For the Union Dead

(snow is hell)

Nestled near the end of Mackenzie Carpenter’s feature on the testiness borne of uncurbed snow and unplowed streets are a quartet of paragraphs not to be missed. Here are the first two:

Pittsburgh Parking Authority meter readers who were told to shovel snow around public garages weren't happy about that, either.

"They are doing jobs that are to be done by facility operators from the Teamsters union," said Shawn Beck, union steward for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2719.

Contained in this two-sentence psychodrama are a glimpse into the city’s good-faith attempts to do something about the snow, a window into why those efforts are failing as often as not, and a gilded, gift-wrapped portrait of why so many people see unions not as invested and selfless workers, but as indifferent, self-obsessed spanners in the works.

At a time when two feet of snow have fallen, another foot is on the way, and a state of emergency has duly been called between, when people have gone three days without heat or power and others still can not get off their streets or out of their houses, when the National Guard has been summoned and neighbors are helping neighbors and this historic weather worst has brought out the human best in so many of us, a local union steward sees no shame, nor irony, nor rank and bitter indignity in complaining that members of his union have been asked to abandon their now utterly useless tasks and pitch in both for city and for fellow citizens by helping with a task normally done by another union, whose ranks are almost surely too thin and too burdened to cover it all.

This response would be bad and, to anyone with even an ounce of sense or empathy left them, maddening enough. But Mr. Beck, whose snowblind, tone-deaf protestations have shattered my once-absolute certainty that no Beck could possibly utter more thorough or grating inanities than Glenn, compounds the offense:  

"They're not getting the training that they need to be shown how to properly shovel snow. ... They're not getting trained in how to lift 50-pound bags of salt.

And the absurdity:

"One's already down ... with an injury," he said, "and I've got more wounded people coming in."

I, like many of you, have spent much of the past 72 hours shoveling snow. Like many of you, I have spent far more hours of my life than I would like or care to remember shoveling snow. And, like virtually all of you, I have never been formally trained in the process. And yet, somehow, perhaps because we possess both functioning gray matter and the willingness to use it, or perhaps because we see a job to be done and decide, before checking with our stewards or our captains or our collectively bargained contracts, just decide to do it. And do not complain about it.

Nor, if we do complain about it, do we make it sound as if we’ve just stormed the snowy beaches at Normandy, and are trying desperately now to hold our battalion together in the face of Nazis with elevated bunkers, 50-pound bags of salt, and Third-Reich-branded snow shovels raining down upon us like grim and certain death.

And I’m guessing that those poor, martyred AFSCME members have, at some point in their lives — perhaps even in the past few days — shoveled snow on their own properties without attending a formal training session, needing to file a grievance, or having their wounds triaged at the nearest M*A*S*H union unit.

The Radical Middle Relaxes

(before the second snowmageddon)

After this brief post, TRM will take the rest of the day off to clear a little more snow, play a few games with the home-bound boys, and honor the birthdays of Robert Klein, Ted Koppel, Nick Nolte, Jack Lemon, Gary Coleman, John Williams, James Dean, Jules Verne, John Grisham, Audrey Meadows, Lana Turner, Kate Chopin, Elizabeth Bishop, Martin Buber, Fred Blassie, Kirk Muller, Dino Ciccarelli, William Tecumseh Sherman, and some guy who lives and blogs in the 'Burgh.

Radical Pittsburgh Resumes

(after the snowpocalypse)

After an odd and untoward union of circumstances — call it the perfect storm of procedural piffle — aggrieved our ability to produce a new episode last week, Radical Pittsburgh returns to form today with an interview / discussion / collegial shop-talk session with Bram Reichbaum, recently (but not permanently?) retired fixture of Pittsburgh’s political blogging scene.

We don’t talk in detail about what Bram will be doing next — subtle hints and suggestions will have to do — but we do talk about the state of this region’s political blogging past and present, some of The Pittsburgh Comet’s greatest hits, and what to watch for as the next year or two unfolds before our (hopefully) critical eyes.

It’s a lively discussion with an accomplished and passionate guest, and something well worth the time and energies of all you blog-reading PG Plussers.

(Not Necessarily the) Notes From a Friday Afternoon

(collecting the sniglets of my mind)

For your consideration: another curious collection of thoughts, reactions, and observations that didn’t make it into a full-length post this week...

• I’ve never understood why his critics claim that The Mayor never shows real leadership. Why, just two days ago, he asked City Council for permission... to create a 25-member task force... that would have two years... to write a plan... for how to deal with the city’s long-standing, ever-worsening vacant property problem. (What? No RFP?) That’s hitting the problem head-on! 

• When he’s finished with politics, The Mayor should seek employment as a university administrator. 

• With a tip o’ the hat to one of TRM’s most favorite readers and writers — we’ll call him Mr. T. — I direct your attention to this U.S. Department of Justice job posting for a Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney. Most specifically, and incredulously, to this passage about half way down the page: The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine.

