Proclaims a rather lengthy, if not borderline navel-gazing, column in the Post-Gazette: “It’s time for regional leaders, in the public and private sectors, to create a bold vision for a great city.”
Writer Douglas Heuck, a former reporter who’s now spearheading “The Pittsburgh Tomorrow” nonprofit project — whose stated mission is to revitalize Greater Pittsburgh — says the effort won’t “be easy, but what worthwhile thing ever is? But it’s doable, and we all know it’s time to work together to make it happen.”
“People everywhere want to be part of something bigger,” Heuck concludes. “That’s especially true of Pittsburghers because this city has an (sic) heroic past unlike other cities. For 100 years, Pittsburgh was a metaphor for can-do strength. Pittsburghers want this city to matter again.”
Yada, yada, yada, we offer non-flippantly. For Heuck offers a strange roadmap with, in effect, no road numbers and no mileage indicators to reverse Pittsburgh’s deep population, jobs and economic funk.
That’s not to say he does not offer expansive recommendations to address Pittsburgh long-running malaise. To begin with, he wants more immigrants, foreign and domestic. Heuck also wants to bring back “ex-pats, particularly millennials.”
Additionally, the columnist says we “need to keep our high schoolers here (or come back after they go to school) and encourage those who come to college here to stay.”
And, Heuck says, we “need to rebuild the black middle class and make this a place where black professionals feel welcomed and valued.”
“We need pioneers” who can take “bold action at a scale we haven’t seen here in generations,” he also says.
“We have an extremely rare opportunity to catalyze a sea change here, building on our strengths — which are considerable — and doing what Pittsburghers have always done: be trailblazers for the nation,” Heuck writes on the way to a boilerplate conclusion:
“We can provide a template for this nation, which is stuck in toxic malaise, of how to work together and build a sustainable future,” he says.
Yes, we realize that Heuck’s column likely is part of what “Pittsburgh Tomorrow” considers the beginning of a “public messaging campaign.” But his generalized prescription is much like saying “We don’t know where we’re going, but we’ll know when we get there.”
And how we’ll “get there” not only requires a detailed road map but a no-holds-barred admission of what has led to and maintains Pittsburgh’s “malaise.”
Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, has been more than rather appalled at such public policy gibberish for decades. And upon reviewing Heuck’s proposals, he pulls no punches in identifying the root cause of the malaise and offers his “bold vision”:
“Get rid of one-party rule,” the Ph.D. economist begins, a hard slap at decade upon decade of Democrat-created dysfunction. “Move quickly away from the deeply progressive leftist politics that dominate the city and much of the county.”
“Abandon the loyalty to unions,” which has unfairly padded pockets while picking the pockets of taxpayers, greatly increasing the cost of public works.
“Fix the wreck that is the outrageously costly and ineffective Pittsburgh Public Schools system,” an admonition that should speak for itself but one that continues to largely go unaddressed.
“Give up the idea of building an economy on Third World migrants and sports teams,” Haulk continues.
“Abandon fantasies and work on real problems — high government costs and taxes, rotten business climate, outrageously expensive schools and a preposterously expensive mass-transit system.”
Reminding that some cities “have to die before there can be a renaissance,” Haulk laughs off the notion of attracting “pioneers.”
For Pittsburgh has become “a city that despises its past successes and glory days that built it,” he says of city “leaders,” elected and unelected, that benefit to this day from the steel, coal, oil, glass and banking” philanthropists but use their philanthropic legacies to promulgate the worst kinds of public policies.
Such cities “will wallow in its detritus,” Haulk says with an informed bluntness so sadly missing, and so badly needed, in contemporary discourse.
“In short,” Haulk concludes, “it will take a miracle to truly turn Pittsburgh around. Too many people remain wedded to policies of self-destruction.”
Cheerleading won’t get the job done.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
