Extra! Extra! Pittsburgh Old Media Adds Value!

Our compliments to both Mayor Ravenstahl and the Post-Gazette, two names that are not often praised.

Kudos to Mayor Ravenstahl, who did the right thing and attended one of the funerals of the people who drowned in the rain on his street. (snark: Luke sorta likes going to funerals, once he got a new job after going to a funeral.) Props to the Post-Gazette, who performed a public service and contributed to the discussion several times in today's paper.

Brian O'Neill did a marvelous job of adding historical detail and human perspective in his article, The Washington Boulevard disaster: Now we must Act. He provides historical facts not available to new-media Google, shifts into life-and-justice values, and ends with a clear call to action; we see too few Writers these days and we are consistently pleased by Mr. O'Neill's work.

We are enamored of Joe Smydo's article (and headline) Marked absences: Mayor Ravenstahl criticized for missing multiple major events. Mayoral defenders attempt to narrow the argument by saying the mayor's got a cellphone, it's an invasion of His privacy and family life, and it's a security risk if His whereabouts are known. The true point comes more from sampling theory than from knee-jerk parochialism; if somebody in a position of responsibility is frequently out of town and unavailable when random events occur, then they're probably out of town and unavailable more than they should be, if they're going to stay in that position.

Jonathan D. Silver wrote a great article, teased on the front page as "Other cities have flash flood alert systems", and headlined as "Flash flood warnings systems are costly" in the interior. The article approaches the question, "How come people in other North American cities don't drown in the rain?"

Paging Rich Lord, Chris Young, Chris Potter;
Call to Action for Mr. Lord, Mr. Young, Mr. Potter: We particularly appreciate the photo caption in Silver's article, Mud-covered vehicles destroyed in the Washington Boulevard flooding were towed to the Pittsburgh Police Zone 5 Police Station, and we wish that Some Journalist would consider why the Zone 5 parking lots were empty - namely, the report that police dispatchers have been in the habit of warning employees to move their cars when flooding was imminent, ignoring the safety of the people on the streets.

Bravo, Post-Gazette, and chapeau Messrs. O'Neill, Smydo, and Silver.

A Seminal Failure of Government: Betting on the Come with Public Safety

Friday August 20, it rained in Pittsburgh and three four people died. (updated) From the Post-Gazette:

A woman and two children were killed and an elderly woman was missing Friday night after a flash flood -- with rushing water 9 feet deep in some places -- swept over Washington Boulevard in Highland Park/Lincoln-Lemington during rush hour.

This sort of thing isn't supposed to happen here - sure, folks in Mumbai die when it rains, but not here in the Good Old Homeland. It's just an Act Of God, force majuere, nothing to see here, move on, our sympathy to the families, update your Facebook, Here we go Steelers, here we go.




Is it really an Act of God? The same thing happened at the same location in July.



This is not three four people who got killed while boating (a risky activity subject to the forces of nature). This is not three four people who got killed while hiking through the wilderness. This is three four people, citizens, taxpayers, who drowned in rain on a main public street during Friday rush hour.

There's a Department of Public Works that is supposed to design, build, and fix drainage systems. There's a Department of Public Safety that is supposed to protect the populace. There's annual Office of Emergency Management; they are supposed to ensure readiness for infrequent events. There are elected officials (Mayor Luke Ravenstahl) who are accountable to the voters for the performance of the city departments (DPW, Safety) under their authority.

If all those agencies and officials were focused on guaranteeing citizen's lives - if they were ensuring that the public would be safe even in 100-year events - instead of simply betting on the come and being comfortable that we're probably going to be okay most of the time, then they'd close those few streets when it was raining, until such time as the drainage was improved. Simple solution.

It can't be too difficult to close a street. They seem to be able to do it whenever a VIP or a corporation wants it closed, regardless of the impact. Ensuring public safety by closing the street when it rains would call attention to their shortcomings and priorities, so instead they leave the people to take their chances. It's a reverse lottery, run by the government. Turns out you can gamble on both sides of the river. Oops, you won - sucks to be you.

The city knows that flooding is likely at that location in heavy rain, the decision makers haven't taken any action to improve the situation, and so the constraints of budgets and political desire abandon people in favor of higher priorities.