• My first thought: Yeah, that’s what I want in my civil rights case trial lawyer: mental illness and retardation.

• My second thought: Who wrote the job description, Rahm Emanuel? 

• Saw the professional profile this week of someone who bills herself — she is not described as, mind you, but bills herself as — a Success Coach. I have no idea what that means, and I didn’t stick around her site long enough to find out. (Which makes her, in one way at least, a Failure Coach.) I do realize, of course, that the title is intended to seem hot and hip, just chock full of power and positivity. But it just seems unctuous and odious to me.

• I’ve spent some part of the last three days trying to decide whether Success Coach is more or less obnoxious than Life Coach. Right now, I’m thinking it’s less. But not by much.

• Speaking of unctious, odious, and obnoxious nomenclature... Word comes today that Comcast will rebrand its tv, phone, and internet offerings as Xfinity. Though it sounds more like a bad movie (Keanu Reeves and Jean Claude Van Damme travel to... Xfinity!) or car (New from Nissan, the Comcast HD Xfinity Coupe!) name, I suppose in some ways it’s a fitting brand for the cable provider. If only because it so clearly invokes the company’s pricing strategy (How high are we going to raise your monthly rates? To Xfinity... and beyond!)

• This week’s best bits from the Top Tens, in the category of Strange Days in February: tomorrow is Lame Duck Day, and Sunday is Wave All Your Fingers at Your Neighbor Day.

• That last one is certainly an improvement over Wave Just One of Your Fingers at Your Neighbor Day — which, as far as I can tell, is every day in South Philadelphia.

• The hard lines I often take on this blog aside, I’m pretty much a softie at heart. But I’m sorry — if you’re crying because a panda you occasionally visit at the zoo is going to China to help perpetuate his species, and especially if you’re gurgling into a news camera  that you’re just happy for the time you had with him, you need serious help. Once FedEx has delivered Tai Shan to his motherland, perhaps they can come back and deliver you to that whole team of psychiatrists you should be seeing.

• The TRM Keen Grasp of the Obvious Award of the Week goes to the folks who designed Duquesne Light’s online pay interface. The process, credited to a company called NCO, includes this prompt above the input box when paying by debit card: Debit Card Number (Required). No doubt to distinguish it from all those other online vendors whose e-pay interface can just guess your number.

• Forget the mythology, the time travel, the temple, the Smoke Monster, and the sideways flashes all at work in Tuesday night’s LOST episode. By far the best parts, as Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker so rightly observes, were the actors themselves: Last night, during LOST’s two-hour final-season premiere, it struck me that [Matthew Fox, Terry O’Quinn, and Michael Emerson], along with a number of others, are giving what may be the performances of their lives. It’s a show not exactly known as a thespian showcase — a show, in fact, where the quality of the performances is just about the last thing anyone ever talks about — but I think it’s about time we acknowledged that what really makes it work, what grounds all that head-spinning lunacy in a form so many viewers are still so willing to follow, is the power of the performances. Without the subtle, and sometimes staggering, brilliance of that ensemble cast, only the geekiest of geeks would by now give a damn what’s going to happen in the end.    

• At least one keen-eyed observer — we’ll call him Toadsly — has noticed that Keira Knightley, who served with distinction as the first Official Muse of TRM, has been succeeded in the sidebar by the equally lovely Malin Akerman. The post of Official Muse began with a series of posts about sexism and feminism and the annual Sport Illustrated swimsuit edition — one I may well resurrect, in some form or fashion, later this month — at my old blog. SI cover girl Carolyn Murphy was the first, followed in successive years by Naomi Watts, Kate Beckinsale, and then Ms. Knightley, who held the post through the hiatus and picked up again when I began here at the PG. The tradition started as a bit of silly fun, soon morphed into a running joke, and eventually became a source of both anticipation and good-natured consternation for my readers. Because it always amused me, and because it sure does brighten up the sidebar, I’ve continued it here.

• And, finally... Some public thanks and humbled appreciation to Pitt professor, blogger extraordinaire, and intellectual man about town Mike Madison, who this week responded to the PG’s feature on (and casual list of) Pittsburgh’s “characters” and iconic personalities with a list of his own, on which he inexplicably, and no doubt quite drunkenly, included me. Mike’s words are surely too kind by half, as is his contention that I merit the company of most of the people on his list. But I could not possibly agree more with his inclusion of Duquesne Chancellor John Murray and Post-Gazette columnist Dennis Roddy, two men I have long admired and respected and, at least in some small way, hoped to emulate in the work that I do... 

The Invisible Men

(or, when bad op-eds happen from good academics)

Yeah, I know. Here we go again. But I can’t help it.

When I read self-serving op-eds, when I read weak arguments, when I read deliberately and selectively fudged half-truths, and especially when I read them all in the same place, in smug support of an even smugger position, I just can’t help it. I have to respond.

(Take food and potty breaks now, folks, 'cause it’s gonna be another long one.)

