The Democrats’ First Commandment is “Thou shalt not take the job of the Party faithful.”
So, even if there is a merger, we won’t see any savings.
This whole thing is a waste of time sponsored by people who make a living by going to meetings and wasting time.
On our dime.

Hey, listen. The stranglehold the Democratic Party has had on Allegheny County politics isn’t good. It breeds bad politicians and an inbred system that resists change. And Luke is part of that….

However, the movement away from 878 local municipalities (number is imaginary, but close!) is long overdue. Years overdue. Decades overdue!

I’m not a Ravenstahl supporter, but this can only be seen as a good. If nothing else, it indicates that one more WPA politician has seen the light and is (at the very least) open to the idea of change.

Some form of “regionalism” isn’t going to solve all of Pittsburgh’s problems, but it might head the city and the region in the right direction….

Piltdown Man

Seems like another excuse to let the failed Pgh. government, which has taxed the City into poverty, make a grab for more money from suburbanites. Can’t they just stop spending so much?

...but they still want all the services they’ve come to expect. I’m not a historian, but my guess is that it’s always been that way.

At the same time, cities like Pittsburgh have seen a massive amount of their tax base evaporate over the past 30 years….much of it replaced by massive “non-profits,” like the profligate UPMC, which had ingested most of the Oakland section of the city and, more or less, pays no taxes. Ditto the universities. Ditto the religious institutions. From where I sit, we should ALL pay our fair share.

Of course, Luke has many problems and they won’t go away tomorrow. Fighting City Council over how many people get to take their cars home at night is a stab in the heart to hard-working Pittsburgh residents…many of whom have to rely on a less-than-stellar (and fading) public transportation system.

So, in the end, spending less is OK. But, just like your budget at home, there is only so far you can cut. Cities have been spiraling downward for three decades now and major, systemic changes are necessary. Like I said, regionalism doesn’t solve all the problems, but it is a step in the right direction. All those communities up and down the Mon River and the Allegheny, don’t EACH need to have a DPW and a police department and a DOT. Let’s regionalize all that “basic service” stuff and see if, just maybe, we can get our taxes to go down…and the service level to go up!

Pilt

To me, this is nothing more than smoke-and-mirrors happy-talk, for a number of reasons. One, this city-country struggle for regional supremacy has gone on for decades, and in 2008 we still appear to be stuck in the “report-issuing” stage. Two, while there are those who could be labeled “true reformers” on this issue (City Councilman Bill Peduto seems to stand out most prominently), too many others are dragging their feet, at best, and outright hostile to the idea of consolidation at worst. While Onorato and Ravenstahl read one script in front of the cameras, a very different script plays out when the lights are off. Which brings me to point # 3, which is a plague that has afflicted this region since the Pirates played their first game (and probably before that) – tribalism. While Democrats have a stranglehold on both city and county governments, little is made of the infighting within the party on various issues, especially this one. The split between the “old” and “new” guards within the Democrat Party, which the nation is seeing (perhaps for the first time) in the presidential contest, is very prominent here. Those considered more “progressive” (such as Peduto) argue most forcefully for reform, realizing the benefits in budgeting (especially for a cash-strapped city such as Pittsburgh) and government efficiency. The “New Dealers”, or old-school Dems, seem to cling to terribly antiquated methods of governance. Something else that holds reform back is the fact that some in the city and the county don’t want to be seen as giving the “other guy” the upper hand. County officials are deeply suspicious of their counterparts in the city, and vice versa. As bad as that silent struggle is, the municipalities in Allegheny County are even worse. Try to tell an EMT or fireman from a local outfit that he/she has to take their cues from a city or county bureaucrat. The result won’t be pleasant for the messenger. If cost-management in the aggregate is the over-arching issue, it doesn’t make much sense not to include Allegheny’s municipalities in a potential merger, but if the main focus of consolidation is to took a line-item permanently out of Pittsburgh’s budget, then a city-county merger makes more sense. Either way, the status quo will probably remain, as talking about reform is much easier and politically expedient than actually doing any heavy lifting on the issue.