Let's just acknowledge that the City's priority has been filming a movie and not ensuring the safety of citizens. By the way, who investigates the liability for these deaths? Couldn't be somebody who also works for the Mayor, could it? And where was Luke at 5pm on Friday?

Shifting into meta, let's also anticipate that the upcoming national austerity, reduced oversight and de-regulation, and dogmatic beast-starving are going to produce a lot more of these unnecessary tragedies.

Selling Parking Garages in Pittsburgh : Me, Too!

One of Pittsburgh's current imbroglios is the impending sale or long-term lease of Pittsburgh's parking garages. Luke'n'at wants to lease the garages to corporations who will run them as long-term moneymakers in return for a short-term cash payment to the city. This would alleviate some of the political pressure on Pittsburgh politicians, but probably not significantly address the underlying financial issues.


Let's think this through with our "look back™" glasses. The original idea behind garages was to have parking so people could easily do business. The original idea behind meters was to keep a churning supply of short-term parking available for people using local businesses, rather than letting employees and neighbors block the prime spots. Cities once operated garages and parking meters as a public good. Are you old enough to remember that?

The garages and meters have become an industry in their own right, and the original concept is lost. Now the garages and meters exist to take a certain amount of money out of the population for the city's budget, and that money turns parking into a power center with its own priorities, profits, bureaucracy, jobs, and followers. When Luke'n'at sells the garages, the city budget gets a one-time windfall and a long-term income stream, and the taxpayers pay a lot more money over time. People pay more money, government takes in more money- how is that not a tax increase?

And, of course, a corporation gets to be the middleman, diddling the public and taking their share of every dollar. The politicians will get to blame the corporations and save face. The great perversion is that parking (which was once a public good marshalled for local economic benefits) will become overpriced, which will cause unintended consequences that are exactly the opposite of the original intent. All those pennies come from somewhere.

I have a garage, and I've got a near-term cash-flow that's constraining my style a bit. I'm thinking of selling or leasing my garage. I mean, if all those smart people in the city think it's a good financial move, why shouldn't I get in on it?


There's going to be a few problems in the transition. I'm going to have to get all my stuff out of the garage. I'm going to have to implement some sort of Smart-Parking-App on my iPad to track my leasing payments and all that money that'll be rolling in. This would be a great time for somebody from CMU to develop a personal EasyPass reader, so that the sub-contractor could easily charge cars as they come and go. I'll need to it be compatible with Windows 98, please. Just saying.

There's probably an opportunity for extra value-added (and I'm always looking for value-added). It's possible that I could provide upscale coffee beverages for parking clients, let them use my WiFi, sell them maps of the color belts, things like that. I could probably write off my snow blower as an expense.

It's a silly example, but not without intent. If it doesn't make sense, if it's not pragmatic for you to lease out your garage, how does it make sense for the city to lease out it's garages? Where does the supposed new money come from?

The cost will be born by the public, and the pain will be felt by the communities and small business. The only money that will move in this transaction is from the developers and wannabees to the politicians. Which brings us full circle to Luke'n'at.

One of these things is not like the others

One of these things is different from the rest:

• May 29th: Four Cyclists Dead in Eight Weeks
  
• June 3rd: Councilman Dowd holds forum on East Liberty attacks on bicyclists
  
• Friday:No charges for teen driver untangling flip-flops when he killed cyclist
  
• Tuesday: 8 attack bicyclist in North Point Breeze
  
• Wednesday: Mayor celebrates Pittsburgh's Bronze Bike-Friendly award

It's great that politicians are getting positive feedback and press opportunities for improving bicycling in Pittsburgh. It's terrible that the area still equates killing a cyclist with killing a deer.

Moral Authority and the Ravenstahl Family Sewer Authority

In the always-excellent 2 Political Junkies we see a letter from Pittsburgh City Councilor Bill Peduto to the chair of Pittsburgh's Ethics Hearing Board, Sister Patrice Hughes. (also here).