I’ve already written at length, and in multiple parts about the flaws and fallacies and near-farcical components of the arguments made by the members of the Pittsburgh Council for Higher Education and Tuition But Not Taxation in (rightful) opposition to the Student Shakedown Tax, so we all knew it was only a matter of time before I’d be forced to do the same in response to another sort of taxation, even ones that have not yet been proposed. (Our local universities will now apparently treat public policy debates like their own tuition rates; why wait for a reason to raise them when you can just go ahead and do it right away, all the time, anyway?)

The time came, and mattered, and provoked this response on Sunday, when Carnegie Mellon president Jared Cohon and Pittsburgh Theological Seminiary president William Carl conspired in a PG Sunday Forum piece to argue — and I use the term loosely — that Taxing universities is a bad idea.

There is surely a case to be made in support of that position. But this is not it.

Instead, it’s a rehash of some old, long-tired fallacies, willful misrepresentations of opposing positions, and a kitchen-sink mish-mash of other assorted claims that compensate with arrogance for what they lack in coherence.

To wit...

...We acknowledge that our government leaders need to find a way to stabilize city finances, but taxing colleges and universities is not a good way to do it.

Translation: Someone’s gonna pay, but it ain’t gonna be us.

It's not only a bad idea; it's contrary to Pennsylvania law.

It’s also contrary to Pennsylvania law to sing in the bathtub, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea. Laws, as any woman or black man now allowed to vote will tell you, can easily be changed when the folly of their existence, or else the necessity of their antithesis, is recognized and acted upon.

For now, Drs. Cohon and Carl are understandably quite fond of the word, if not exactly the letter, of the law:

The tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations goes back at least to the commonwealth constitution adopted in 1874. More recently, the state Legislature reaffirmed our tax-exempt status in 1997 when it passed Act 55.

In doing so, it laid out five criteria that organizations must satisfy in order to be exempt from taxes. Knowing the five criteria is useful, as they provide the rationale for tax exemption. Organizations must:

• Further charitable purposes (as colleges and universities do through education and basic research);

• Operate entirely free from a profit motive;

We don’t have to go any farther than this one. (If you want to read criteria three, four, and five, see the original text.) Because this is the deal-breaker.

Because, as we’ve already discussed multiple times, our local universities do not operate entirely free from a profit motive. They don’t even operate partially free from a profit motive. They and their administrators, their trustees, and their teams of not-always-cracker-jack financial advisors operate deeply devoted, and indeed inexorably chained, to a profit motive.

They don’t call them profits, of course. They call them endowments. But they’re the same damned thing: money left over at the end of the year when all expenses have been paid. (I’ve already covered this here, but we’ll recap just for fun...)

In Summer 2008, just before the economic downturn, the University of Pittsburgh’s endowment — that’s money they’ve received and returns on investment they’ve earned, separate from the annual operating budget and so left over, like a big, fat savings account, at the end of each fiscal year — totaled $2.4 billion. (That’s billion, with a B.) Carnegie Mellon’s totaled $1.1 billion. (Once again, that’s billion, with a B.) At last count, Pitt’s losses — including some questionable investments with charlatan financial advisors had dropped its endowment to roughly $1.8 billion. CMU’s, after similar losses, had dropped to $770 million.

Considerable losses to be sure, but still a nice position to be in when all of the year’s bills have been paid and you still have a cool three-quarter billion, or one-and-three-quarter billion, left in the bank and on the balance sheet. You can separate the revenue streams, and you can make all the bogus semantic distinctions you want, but you can’t change the final accounting.

You can call that money an endowment. You can call it, UPMC-like, excess margin. You can call it all the money in my piggy bank, for all I care, but the simple fact remains that, out here in the real world, where we can both do the math and see the writing on the conference room wall, those things are called profits.

As for the motive, well... let’s let Dr. Cohon speak to that. In an email to the Carnegie Mellon campus community, dated December 8, 2008, Dr. Cohon addresses the current economic situation by fretting that the decline in the stock markets has reduced the size of our endowments, then later declares that, while we must tighten our belts, we must also continue to invest strategically.

You don’t suppose he advocated strategic investment out of a status quo motive, do you? How about from a loss motive? From what sort of motive do you typically fret about stock prices and strategic investments?

Yeah. Exactly.

A little more than a month before that email went out, CMU issued a press release announcing the Public Phase of Comprehensive $1 Billion Campaign Targeted to Endowment, Future Growth

In other words, the university was hoping to raise one billion dollars that would go not into the university’s classrooms, but into the university’s coffers.

Does anyone really want to tell me, and try to keep a straight face all the while, that these actions constitute an operation entirely free from a profit motive?

Now, I know that endowments serve a critical function in the short-term funding, and especially in the long-term stability, of a university. So I’m not trying — at least not in this post — to diminish their importance or even their existence. But don’t pee and my leg and tell me it’s raining, and don’t try to amass billions of dollars in assets and tell me you’re entirely free from a profit motive.

In other words, there are good reasons for colleges and universities to be tax exempt.

One of which they ignore, or at least rationalize, with impunity.

