Dan the man

Less than 24 hours after Allegheny County Council voted to begin collecting a 10 percent poured drink tax Jan. 1, the head of the Pennsylvania Restaurants Association is vowing retribution against the person they consider the architect of the tax: Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato.

Kevin Joyce, also owner of the fancy Carlton restaurant across Grant Street from the county courthouse, today quickly dubbed Mr. Onorato "Dan the Tax Man" and promised to work against his expected bid for governor in 2010. The association also is checking to see if it has the basis of a lawsuit over the issue.

For his part, Mr. Onorato said at a news conference this morning that the tax is "not unusual." Many other cities have a similar drink tax that hasn't seemed to hurt their hospitality industry, he said.

Mr. Onorato pushed the alcohol tax and a $2-a-day tax on rental cars -- the only options the state Legislature gave him earlier this year -- to provide the county's $30 million subsidy for the Port Authority. The taxes provide the long-awaited dedicated funding stream for mass transit, which seems to have a funding crisis as often as the seasons change.

"Take the emotion out of this and you see this made sense," Mr. Onorato said. "Other cities have had this tax for many years and it has not hurt them. Based on the history, it shouldn't be as hard as [restaurateurs] think it's going to be."

If he's wrong, he can count on the restaurants association to take his nickname statewide.

Labor rules

A lone union was able to hold up a city of Pittsburgh development subsidy today, besting a pedantic developer, two lawyers, and apparently Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration in the process.

City Council voted 6-0, with two abstentions, to delay for one-week consideration of a $10 million tax-increment financing subsidy to the Bakery Square project in Larimer. The postponement threatens to push consideration of the subsidy -- which council could have voted on at any time after an Oct. 23 public hearing -- into next year, which would require reintroduction of legislation and add at least several weeks more to the process.

ER lacks the stamina to type its way through the debate over the $113 million project, which involves TIF rules, a 1999 ordinance on subsidized hotels and union rights, and the arcane concept of "air rights" -- you can read all about it here if you want to. Suffice it to say the UNITE HERE union wants a hotel that's part of the project (but not a recipient of the subsidy) to be unionized, and the developer apparently doesn't.

Top Urban Redevelopment Authority lawyer Don Kortland, city Solicitor George Specter, and developer Todd Reidbord of Walnut Capital went before council, defending the developer's approach and saying the 1999 ordinance doesn't apply. Mr. Specter's involvement was particularly telling, indicating that Mr. Ravenstahl's administration is firmly with the URA and the developer on this one, after a period during which they appeared to want to negotiate a deal with the union.

"You have your solicitor and the URA solicitor saying that this was done pursuant to the law," said Mr. Reidbord. "I'd ask members of council to weigh that."

He also gave council a primer on TIF, reminding them that they are in Pennsylvania, where Pennsylvania law applies, rather than some other state that might have other laws. "TIFs are created by law," he said. "Pennsylvania has its own, specific TIF law. We can't change that. ... This particular TIF district was created under the law, Pennsylvania law."

Note to Mr. Reidbord: Council knows what state it's in, and hates being lectured.

Council members countered that Pittsburgh has its own laws, and one of them seems to indicate that hotels in which the city has an interest need to make peace treaties with unions trying to organize their workers. Creating a tax parcel in the air that would free the Bakery Square hotel from that constraint "is just ludicrous," said Councilman Len Bodack. "We're asking the public for a $10 million gift for this project. ... If you're asking the public for something, the public wants something in return."

He argued that if the hotel wouldn't be built without the rest of the development, and if the rest of the development wouldn't be built without the TIF, then the hotel is subject to the city's TIF rules. And if it would all be built without the TIF, then there needn't be a TIF.

It was one of the eureka moments of Mr. Bodack's soon-over term on council.

"Nobody wins if the TIF is not approved. It's a complete loss," Mr. Reidbord warned, stopping short of saying the project would grind to a halt without city help.

Councilwoman Tonya Payne bought that. "Here we are, standing in the way of development actually occurring. Development of this magnitude hasn't happened in this neighborhood since who-knows-when," she said. "It's jobs there. And you're putting all of this on the line?"

She said UNITE HERE leaders "barely even want to talk to me."

She and Council President Doug Shields abstained on the motion to delay the bill. But with six members content to postpone, it looks like this union-friendly council is in no mood to put Bakery Square on the front burner.

Top tube topics

John F. Kennedy's assassination and funeral, the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, and the first televised presidential debate in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon head the "most memorable" political moments in American radio/television history, according to a Museum of Broadcast Communications announcement today. Apparently, the Bakery Square debate as well as the drink tax deliberations happened too late to be included in the list. You can check it out here here.

Polls, polls, polls

With the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, polls are falling like snowflakes on, well, Iowa. For a complete roundup, you can check out the compilation at Pollster.com. One of the latest was Quinnipiac University's periodic look at key battleground states, Pennsylvania among them. The latest shows registered Democrats in the state overwhelmingly in favor of the candidacy of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, while former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani tops the GOP field, albeit with a less impressive total.

In the Keystone state, the Democratic leaders are Mrs. Clinton, 43 percent; Sen. Barack Obama, 15 percent; and former Sen. John Edwards, 9 percent. Topping the Republican competition here were, Mr. Giuliani, 27 percent, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, 13 percent. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson were tied at 6 percent.