Councilman Peduto objects to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl (30 years old) appointing his little brother (Adam Ravenstahl, 25 years old) to the Board of the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (Alcosan), and Peduto asks Sister Hughes to conduct an investigation. Excerpts from Peduto's letter:

Dear Sister Hughes:

I am requesting that the Ethics Hearing Board rule on the decision of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl to nominate his brother State Representative-elect Adam Ravenstahl to the Board of the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority. The City Code has rules for appointing, hiring and promoting direct family members of elected officials and employees. As the code states, the only time a direct family member can be appointed is through a waiver from the Ethics Hearing Board.

.....

I am formally requesting that the Ethics Hearing Board investigate this nomination to determine the legitimacy of any elected City official appointing, hiring, advancing or advocating the appointing, hiring or advancing of direct family members.

The city's Ethics Hearing Board consists of five members — two appointed by the mayor and three appointed by the mayor from a list of nominees submitted by City Council. Sister Patrice Hughes (photo, right) was appointed by Mayor Bob O'Connor.

To me, this is a serendipitous reminder of the moral authority of nuns, and perhaps also of the arrested development of Pittsburgh politics - Luke gives Adam something he's not supposed to, and so Bill tells Sister. Only in Pittsburgh (OIP™).

---

I know I shouldn't, but I can't resist.
Perhaps it says something about my own arrested development.


(Source: Pittsburgh Pist-Gazette)

The Pittsburgh Promise : Life Imitates Art

I watched The Office last week (Season 6, Episode 12) and one of the issues was a ten-year-old promise that Michael Scott had made to pay the college tuition for an entire class of an inner-city high school.

Unfortunately, he did not have the money to keep his promise, so he had to go to the school and tell them it wasn't going to happen. When he arrived, the students (who call themselves Scott's Tots) surprised him with a ceremony honoring Mr. Scott, including an rap song set to the Bad Boys jingle:

Hey Mr. Scott,
What'cha Gonna Do,
What'cha Gonna Do,
Make Our Dreams Come True!

Throughout the various demonstrations of gratitude, Mr. Scott sits there weeping, and finally he stands up and explains that he doesn't have the money to pay for anybody's tuition. The response is predictable: dismay and disappointment. Tone-deaf to the situation and feeling like a victim himself, Michael Scott says, "Of all the empty promises I've made, this was by far the most generous".

---

As Oscar Wilde said, often life imitates art. This was tragic-funny on television, but I don't think it's going to be so funny in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Promise, proposed in 2006, was funded by voluntary donations from city non-profits with the tacit understanding that their donations would preclude having to pay city taxes, or make PILOTS (payments-in-lieu-of-taxes).

The city's finances are not balanced, and the Mayor has played brinksmanship with the Universities with his proposed (and unprecedented) $15 Million tuition tax called the "Fair Share Tax". Then the Mayor stated that he'd settle for $5 Million. The Universities have declined to agree to the shakedown.

In the next round, the City will continue to demand money. It'll be rushed, before City Council changes in January. There'll be threats of tax legislation. Eventually, the non-profits will play their card: "you might be able to tax tuition, of course, but then we're going to stop supporting the Pittsburgh Promise. Because, Mr. Mayor, you promised that if we supported this, we'd be good."

The Pittsburgh Promise was politically expedient for Luke, if not for the city's long-term financial posture. The Education Tax was volatile, so it wasn't released until after the election. I believe this is all Kabuki theater, designed to provide Luke political coverage: I could have balanced the books, but then the non-profits would have hurt our kids.

Hey Mayor Luke,
What'cha Gonna Do,
What'cha Gonna Do,
When the bill comes due!

G-20 in Pittsburgh: Luke's Real-World Moment

July 25 Wall Street Journal: Pittsburgh Scrubs Up for Visit From the G-20

I'd like to follow up on a great post at an excellent blog, Politics and Place. The post is titled, If he Loses, this is how he'll lose. The "he" is Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, and the thing to Lose is the Pittsburgh Mayoral election this November.

P&P describes a reasonable scenario in which Luke's seemingly inevitable re-election may not be guaranteed. Pre-requisites include: Appearance of a single electable opponent (Harris and Acklin are splitting the opposition), Northshore Northside Angst about their legit issues with Luke's administration (accountability, wow!), and a geographic (Southern-Western) strategy. It's an excellent, well considered write-up of a scenario in which Luke's pre-ordained victory might not occur.