Basically, if we didn't exist, the government would have to invent us to support the educational needs of its citizens.

Here’s the first of many times we’ll play what I like to call the Substitution Game: the good doctors will lay claim to some vital or important or otherwise totally, critically, indisputably essential reason for their tax-exempt status that, if you were to think about it for any more than a moment — and then, if you were to substitute some other group or institution or for-profit entity — you would realize is no good reason at all for tax-exempt status, because it also applies to plenty of taxed statuses too. And so, if these claims actually held up, we’d be taxing no one but individual citizens. (Yeah, I know...)

For example: Basically, if [insert big energy company here] didn’t exist, the government would have to invent them to support the energy needs of its citizens.

Or: Basically, if [insert big manufacturing company here] didn’t exist, the government would have to invent them to support the manufacturing needs of its economy.

Or: Basically, if [insert big, Death-Star-like medical conglomerate — know of any like that? — here] didn’t exist, the government would have to invent them to support the health care needs of its citizens.

See what I mean? See how much fun it is?

Until, that is, it becomes so damned infuriating.

We believe that attempts to tax colleges and universities are based on two false perceptions.

First, many people seem to believe that colleges and universities drain services while providing no return to the city.

What a load of waffle.

Find me one person — just one — who believes that the colleges and universities DRAIN city services while providing NO RETURN to the city. Fine me one man, woman, child, or small woodland creature in this whole region who will honestly and seriously contend that these schools suck us dry while providing not so much as a drop of worth in return. And then while you’re at it, find me a snipe, the Yeti, and some valuable swampland in Jersey I could turn for a quick buck.

I’m certain that Drs. Cohon and Carl do not actually believe this. I mean, they can’t possibly. They’re not that stupid. Or ignorant. Or even deluded.

But they are, apparently, that disingenuous. And, unfortunately, that willing or lazy (or both) to offer up a straw man of an argument so thin, so pathetic, so gossamer and insubstantial, that it insults the very nature of straw men. Call it a cotton candy man argument. Or better yet, an invisible man argument.

Already, the entire essay is built upon a flimsy, faulty premise. One that barely survives its own sophomoric utterance.

(As a guy who’s read and heard and graded plenty of sophomoric rhetorical utterances in his day, I am uniquely qualified to level that assessment. If I’d received this essay in one of my writing classes, it would have earned a C- at best. Duquesne MBA students: consider yourself warned.)

Pittsburgh colleges and universities already provide millions of dollars to the city each year in parking taxes, amusement taxes and other taxes and fees.

This one again? Really?

Note to Dr. Cohon, Dr. Carl, and every other university president in the city: repeating this tired old crock over and over (and over) again does not make it true. And does not change the fact that by provide to the city, you actually mean collect from other people and pass along to the city. You pay or provide parking and amusement taxes no more than Macy’s pays or provides sales taxes. No more than Mitchell’s pays or provides drink taxes. No more than John Weinstein pays and provides all of our county real estate taxes.

They also provide vital services to our neighborhoods, especially police protection.

This is certainly true. If also, as you are about to see, terribly overstated...

If you are searching for a police station in Oakland, the third busiest business district in Pennsylvania, what you will find is one staffed either by a University of Pittsburgh or Carnegie Mellon University police officer, an effort supported by more than $11 million in funding from the two institutions. Pittsburgh would need to increase its police force by 10 percent to make up for the contributions provided by Pitt and Carnegie Mellon.

When’s the last time you went searching for a police station? For that matter, who do you know who’s ever gone searching for a police station? The very notion is laughably, almost wholly divorced from reality. But not, of course, from a rhetorical attempt to make it seem as if Oakland has somehow been abandoned by the Pittsburgh Police Department and is now being protected by the selfless public servants at Pitt and CMU.

If you decide, for some odd reason — you have a whole day to kill, perhaps, and you’ve never heard of 911 — to search for a police station in Pittsburgh, you’ll only find six (one for each of the city’s police zones) anyway. Which means that Central Oakland’s lack of a police station is no different from the lack of a police station in eighty-one of the city’s other neighborhoods.  

And the reason, of course, that most of those neighborhoods don’t have multi-million-dollar university police departments is that they don’t have multi-billion-dollar universities with tens of thousands of university students squatting within them.

It’s not as if the Pitt and CMU police forces have decided to patrol Oakland as a way to give back to the city. They’re patrolling Oakland because that’s where their students are studying and learning and walking and driving and drinking and puking and annoying their neighbors and peeing on the sidewalks and, every once in a while, setting fire to sofas and overturning cars and bus shelters.

(Yeah, I know some of those last few are rare occurrences. But I’d venture to guess that there have been more instances of student street vandalism in Oakland in the past ten years than there have been of people searching for a police station. So I’m sticking with ‘em.)

If those Pitt and CMU police forces are so wonderful and so vital, then all those Pittsburgh Police cars and officers I see in Oakland ought to be deployed elsewhere, right? I mean, it sounds from this essay as if the university officers have it covered, doesn’t it?

