This just in

Election results are up online. Ravenstahl is ahead.

Poll watching

WPXI is quoting the Ravenstahl campaign as saying that the mayor is certified as a poll watcher. Allegheny County Democratic Chairman Jim Burns acknowledged that it may have been questionable for the mayor's wife to be wearing an "I Like Luke" sticker. Bill Green and David Johnson read the portions of the election code cited by Ravenstahl and believe that the mayor's intepretation may be correct.

"Possibly much ado about nothing," Johnson said.

City living, part 2

I've seen one or two comments on local blogs (here and here) claiming that Mark DeSantis is going to lose votes by promising to end the residency requirement for city employees should he become mayor.

I can see the logic. A city resident may reason that if his or her taxes are going toward paying an employee's salary, then that employee should be paying taxes to support the city as well, and that an employee who lives here has more motivation to work hard. GM shareholders don't want to visit a Chevy plant and see a bunch of Fords in the parking lot.

DeSantis also gave the mayor the opportunity to cast himself as an advocate for taxpayers against the demands of public employee unions, who many people believe have helped to push the city to the brink of bankruptcy.

So, yes, some people may vote against DeSantis for wanting to lift the residency requirement. The arguments against the requirement -- which I also oppose -- are abstract: that you can draw from a deeper pool of talent without such a restriction, and that you shouldn't have to force people to live in your city. (I'd also argue that conscientious employees will work hard regardless of whether or not they live here. I work at a university, and while I have no college-age children, I think I do a good job nonetheless.)

On the other hand, the arguments in favor of keeping the requirement are concrete: Fewer people will live in the city if the requirement is lifted, potentially raising the cost of living here for the rest of us.

Power to the people right on

North Side residents are shocked, shocked, to learn that Luke Ravenstahl could care less what they want for their neighborhood:

Others at the meeting, held at The Pittsburgh Project building on North Charles Street, accused officials of being more enthused about building a casino than tackling the crime and poverty that have ravaged North Side neighborhoods. (link)

Well, duh. Of course politicians would rather build a casino than address crime and poverty. Just like they would rather build stadiums, arenas, convention centers and luxury condominiums than address crime and poverty. As our president might say, reducing crime and poverty is hard work. The causes are complex and the solutions not readily apparent. Progress often occurs so slowly that if you're not careful your successors end up taking all the credit. (New York City's celebrated decline in crime began under David Dinkins, for example.)

But large, glitzy economic development projects are easy. You just hand over money to a politically connected developer and within a matter of months you're getting your photo taken with a big shiny shovel. By the time anyone realizes the project was a dud, you just might be out of office, or even dead. Which would you prefer if you were a politician?

The North Side residents are not wrong to demand more of their mayor. Just a bit naive. On the other hand, there is an alternative.

Pot luck

The ABD has obtained an internal Ravenstahl administration document. Meanwhile, those of you who watched the president's address to the nation Thursday may recall that the president said that 36 nations have troops in Iraq. If that number seemed a bit high to you, you're not alone. (Thanks to the Newshoggers.)

I certainly hope they didn't forget Poland.

Hope springs eternal

There's a Democrats for DeSantis blog. (Hat tip to Pittsblog.) Meanwhile, Chris Briem runs the numbers and finds the odds are not in the challenger's favor. Read the comments; Chris has some things to say that a lot of Ravenstahl critics (like me) may not want to hear, but which are hard to counter.

Fore!

We now know where the mayor was during the City Council hearing on the promotion of three controversial police officers--he was playing golf:

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl played at a celebrity golf tournament rather than face more than 100 women angered by the promotions of three police officers linked to accusations of domestic violence or disturbances in their pasts.

"I can confirm that he was there both days," said Nancy Angus, director of the Mario Lemieux Foundation, which organizes the annual Mario Lemieux Celebrity Tournament.

"He played as an amateur. He didn't play as a celebrity," Angus said Tuesday. ...

"Some are attempting to unfairly criticize me for attending a charitable event while a public hearing was being held on the 28th. This smacks of crass politics and yellow journalism and disappoints me greatly," Ravenstahl said in a statement last night.

"What's astonishing is that if he was really trying to raise money for charity, he was trying to hide it from people by not answering the question," said Jeanne Clark, a member of the Squirrel Hill chapter of the National Organization for Women, which petitioned to have City Council hold the hearing.

Why did the mayor refuse to reveal his whereabouts? Clearly, he knew that it would be embarrassing, particularly since he was recently outed as a hard-core Tiger Woods groupie. (Exactly how much time does this guy spend at work, anyway?)

Leave aside what this incident says about the mayor's character or maturity. It was just plain dumb to stonewall the media about why he skipped the hearing. This town has two daily newspapers, an alternative weekly, three television stations and numerous bloggers. Did he really think no one was going to find out what he was doing? This story might have died a week ago, even if bad feelings had lingered over the promotions of three officers with histories of domestic disturbances. But the mayor's dissembling kept it alive.

The mayor is an amateur in more ways than one, it appears.

Where was Luke?

It's an axiom of politics that the cover-up of a crime is just as likely to bring down an office holder as the crime itself. Which makes me wonder just what it is that Luke Ravenstahl is trying to hide by not revealing where he was while City Council held a hearing on the promotion of three police officers with a history of domestic disturbances.