If I may, the conditions described set the stage but don't ring the bell; they're necessary but insufficient. For Luke to not be elected, there needs to be an event, either (1) a significant, understandable scandal (a bag of cash rather than complex financial derivatives), or (2) an obvious failure of leadership attributed to the Mayor's office.

Holy Cow, Batman! What's that? The G-20 in Pittsburgh on September 24 and 25th? Zowie!
Here's a few fundamental facts (I invite correction):
The G-20 weren't invited to Ed Rendell's Western Pennsylvania.
The G-20 weren't invited to Dan Onorato's Allegheny County.
The G-20 were invited to Luke Ravenstahl's Pittsburgh.
The Mayor is responsible for security in the streets of Pittsburgh. It's his city.

All the sunglass-and-earpiece-wearing, talking-into-cufflinks guys with their lapel pins are going to be worried about are the VIPs. The responsibility for local peacekeeping lies with local government.

Let me be clear: I don't know anything other than what we read in the media. No insider information. No wink, wink.

If there's a riot threatening the VIPs, then the Spooks will engage and extract the VIPs. If there's a riot threatening to burn the Hilton while the VIPs are away at their secure locations, that'll be an issue for the locals. The Feds will keep their eyes on their responsibilities and avoid distractions.

Will Luke declare an emergency and seek State help? Will the Governor declare an emergency and seek Federal help? Are local politicians capable of making these decisions in real time? New Orleans wasn't.


Consider the July 2009 G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy. The government had 15,000 police officers standing by. Just a few weeks ago.


Consider the London 2009 G-20.
On March 28, 2009, 35,000 people joined the peaceful "Jobs, Justice Climate" march. On April 1, five thousand people joined the G-20 Meltdown protest outside the Bank of England. Two to three thousand people joined the Climate Camp in the City. There were 10,000 law enforement officers involved.


Here's my favorite story about the G8 Summit in 2001 in Genoa, Italy: 23-year-old activist Carlo Giuliani of Genoa, was shot dead by Mario Placanica, a Carabinieri officer, during clashes with police. Video shows Guliani throwing a fire extinguisher at the carabinieri's vehicle before he was shot and then run over twice by the Land Rover. Placanica was acquitted from any wrong-doing, as judges determined he fired (1) in self defence and (2) up into the sky, but a flying stone deflected the bullet and killed Giuliani. This is brilliant. I guess these things happen. My question is, who's going to be the accountable official at the press conference when this happens in Pittsburgh?

Consider Pittsburgh 2009. The city is smaller, and the area is an non-integrated hodgepodge of too many (130?) municipalities. We have a relatively inexperienced police department and public safety force. The big events locally are Steelers games. We hope to get maybe 4,000 police, but we don't have exact committments yet. At sixty days to go, we just sent out the email asking for assistance. Our police department is not experienced, trained, or equipped to handle this. Neither is the leadership.

I'm sorry to repeat myself, but in the same year:

• Pittsburgh: 4,000 police
• Italy: 15,000 police
• London: 10,000 police.

Why does Pittsburgh need so few police?

Consider Chicago 1968, and look at how Mayor Daley lost control of the police force. Chicago turned into a police riot. Does anybody believe that Luke will be a more effective Commander than Mayor Daley (Senior) if things break bad?

Hey, Pittsburgh Reporters

If I could persuade local reporters to pursue one question it would be: What person is responsible for Pittsburgh public safety during the G-20? Who'll deserve the credit if it goes right, who deserves the onus if it goes wrong? Any answer that sounds like "it's a team effort" is baloney. Accountability goes to one boss. It'd be cool to clarify who that is. I believe it's the Mayor. If I'm wrong, somebody teach me, please. You'd better ask beforehand, because you'll never get a straight answer after.

How Luke Ravenstahl Loses the Election

Absent a dead body, a scandal with a bag of money, or a simply understood swindle, if Luke's going to lose - it's going to be because the Pittsburgh G-20 is a debacle.

If the G-20 goes wrong, it'll be a tragedy. People will die.
That's a lot more significant than what happens to Luke.

If anybody else wants to be prepared to act on the G-20 debacle, they're going to have to be out in front, demonstrating that they would have (1) done it differently and (2) done a better job than Luke. I don't know if either Acklin or Harris have established that they're a better grown-up than Luke. The odds are with them, but they haven't made the case.