Note to Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper: next time the Steelers win the Super Bowl, or the Pens win the Stanley Cup, don’t worry about sending any of your officers into Oakland. Just deploy your officers elsewhere, because it sounds like those university forces have it covered.

(Oh, and by the way: if you’re looking for a police station in Oakland, good luck finding Carnegie Mellon’s. It’s tucked into office suite space on a one-way side street off of S. Craig, tucked behind a Quiznos Sub Shop and across from the back door and the dumpsters at LuLu’s Noodles. Nothing like a high-profile presence for deterring crime. Or providing a beacon of hope for all those poor, wandering Pittsburghers.)  

Pittsburgh colleges and universities provide more than 300,000 hours of community service every year. These include providing educational and learning opportunities for children in K-12 schools in southwestern Pennsylvania.

There’s that 300,000 hours number again. One that gets thrown around a lot but that, as I’ve noted before, never is given a full, or even a rough, accounting.

I’d like to see some. I mean, I’d really like to see some. But I’m not gonna get my hopes up.

I will, however, suggest that plenty of for-profit entities provide many hours of community service each year as well. Should we not be taxing them too? Or should they just stop providing the community service, since they’re not getting a blind eye and a blank ledger in return?

Our institutions have undertaken a variety of building projects aimed at improving neighborhoods and creating new economic vitality for our campuses and those around us.

This is undoubtedly true. (Though the syntax is slippery, as if improving our neighborhoods were the first things on the universities’ minds when they gobble up properties and expand their footprints.)

Just as it is undoubtedly true that those projects, once completed, remove properties from the tax rolls. And just as it is undoubtedly true that the same can be said of for-profit entities. Does that mean we shouldn’t be taxing them either?

Far from draining services, Pittsburgh colleges and universities provide direct investments and generate significant economic impact that anchor the city's economy and that are vital to its long-term financial viability.

Once again, let’s play the substitution game: Pittsburgh’s banks and law firms provide direct investments and generate significant economic impact that anchor the city’s economy and that are vital to its long-term financial viability.

Equally true, yes?  Should we not be taxing them either?

In a recent column in the Post-Gazette about the value of the city's nonprofits, economic analyst Harold Miller noted that there would be fewer taxable buildings, stores, hotels and restaurants in Oakland if it weren't for the presence of the nonprofits.

The same is true of the downtown for-profits. Should we not be taxing them either?

(Yeah, I know. I’m already sick of the substitution game too. But when a faulty, flimsy premise and repeated invitations to play it are all they have...)

The column also noted that in many ways, the city of Pittsburgh is more disadvantaged by being a county seat for Allegheny County, with all of its tax-exempt property, than it is by being home to colleges and universities.

This may be true. Or it may not.

Either way, I’d love to see a full accounting of the property values held by all the non-profits, as well as all the county government entities. That, I suspect, would make for some interesting reading. At least then we’d know what many ways means.

If the claim is true, do Drs. Cohon and Carl think the city should tax the county? Or should we first consider how many police stations it has and how many hours of community service it provides?

And even if it is true, why does that mean the non-profits should escape having to pay their fair share? Because they aren’t quite as much of a handicap as the county government? That’s like a murderer telling the police he shouldn’t be arrested because there are other murderers out there who’ve killed more people than he has.

The second false perception is that, as they expand, universities convert tax-bearing property to tax-exempt status, eroding Pennsylvania's tax base.

To begin with, we don't own as much land as many people seem to think and we represent a small minority of tax-exempt land. Pittsburgh colleges and universities own only 6.5 percent of city property and about a quarter of city tax-exempt property. Universities hold only a small fraction of tax-exempt property statewide, while government owns the vast majority.

And this contradicts that premise how, exactly?

Because government owns more tax-exempt property, universities shouldn’t have to pay their fair share? Because another non-profit entity — one that could tax itself all-day-everyd-ay but never raise the bottom line — freeloads more than you, you should able to freeload too?

I’m going to try this one on April 15th.

Dear IRS: Bill Gates makes more money than me, so I really shouldn’t have to pay any federal income tax.

I think I’ll try it later this year too:

Dear City of Pittsburgh: I own only .0003 percent of all city property, so I really don’t think you should collect property taxes from me. (I mean, my God, I live in a duplex! At least go after people who have four outside walls!)

I could even try it if I ever get pulled over for speeding on the Parkway:

But Officer, I was only going 75, and I’m sure that people have done well over 100 on this road before, so just give me a warning and we can both be on our way, okay?

Did I say these arguments were sophomoric? What was I thinking?

(It’s almost certain that this piece, like most pieces published under the byline of political candidates or CEOs or university presidents, was not actually written by the authors to whom credit is given. So, as both a public and a private service, I offer this free bit of communication consulting advice to Drs. Cohon and Carl: hire some better ghost writers, or PR flacks, or legal advisors, or whatever combination of them produced this nonsense. At the very least, read more carefully that to which you put your names. When you do not, those names, and the good reputations that come with them, diminish.)

