Deep into a Post-Gazette story on the latest lawsuit seeking to force Allegheny County to conduct its first countywide property reassessment in more than a dozen years was this little tarnished nugget:
“State Sen. Wayne Fontana has told the Post-Gazette in recent months he will introduce legislation to [order regular, statewide reassessments]. It’s uncertain if the state legislature will act on it this year.”
Which only reinforces how serious our state legislators are about continuing to thumb their noses at the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Uniform Taxation Clause.
Goodness, such dedication to such wanton dereliction of duty.
By the way, there’s a unique twist to the newest reassessment lawsuit, this one filed by a Lawrenceville resident – its call for a special “master” to oversee the reassessment process.
Per the lawsuit, filed this month in county Common Pleas Court:
“The appointment of a master to supervise the reassessment is an appropriate and necessary equitable remedy where a department of local government is as broken as the Allegheny County Office of Property Assessments.”
That’s not a shot over that department’s proverbial bow but a metaphorical shot right between the eyes. And a much-needed one at that, though astute observers have and will note in a valid point of order that at least some of what this office does is a slave to state taxation regulation.
There’s another equally troubling piece of fool’s gold buried in an overly effusive local newspaper editorial that, citing federal statistics, suggests that Greater Pittsburgh’s population “grew — by about 0.02% — entirely on the strength of a boost of 10,000 immigrants.”
Of course, it’s certainly premature to break out the pom-poms given the American Community Survey numbers include illegal aliens.
Indeed, the editorial advocates for policies that the Allegheny Institute holds sacrosanct – city and county leaders “must prioritize governmental efficiency, pragmatic pro-growth policies and overall livability. “
But what really struck us about this editorial is among what it proposes as a “solution” to the region’s economic/population malaise:
“The region needs a single growth czar to coordinate economic strategies.”
Good grief.
Cue the “industrial policy” initiatives? Attempt to command the economy in the vision of yet another bureaucrat? Slay governance “fragmentation” once and for all? Keep violating the state Constitution with oodles and boodles of corporate wealthfare?
And here we thought voters drove a stake through the heart of the faux “Regional Renaissance Initiative” waaaaaay back in the late 1990s. Oh, what silly “us-es” we were, eh?
Now, if any such “czar” wants to do what’s really necessary – reduce government bloat, excise onerous regulations, re-employ the fundamentals of basic economics and kick the leeches of organized labor in government to the curb – hey, we’ll be all ears.
But when you have supposedly serious public policy influencers suggesting, as the local editorial does, that “One possible idea [to rejuvenate Pittsburgh’s moribund state of affairs is] marketing the region in high-immigration regions, like Florida and Texas, using Spanish-language advertisements,” we have little hope that Pittsburgh can save itself from itself.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
