare (ahem), the Tribune-Review reports that FNB Corp. and the Pittsburgh Penguins have entered into a sponsorship/partnership deal.

The same banking company that wants $15 million in taxpayer help from state development coffers — a grant, not a loan, from the Pennsylvania Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) — to build a $200 million skyscraper on the site of the old Pittsburgh Civic Arena will spend an undisclosed sum to, as the Trib reports it, “replace Verizon’s name on a PPG Arena gate.”

Then there will be the “FNB Club of premium seats” on the west side of the arena.

And let’s not forget “FNB ATMs and a digital center in the arena as the company becomes the official retail and digital banking partner of the Penguins,” the Trib says.

“It gives us an opportunity to work with a sports franchise that is a class act,” FNB Corp. President and CEO Vincent J. Delie Jr. said. “It elevates our visibility.”

Money being fungible, are not taxpayers picking up part of the tab to elevate FNB’s “visibility”?

Of course, they are. And that’s simply not acceptable.

Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).