Furthermore, our expansion in recent years has often increased tax rolls, and, even when it hasn't directly, it has produced substantial and continuing benefits. There are many outstanding examples.

Or not-so-outstanding examples...

Chatham University purchased a building in East Liberty, renovated one-fifth of it and is now paying at least twice the amount of taxes as the previous owners on the remaining four-fifths of the building.

First: the combination of the fractions and the fractured syntax are a bit much.

Second: that building is a three-story, 250,000-square foot, $5 million property adjacent to the new Bakery Square development. It’s one thing to say that the university is paying more taxes than the previous owners (even if we don’t know what those figures are), quite another to say what the university is (and will be) paying in relation to what another, for-profit owner could be paying next year, or for years after that, on a piece of property the value of which has risen considerably in the eighteen months since the purchase, and the value of which figures to skyrocket over the next several years.

The Petersen Events Center, constructed by the University of Pittsburgh, generates both amusement and parking tax revenues.

So will the Consol Energy Center. Should we not tax the Penguins either?

(So did Fitzgerald Field House, by the way.)

Pitt also constructed the Sennott Square Academic Center on the most blighted block of the Forbes Avenue business corridor, creating new tax-bearing and job-generating retail space on the first floor.

And lovely space it is. Of course, above that tax-bearing and job-generating retail space on the first floor are five floors of tax-exempt university space.

On Fifth Avenue, the Bio Sciences Tower 3 is a magnet for research dollars.

Which go directly to the university.

Down the street, Carlow University purchased a rundown lot on the corner of Craft, Fifth and Forbes avenues to build a Science and Technology Center, enhancing retail and commercial opportunities along the Forbes Avenue corridor. Carlow also purchased a church and rectory at Robinson Street and Fifth Avenue to further protect and enhance an important Oakland entry point.

The Science and Technology Center, a striking and (for Carlow) much-needed building, is tax-exempt. As is the church and rectory property. So the (ahem) tangible benefits of these two projects are to enhance retail and commercial opportunities (translation: maybe someone will open another business in the vicinity, and we can credit it to the center) and to further protect and enhance an important Oakland entry point (translation: look pretty).

As we finish considering this leap of a stretch, and as we move on to the rest, please remember that these are the cherry-picked best-of-the-best examples of projects that have often increased tax rolls and produced substantial continuing benefits. If Drs. Cohon and Carl are fudging this much on their top examples, well...

Duquesne University redeveloped a site containing a series of dilapidated warehouses into its Power Center, which contains a vital mix of retail and university space — bringing both new taxes and jobs to the city.

A vital mix of retail and university space, eh? Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Too bad it’s a gross overstatement.

The Power Center is a wonderful building. Four-and-a-half of its six floors are dedicated to university — read: tax-exempt — space. The anchor of its vital retail space is a Barnes & Noble bookstore that doubles as the campus bookstore. This space is larger than Duquesne’s old bookstore, and more accessible because it’s no longer in the student union up on the Bluff, but it’s still essentially a relocation.

The other two components of this vital retail space are a half-empty Jamba Juice storefront and a restaurant called The Red Ring, which serves great food at reasonable prices, is packed to the rafters on Penguins game nights, but schedules its hours around the university calendar and looks like an abandoned movie set most nights when no games or concerts are at the arena.  

Point Park University has invested well over $40 million in its Academic Village initiative.

Virtually all of which is Point Park property, and therefore tax-exempt. So this is probably not the best example.

Carnegie Mellon University built the Collaborative Innovation Center on its campus as a tax-bearing facility, believing that the powerhouse ideas of its students and faculty could bring jobs to Pittsburgh. Since then, Google, Intel and Apple have moved into the facility. We estimate that CMU's presence alone has created 200 companies and 9,000 jobs in the past 15 years.

This, of course, is excellent. Thank you, CMU.

It is also an estimate. (Don’t these people have any precise data? Ever? Must we always deal in estimates, guesses, hunches, and round-ups?) For God’s sake, show us some real numbers once in a while.

Also: so you’ve created jobs and businesses for the region. Great. (Substitution Game Alert!) So have many other for-profit companies, institutions, and entities. Should we not be taxing them either?  

While we wait for an answer, and now that we’ve noted the considerable tricks and flaws and fudges in these examples, let’s go back and look at the big picture again.

How many acquisitions and expansions have the universities made that have not added to the tax rolls? That have diminished or depleted or otherwise obliterated property from the tax rolls? Can we see the whole list? You know — all the ones that have removed properties, and all the ones that have added properties, and all the ones that have both removed and added properties? And then see the values of each?

You know, so we can determine the net loss or gain — anyone really think it’s a gain? — to the city’s financial ledger.

Because it would be awfully unfair, and yet again disingenuous, to praise yourself for giving someone a hundred dollars when you’ve taken a thousand from them. Isn’t that right, Doctors?

All of this is good news for Pittsburgh and its employment picture.

Of course.

