A merger wouldn't solve city finance woes

Regarding "A Real Solution to the City's Financial Problems" (Dec. 13 Forum): Duquesne University Chancellor John Murray makes several valid points about Pittsburgh's financial problems. However, he is fundamentally wrong in asserting that a merger of city and county governments would solve the city's financial problems.

The problem is not wasteful or duplicative spending. It is unfunded pension and health benefits, together with the city's large amount of bonded debt obligation. The burden of this legacy is enormous and, as Dr. Murray recognizes, would not be assumed by noncity residents in any proposed city-county merger that had a ghost of a chance of being adopted.

The city is already spending 33 percent of its $436 million in general revenues on debt service, pension fund contributions and retiree health benefits. The unfunded liabilities in the pension funds alone were larger as of January 2007, the last year for which there is published data, than they were in 1995. The growth in unfunded liability came despite the fact that the city issued almost $300 million in general revenue bonds in the late 1990s to meet a state mandate to reduce its unfunded pension liabilities. Since that time, the unfunded debt has continued to grow while the city has not been able to make more than the state-mandated minimum annual contributions to its pension funds and has not set up any reserves for its health insurance obligations to retirees.

Even with an infusion of funds from the sale of its parking garages, it would, conservatively, take more than an additional $30 million per year for the city to fully fund its pension funds within a 20-year period. This is more than the $22 million currently budgeted for operating the offices of the mayor, City Council, the city clerk and the city Finance Department. There are good reasons to promote a merger of the city and county governments. But additional revenues are needed to solve the city's financial problems.

JACK OCHS
Point Breeze

Here's the irony

I don't have a strong position on a city-county merger, but the results where it has been tried are not as unequivocal as Duquesne University Chancellor John Murray suggests ("A Real Solution to the City's Financial Problems," Dec. 13 Forum). If they were, the pressures to merge would be irresistible.

The irony of his piece, however, is that higher education, by raising its prices 2 percent to 4 percent a year, has priced itself out of the reach of the middle class. It is unconscionable that as a nation we graduate 22-year-olds who are $25,000 in debt. Duquesne's graduates leave school with more debt than Carnegie Mellon's ("College Grads' Average Debt Exceeds $23,000," Dec. 2). Studies have also shown that schools have been less than responsible in where they steer debt applicants. Student debt is a national scandal that institutes of higher learning should be putting their best minds to work on, not perpetuating.

It's insensitive to give the city financial lectures when your colleagues have their hand out to the state and perpetually complain about their annual appropriation.

Dr. Murray also supports voluntary payments by nonprofits to government. No institution can survive with voluntary submissions. He wouldn't support voluntary tuition payments by needy students as a solution to the student debt crisis.

GUS NICHOLAS
Ross

RNC talking point

Regarding Jack Kelly's Dec. 13 column ("Palin Is Up, Obama Is Old News"): Yet again, Mr. Kelly has trotted out another tired and easily discredited Republican National Committee talking point for his Sunday column. To say that "there is no statistical difference between the one and the other" when comparing the president's job approval rating to former Gov. Sarah Palin's personal favorability score is akin to saying the Pirates are as successful as the Penguins by comparing the results to the questions, "Do you like going to PNC Park?" and "Will the Penguins make the playoffs?"

When comparing apples to apples, numerous polls show that the president has a favorability rating significantly higher than Ms. Palin's. Like former President George W. Bush, they might like the man, but are not happy with the job he is doing. Not a surprising development given the numerous challenges the country is currently facing. Unfortunately there is no comparable job approval rating for Ms. Palin since she resigned from her job in July.

JIM FUTRELL
Bethel Park

Incoherent appraisal

Jack Kelly clearly illustrates incongruous and selective logic in his column "Palin Is Up, Obama Is Old News" (Dec. 13). On one hand he says the polls are not the same since they asked different questions. Then his other hand, not obviously knowing what he just said, replies that there is no statistical difference between one poll and the other.

He then further states that no other presidential candidate or president has received more favorable press coverage than Barack Obama. I guess he only uses the Republican messiah, Ronald Reagan, when it suits his selective bag of facts.

His analysis of Ms. Palin's book uses only a positive spin and ignores her string of inaccuracies since they were made by obvious liberal writers. Earth to Jack: Facts is facts, even if the writer was a fascist.

Mr. Kelly demonstrates, again, the inability to structure a coherent and accurate portrayal of reality.

MILAN J. FRANCESCHI
Mars

Yes, a problem

I read Erin McKean's "The Word" column Dec. 6 ("Problems With 'No Problem'?") with great interest.

The response "No problem" doesn't bother me nearly as much as the question of why the consumer is thanking the sales clerk to begin with. Am I thanking her for the privilege of spending my hard-earned money at the store? Am I thanking her for her sullen attitude as she waits on me? Am I thanking her for not even acknowledging my presence when I come up to her register because she's so busy gossiping with the bag boy or the clerk at the next register?

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't she be thanking me for shopping at the store that keeps her employed? When I started my first job at John's Drug Store as a teenager, I was taught a very simple formula. You are always polite and pleasant and thank the customers because:

1. If they don't shop here, we don't have any business.

2. If we don't have any business, the store closes.

3. If the store closes, you don't have a job.

That seems like a very basic logic to me.

What irks me even more than "No problem" is "Have a nice day" or worse yet "Here ya go." I once had a clerk who never even looked up when I came to check out my groceries. She handed me my receipt and mumbled, "Here ya go." I stood there, staring at her, waiting for a "Thank you." What I got instead was a sarcastic "Have a nice day" and a wave of the hand as if to add, "Be on your way now." I should have gone to the manager right then and there, but I was so infuriated that I had to go home and cool off before I called the office.

What have we come to? It's the utter rudeness of our society that's the problem.

ROBERTA SAUNIER
Beechview

We should be bringing the troops home from Afghanistan

There are no logical reasons to remain in Afghanistan. The arguments given by some to stay are based on emotion or are really just a form of propaganda.

"We need to give the Afghan people an opportunity to control their future" is an emotional plea given to remain there. Their civilization has been in existence for thousands of years. Maybe this is as good as it gets for them. In any event, their future is in their hands and has been for all of those years. (By staying, what can American troops accomplish in the next year and a half that they have not been able to accomplish during the past eight?)

The mantra, "We must fight them there instead of here" has been repeated so often that it can be classified as propaganda; the statement makes no sense. There is always going to be a there or a potential for a there, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan or any of the four corners of the Earth.

What does make sense is to bring the troops home to protect our borders, ports and, yes, in light of the recent gate-crashing incident at a Washington party hosted by the president, the White House itself.

Technology including satellite surveillance and drones can be used to monitor and control situations around the globe. Our troops should be used in future conflicts -- and should have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan -- in an in-and-out capacity. (Vietnam taught many of us that an occupying army cannot win a war fought against guerillas.)

Eventually, the troops will come home. Simply stated, eventually should be now!

STEPHEN J. VEROTSKY
Johnstown

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