What a shame that Brandon McGinley can see neither the proof in the pudding nor the forest of failure in the trees of public policy insanity.
The Post-Gazette columnist says the Allegheny Institute – and other groups and individuals questioning the use of the Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID) program to subsidize redevelopment Downtown – “don’t … fully appreciate the extent of the market failure in the Golden Triangle. The simple truth is that existing [publicly financed revitalization] programs aren’t enough.”
It was a hardly tacit swipe at Eric Montarti, the Allegheny Institute research director, for having the temerity to ask, in effect, when is corporate wealthfare scheme after corporate wealthfare scheme – that with painful recidivism keep promising Pittsburgh’s latest “renaissance” – enough?
Or as Montarti put it (in Policy Brief Vol. 26, No. 22), “Why haven’t the retired tax-increment financing projects, along with grants from the state and other tax abatements, set the stage for private developers to develop without additional incentives and tax diversions?”
Because sucking at the taxpayer teat is so much easier than trying to sell bank lenders or other private investors on the merits of projects that are far too risky to even approach being prudent.
Such efforts are merely the latest in that long line of government interventions supposedly designed to “save” us all from the depths of a massive market failure that, silly us, we simply can’t understand, let alone appreciate.
Come now. As the late radio talk show host Jim Quinn was wont to say in moments such as this: “I was born at night but it wasn’t last night”.
Look at all those supposedly “successful” taxpayer-funded market interventions of Pitttsburgh’s relatively near past.
New football and baseball stadiums. And how many millions of dollars more will taxpayers be shaken down for to upgrade them in a few short years for facilities whose economic impact is de minimis?
A new hockey arena.
A new convention center (and now, millions more dollars for a dubious convention center hotel.)
The North Shore “T” Connector that commuters would not pay to ride; it took subsidies – some private, some public – to turn the trick.
Sweetheart deals for development rights to the barons of sport, one of which failed spectacularly and the other that gave us ho-hum, disposable, cookie-cutter architecture and the predictable high churn rate of retail.
Multiple millions of public dollars to the PNC and FNB banking behemoths for new skyscraping headquarters. What, they couldn’t get a loan?
Government-financed and even bought department stores.
A brand-new Pittsburgh International Airport in the 1990s and a $1.7 billion rejiggering of it just recently that soon could be sucking for debt air.
The continued bribing of airlines to operate here.
The list goes on and on. And so does the population, jobs and economic growth malaise. The needles barely have moved. Yet the self-anointed economic redevelopment brainiacs insanely insist that all we need are a few more government/taxpayer interventions to restore Pittsburgh to greatness.
Yeah, that’s the ticket to move Pittsburgh past the proverbial “finish line,” they argue. Heck, they don’t even know how to get to the starting line in sound economic fashion.
Even the P-G’s McGinley says “he’d rather err by doing too much than doing too little.”
Even if it continues to molest taxpayers, rewards those speculating with public money and whose results only mire Pittsburgh deeper in the muck of repeated failed leftist governance beholden to leftist unionistas always looking to pad their pockets at taxpayer expense.
Past being prologue, all they want is another series of government interventions to cover up the lies – the failures — of past government interventions.
Again, as my colleague Eric Montarti had the courage to ask: “When is enough enough?”
Apparently never for the self-serving, insane usual suspects.
Let us make this abundantly clear: The marketplace did not fail downtown Pittsburgh. Its failure was fueled by politicians, developers, unions and building owners.
Pols, for failing to provide regular, predictable property reassessments and seeking to build their legacies by currying favor with developers and unions by subsidizing them with public money.
Developers, for constantly whining that their projects made no economic sense without those public subsidies; they refuse to heed the signals of the marketplace speaking loud and clear.
Unions, for extorting wages and benefits far higher than the marketplace norm, then claiming both to be the new market norm.
Building owners, too many of whom failed to keep their buildings attractive to tenants in the evermore competitive office marketplace.
No, the marketplace is functioning as it should. And its these people functioning as they should not that failed the Downtown marketplace.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