Google is now doubling its size in Pittsburgh and will become the anchor tenant of a development in East Liberty.

Where it will pay taxes.

And another thing on this whole spin-off argument: I estimate that I’ve created 2 taxpayers in the past 15 years. If they stay or return here after college, and then start working full-time and paying taxes, can I claim them as reasons why I don’t have to be taxed anymore? After all, I’ve added to the workforce and to the tax rolls, and so I’ve contributed to the long-term economic vitality of the region!

Shouldn’t a guy get a break for that?

A striking example of the catalytic role of the nonprofit community is the development of the South Side. Early investments by UPMC and Pitt in sports performance and regenerative medicine centers were keys to critically important developments on the South Side. Thanks to their visionary investments and initial developments, this once-blighted area now boasts the South Side Works retail complex, the corporate headquarters for American Eagle, attractive housing, restaurants and a new hotel.

Yes, you’re reading that correctly. The good doctors are attempting to credit the entirety of the South Side Works to a couple of medical facilities. As if Joseph-Beth Booksellers and the South Side Works Cinema and the Cheesecake Factory and McCormick & Schmick’s and the Hofbräuhaus and that impending, god-awful Toby Keith establishment only decided to settle there because of the McGowan center and a couple of football practice facilities.

This claim is so ludicrous, it barely survives its own awful utterance. In fact, I’m barely surviving its own awful existence. My teeth are clenching, my joints are tightening, and I can barely finish typing this senten...

(There. That’s better.)

But really: ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

All that development comes thanks to those (ahem) visionary investments and initial developments?

I repeat: ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

In what world are these men living?

Of course, if we can play that game, then I’m going to claim that Mike Tomlin’s decision to move to Pittsburgh and live across the street from us on Shady Avenue is all thanks to Wendy’s and my visionary investments and initial re-developments. If we hadn’t moved here first, Coach Tomlin and his family would never have followed. So, you know, that last Super Bowl — you can thank the Hermanns.

Beyond the false perceptions about universities, taxing our institutions would take away, dollar for dollar, from the benefits we provide to the city. We are not rich organizations (another false perception),...

Those endowments again? That’s Billions. With a B.

... and, as a general matter, the tuition we charge does not cover the full cost of education, nor does the external support we receive cover the full cost of research. Imposing a tax on us in order to balance the city budget would force us to raise tuition in order to balance ours, or to provide less financial aid or forego investments in new and enhanced programs.

You know, because they have no other (mammoth) source of funds from which to draw. If you asked CMU to kick in a couple of million a year, and they have only a billion dollar endowment, or if you asked Pitt to kick in that same amount, and they have only a $2.5 billion endowment, you can see why they’d have no choice but to pass those costs on to their students. I mean, where else would they get the money? 

We are proud of the role that we have played in the success of our city. Pittsburgh is hailed as a model of urban rebirth based, in part, on the direct contributions we have made, the jobs we have created, the companies we have spun off, the innovative employers we have attracted and the developments we have built. Taxing us will take away from our efforts to do more for the city, dampening the economic impact of what we do and ultimately hurting all of Pittsburgh's citizens.

Taxing Pittsburgh's colleges and universities would be contrary to long-settled law.

Thirteen years is long-settled? Is there some statute of limitations on changes to questionable state law that I missed while I was spending so much time trying to point out all these logical flaws and fallacies, all these invisible men and rhetorical absurdities?  

The repeated attempts to do so seem to be based on false perceptions about what we contribute to the city.

I thought they were based on the belief that they drain services and provide no return to the city.

And, while well intended, taxing our institutions would have immediate negative impacts and long-term consequences that no one wants.

Except, of course, that you have not proven, nor even come close to indicating, in real terms, what those impacts and consequences would be. But you sure have assured us that we don’t want them, so maybe we shouldn’t even ask to see them. They might be too scary.

Pittsburgh colleges and universities have been a major part of the city's success,..

Amen. Absolutely.

...and we are committed to helping find long-term solutions to the city's budget problem.

You have a funny way of showing it.

We look forward to working with Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and other city and state leaders to chart a course for the future of Pittsburgh of which we all can be proud.

We’ll be watching every step of the way. And not as uncritically as you think.

Emp-T

(or, the perils of a misplaced print run)

Fun With Photos Week continues here at TRM, thanks to a submission from a regular reader — we’ll call him Sideshow Bob — who couldn’t resist the shutter bug this morning while passing through the Steel Plaza T Station:



Even if they eventually get around to filing the racks with bus and T schedules, writes Sideshow Bob, it's not Customer Service.

He has a point there, of course. Just as he did in his subject line: Everything You Need to Know About the Port Authority.

Of course, if that were really true, you’d find one of those empty racks every two blocks. No one would be looking at them. And Dan Onorato would be lurking somewhere in the bushes, urging you to drink so that some of those pamphlets might live. 

Arth in the Balance

(or, the perils of a misbegotten letter)

Saw this license plate on the back end of a different-thinking Honda on Tech Street yesterday, as I was dropping Wendy off at work:



And I thought: Who the hell is Arth? And why does he need to be saved?

