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Op-Ed: We need major reform, but not home rule Pursuing mindless growth, local bigwigs are leading us to disaster. The charter will make things worse Wednesday, May 13, 1998 By David Tessitor
Who hasn't thought of the Titanic and how it would have felt to be aboard its fateful first voyage? Imagine a group of passengers trying to avert the disaster by warning everyone, only to be ignored and banished to their cabins.
Do that and you have some idea of what being a member of the Citizen Advisory Panel of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Regional Planning Commission was like. Our group was recently removed from SPRPC's public participation plan because of its constantly unwelcome advice.
As with the Titanic, the leaders in the Pittsburgh region have ignored forecasts and indications that rushing ahead on their present course could lead to disaster, and they have failed to heed the warnings from elsewhere that have advised changing our direction.
Instead, they are using your tax money to subsidize a vast wave of real estate speculation -- from stadiums to upscale housing -- betting upon a population increase that could only happen if we had a gold rush migration or a local outbreak of geriatric pregnancies.
With our elderly population and the most reliable forecast indicating a continuous population decline for the next 15 years, their "if we build it, they will come" strategy make about as much sense as the spontaneous generation myth that a box of old rags will turn into mice.
The mayor and county commissioners are risking the well-being of existing residents by taking their taxes and, instead of maintaining the roads and facilities in their communities, using them to subsidize new construction intended to bait people into coming to the Pittsburgh area.
The city administration makes a slick presentation of its plans for the city. Unfortunately, it talks the talk, but it doesn't walk the walk. With a Barnum & Bailey strategy of "appearance is all that counts," it is subsidizing new housing plans (such as Nine Mile Run) knowing from a marketing study (which it will not release) that most of the buyers are expected to come from existing neighborhoods, which will only lead to the latter's more rapid decline.
It is also seeking to transform Downtown into an automotive-scaled suburban service center designed for the beltway residents of the future, rather than a traditional pedestrian urban center for city residents.
Clean, uncluttered sidewalks in good repair, together with restored traditional storefronts, would work better in the urban space. Instead, the present proposal is to tear down more historic buildings in order to put in more parking garages and more suburbanesque parklets. It make make the place feel more like the suburbs, but it misses the point of what it is to be a city, and it doesn't work.
The county, on the other hand, is trying to follow Brazil's example, not only by going into increasing debt, but also by seeking to turn the airport area into a '90s version of Brasilia, the sprawling '60s capital built in the Amazon which spread out buildings so much, the only way to get from one to the other was by car. Following another Brazilian example, Allegheny County is the only county in the United States to base its public transit on exclusive busways.
The regional agenda of the Allegheny Conference and SPRPC embraces the city's and county's strategies with more of the same. Committed to copying the rest of the nation's long-indulged practice of suburban sprawl, even though it is now regretted nearly everywhere else, the region's leaders are blinded by the profits to be made in real estate speculation and seem unable to see the harm of draining our traditional communities.
Our leaders keep asking in desperation, "Who do we want to attract, and what do we need to get them to come here?" They keep answering with stadiums; a convention center expansion; elaborate people movers to transport tourists; more expressways to subsidize opening more farmland for more sprawling suburban housing plans and shopping malls. ... It's as if their goal is to say: "Come to Pittsburgh, it's going to look just like where you are now."
The problem that plagues us is bad policy. It is not the present structure of Allegheny County government.
The reorganization effort before county voters on May 19 -- the home rule charter -- makes about as much sense as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It will do nothing to solve our problems and will stand in the way of the immediately needed changes in policy.
If it is hard to find three county commissioners who can see the need for completely changing direction, imagine how difficult it will be to find such candidates for the 16 new elected positions proposed in the charter (the county executive and the 15-member council). And it will take many months, if not several years, to sort out exactly how the new government will be run, crippling or handicapping it during that time.
Meanwhile, the real estate speculation agenda that is under way will be able to continue or even accelerate amid all the shuffling. As a result, we could easily continue in the same direction for another decade -- whereas the election of just two enlightened county commissioners under the present structure could have them beginning the necessary policy changes immediately upon taking office.
Should it surprise anybody to find out that the proposed restructuring grew out of ComPAC 21, which was managed by the Pennsylvania Economy League -- and that the league shares the same offices and staff with the Allegheny Conference, which voters may remember as being behind last fall's stadium referendum (the Regional Renaissance Initiative) and which now supports Plan B? Does anybody think the agendas might be anything but mutually supportive?
The power brokers hold that it's not that they've been doing the wrong things, it's that they haven't been doing enough of the wrong things -- and they're determined to do more, faster and on a larger scale.
As the restructuring of Allegheny County government has been raising false hopes and distracting the media, SPRPC has been quietly reorganizing into a more powerful quasi regional government.
The reorganization of SPRPC in the next months will further increase a present structural disadvantage for Allegheny County which, with half the region's population, is often seen as a pool of investment and population to be tapped by the surrounding counties. Those outer counties will strengthen their present 5-2 voting advantage on SPRPC, raising it to 7-2. A consolidation and realignment of economic agencies which will also occur will give this appointed body even more power and control of the region's economy.
In a move that tightens its control over public involvement, SPRPC has already replaced the open-membership regionwide CAP (which spoke out about improprieties in the planning process) with appointed Public Participation Panels. (The CAP still exists but is now totally separate from SPRPC.)
If anything needs restructuring, it is SPRPC which needs to be changed into a directly elected body with an equal number of at-large and district positions apportioned by population, in order to provide "one person, one vote" representation and hold the decision makers directly accountable to the people.
If the reorganization of Allegheny County passes, it will more than likely delay any serious reform of SPRPC.
Just as fortunes have been made from the disastrous sinking of the Titanic, we have seen in the Pittsburgh region that, as it has been said, "There is as much money to be made in the decline of an empire as there is in building it in the first place."
The only real hope for Allegheny County, therefore, may be in keeping the present system and finding a couple of capable people who are prepared to actually change our direction.
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