I don't think Luke will do well with the G-20. I don't think either of the tenderfoot alternatives have presented themselves as credible protectors of the city, either.

Maybe the only possible winner will be regionalism, the notion that perhaps having 130 municipalities in Allegheny County is counter-productive in the face of real-world events.

Allegheny Alzheimers and Post Gazette Search Results

I don't know anything about Politics, but I do know about Search Algorithms.

When I write a blog entry, I like to embed links when I use an obscure term, refer to an event, or mention something that I might assume the reader knows about - because I hate it when I read something and the context isn't evident.

I have a bad habit of considering my blog posts a work in progress for the first few days after I've posted them - I re-read them, edit them, try to fix the flow, and add links when necessary.

So I was reviewing my previous post about Pittsburgh bicycle politics, looking at the line where I mentioned that Hizzoner Luke Ravenstahl used a Dept. of Homeland Security SUV to go to Star Lake Amphitheatre for a country music concert, and I thought to myself - Hey, that's an obscure reference, you should put an explanatory link in there!

I went to the local paper, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette — whoa, did I say I went to the local paper? Sorry, I went to their website, which I suppose is part of the problem newspapers face nowadays — people go to the website for free instead of the newstand. But I digress.

I went to PostGazette.com, which is a nice website - sometimes slow to load, but that's okay - and I searched for "Ravenstahl Star Lake". No results. I searched for "Luke Ravenstahl SUV". Nothing.


I went to the Tribune Review and got good search results.
I went to Google. Lots of results.
I went to the Burgh Blogosphere. Lots of results: MacYapper , I Love Luke, Tube City Online, Pgh Comet, Pist Gazette, Daily Kos.

I went back to P-G.com's search page and searched for:
Ravenstahl concert : nothing
Ravenstahl SUV : nothing
Ravenstahl scandal : nothing
Ravenstahl ethics : 1 return-- "Ravenstahl, DeSantis stick to the script as ethics issue isn't raised"

I used the P-G's search function to search on "Mona Wallace", which is a name from the Star Lake scandal that came up in the Google results. Shazzam! — lots of stories about the Mayor and his SUV in the Post Gazette. You just can't find them when you search for them directly.

I tried parsing the Mona Wallace headlines into phrases, and searched for them on the PG site:
Mayor SUV : letters to the editor, no news
Ravenstahl personal use SUV : nothing

I thought, maybe I'm spelling it wrong, so I searched on: "Ravenstahl" : this produced all sorts of results. For a while there, I thought that when Luke changed his last name to Steelerstahl, maybe the Post Gazette did a search/replace in the archives. There's still a lot of Ravenstahl responses in the Search function, just none about the SUV brouhaha.

I tried the above search queries in Google and got lots of results. I found a Wikipedia page on Hizzoner the Mayor, and it contained some other stories I tried to search for in the Post Gazette.

Institutional Infonesia *

* Infonesia: the condition of having read some info, but cannot find or recall the source.

Based on the Wikipedia entry, I used the P-G search page for the following terms--
ravenstahl Lemieux : nothing
Ravenstahl stadium : nothing
Ravenstahl New York : nothing
Ravenstahl Burkle : one letter to the editor about the Penguins
ravenstahl oakmont : nothing
ravenstahl tiger woods : nothing
ravenstahl KDKA poll : nothing
Ravenstahl US Open UPMC : nothing

And yet, when you search those terms in Google, all sorts of results show up.


Having said all that, I don't often use the P-G.com Search function; maybe this is par for the course.

I'd like to repeat (sorry) a quote from Milan Kundera in another post:
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
How do people struggle against power when the Search function forgets? What's the Post-Gazette's value proposition when they don't contribute to public discourse?

What was it George Santayana said? Those who cannot <something something> are condemned to <something>? It was a bit like that. Hey, how about those Steelers Penguins?



This is a puzzle for me, and if anybody has any comments about what's up I'd love to hear them. Also, if you find other PostGazette search terms that should produce local news about Hizzoner but don't, please kick in a comment. If any P-G folks would like to weigh in, I'm open to feedback and correction.