And then it hit me. I realized that I was thinking far too locally, and that I needed to act much more globally. If not orthographically.

Quick, someone call Al Gor!

Stuck in the Middle With Me

(once again, on groundhog day)

Seventeen months ago, I quit blogging.

Sixteen months ago, in a Post-Gazette Next Page essay, I explained why.

Fifteen months ago — about an hour after I'd declared to a conference room full of PG writers and editors that blogs were dead — I agreed to to begin again.

Twelve months ago today, I did.

Because some of those writers urged me to. Because one of those editors asked me to. Because that same editor assured me, as much as she possibly could, that many of the concerns and frustrations that drove me away from blogging would be, if not eliminated, at least contained and controlled on this site. But mostly because I still wanted to believe in what I'd been doing. Or at least been trying to do.

Turns out, happily, that we were both right.

Last February 2nd, rested and ready, settling into a new blog, a new site, and a whole new set of possibilities, I made the same old promises to myself and to you:

That I would do my best to fill The Radical Middle with everything — critical thought, emotional and intellectual honesty, lively and lyrical prose — good blogging and opinion writing should contain. That I would avoid (most) self-indulgences. That I would strive to make everything I posted worthy of major paper publication.

That I would make both my craft and my content as strong, as polished, as compelling as possible. That I word make every word, subject, and syllable count. And that, even as I tilted to the left or leaned to the right or seemed to stray occasionally from the center, I would always value ideas over ideology. Honesty over advocacy. And calling ‘em as I see ‘em over seeing ‘em as I’d like ‘em.

That I would be fair and informed in my opinions, and that, with an obsession almost to a fault, I would see things critically and write about them with a brutal, almost belligerent honesty.

I’ve failed at times, succeeded as often as not, and tried always to strike a balance between. In both cases, you’ve let me know. And I’ve been glad to hear it.

It’s been said that inside every cynic is an idealist trying to get out. I agree with that. And I think it takes someone firmly rooted in both camps to fully appreciate the Clint Eastwood lines that still serves as both beacon and mantra for this blog: Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.

I agree with that too. Even as I hold out hope that we all, readers and writers alike, can engage and agree and disagree and agree to disagree. That we can hold and support and fiercely defend our positions. And that we can, every once in a while, open our eyes and minds and rhetorical windows wide enough to let in at least a little contrarian air.

It’s why I first began more than five years ago, why I began again last year, and why I’m happy to begin again today, at the dawn of another year in the reliable, and often radical, middle.

A Sign of the (Olden) Times

(or, the perils of a misplaced apostrophe)

Saw this sign in a no-longer vacant storefront window along Murray Avenue yesterday, as I was herding the boys toward a quick lunch at Subway:



Thought the concept was interesting, the logo a bit too Survivor-ish for my tastes but still engaging, and the nattily dressed, hand-springing koala awfully charming. But, as a certified grammar geek and punctuation freak, the placement of the apostrophe made me laugh out loud.  

My too-giddy anticipation over tonight’s season premiere of LOST likely had something to do with it, but I wondered for a moment if the boys and I had traveled back — way back — in time, or if we’d somehow stumbled upon a perfectly preserved ancient artifact of a concept way, way ahead of its time.

Either way, I hope the business didn’t open in the Spring of 1066. With all the fuss over the Norman Invasion and the Battle of Hastings and the utlimate ascension of William the Conqueror, who could have possibly found the time to sip kosher-friendly coffee while their kids played in the bounce house?

Monday Afternoon Programming Notes

(web no, radio yes)

Thanks to a strange union of circumstances — some procedural, some logistical, all of them outside my (obviously limited) realm of influence — there will be no new episode of Radical Pittsburgh this afternoon. A fresh installment of the PG+ webcast will appear next Monday. In the meantime, you can catch up on the first two episodes.

Thanks to a typical intersection of happenstance — some lucky, some unlucky, all of it over the airwaves — there will be a new installment of the Pittsburgh Business Radio show I co-host with Mark DeSantis and Anna Dobkin. Anna’s under the weather today, so Mark and I will have a super-secret special guest host taking over her mic this afternoon. We’ll have the usual array of interview segments, then settle in to the free-wheeling final hour, in which we punditize on all things Pittsburgh and beyond.

This afternoon’s show runs from 3-6pm. You can listen on WMNY Money Talk 1360 AM, catch the live stream online, and/or participate in the accompanying real-time TalkShoe chat.

If you miss it — if you’re, say, stuck in a meeting, or still recovering from a night that included both the Grammys and the NFL Pro Bowl (if the People’s Choice Awards had been on too, the trifecta of irrelevance would have been complete) — I’ll post a link to the podcast later this week.

UPDATE, 2/3: As promised, here's a link to the podcasts for all four segments of Monday's show. Good stuff all around, but I'm especially fond of Parts 2 and 4, the segment with City Paper editor Chris Potter and the final, free-form discussion.