Granted, there was nothing criminal in failing to attend the hearing. It merely demonstrated an embarrassing lack of sensitivity and political acumen. Yet, the mayor would rather endure further embarrassment than say what was more worthy of his time that day. So I can only assume that wherever he was, it would prove even more damaging to his already battered reputation than his failure to show up at the hearing.

I'm waiting to be proven wrong.

Luke W. Ravenstahl

The Pittsburgh Police Bureau has just promoted three officers with histories of domestic disturbances, and in some cases domestic violence. You got a problem with that?

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who approved the promotions, could not be reached for comment. His spokeswoman, Joanna Doven, said the mayor would not discuss the promotions or their effects on women.

"He's not going to talk about that," Doven said.

To borrow a line from one of my favorite films, the mayor's the big shot around here, and we're just some schnooks like to get slapped around. Frankly, I haven't seen this combination of incompetence and arrogance since the last time I heard the president speak.

Cult of personality

I received the Pittsburgh Citiparks 2007 Summer Magazine this week. (I don't recall any previous editions, but perhaps it just got tossed in the trash.) I counted no less than seven pictures of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. There is, in fact, an entire page of nothing but photos of the mayor, including a close-up in which he appears to be throwing out the first pitch at PNC Park. Um, what does that have to do with Citiparks?

A foundering ship

The Post-Gazette, in a euphamistically worded editoral, calls out Pittsburgh's political culture and its political class:

The city's Redd Up Crew, the brainchild of that authentic hometown character, late Mayor Bob O'Connor, has Pittsburghese in its name for a reason: It is Pittsburgh to the core. Unfortunately, more so than we ever knew.

In addition to civic pride and neighborliness, Pittsburgh has unenlightened political attitudes that have been magnified by the supremacy of the local Democratic Party for the last 70 years. That was on display when members of the Redd Up Crew were caught on camera wearing the campaign T-shirts of Councilman Jeff Koch.

This incident seems to capture all too well what seems like a precipitious political decline since Mayor Bob O'Connor died nearly nine months ago. When Bill Peduto withdrew from the mayor's race, he said the city was still grieving O'Connor's death. That struck me at the time as bogus--which is not to imply O'Connor's death was not tragic, nor that his family and friends are not still rightfully grieving--but to a great extent we are indeed still suffering from O'Connor's death.

The fact is that no one has filled the leadership vacuum left by the mayor's death, and the city is the worse for it. That's not to say O'Connor would have been a great mayor, or that incidents like what happened with the Redd Up Crew wouldn't have occurred under O'Connor's watch. But that incident adds to the sense of chaos that pervades our political landscape, and which threatens to diminish the city's quality of life. Luke Ravenstahl has neither the experience nor the political base to fill that vacuum. Peduto can't seem to expand his support beyond Squirrel Hill and Shadyside, and his influence on council is almost nil. Doug Shields seems to have cast his lot with the city's corrupt political establishment, and as for the rest of council, well, let's just say that Jeff Koch fits right in.

It's enough to make one want to vote for Rauterkus.

Whatever, dude

Assuming that Bill Peduto is being sincere in dropping out of the Democratic primary because he doesn't like the negative tone of the campaign, then I have three words for him: Boo-friggin-who.

You don't get into politics these days unless you are willing to get your knuckles bloody now and then. Lamentable, perhaps, but that's the way it is. Just ask President Kerry. Besides, Peduto is running against an incumbent. Any time an incumbent runs for re-election the race is a referendum on their performance in office. (I realize Luke Ravenstahl isn't technical running for re-election, but the principal holds.) And I never heard Peduto issue a call for all those bloggers who were supporting him so vociferously to stop their daily attacks on the mayor.

Don't get me wrong--I was pretty convinced that Peduto was in for a thumping come the primary, but I was still holding out hope for an upset. Even if Peduto gets into the general election as an independent, I don't see much chance, absent a complete meltdown by the mayor over the summer, for Peduto to prevail.

The suburbs keep looking better and better

So if there is so much demand for Downtown housing, why does the mayor want to bribe people to live there?

Ravenstahl has said he supports subsidies for affordable housing and tax breaks for those who move Downtown.

But it's a thought that doesn't sit well with some city residents who already feel overtaxed.

"I pay for my house. Why should I pay for someone to live here?" said Dan Johnson, 36, of Bloomfield, as he walked to work Downtown. "I don't think that will fly here."

Unfortunately, Mr. Johnson, I'm afraid it just might fly here, whether people like us like it or not. Pittsburgh isn't exactly synonymous with good government, and here is example number 5,679,456. As Sam at AntiRust points out, there is at least some overlap between the market for Downtown housing, and the market for housing elsewhere in the city, as the above referenced Tribune-Review article notes:

Heather Miller sold herself on buying a new condo Downtown. A Cranberry native who lives in Mt. Washington, Miller already shops in the Strip District and works as a site coordinator in the old Union National Bank building on Fourth Avenue, which is being converted into The Carlyle. That place will have 61 luxury condos.

Last I looked, Mt. Washington is inside the city limits. I fail to see why it makes sense to spend tax dollars to allow Ms. Miller to move across the river.

Playing politics

It doesn't bode well for Bill Peduto's mayoral aspirations that he failed to persuade any other members of Pittsburgh City Council to join him in voting against Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's budget. The mayor has previously deflected Peduto's criticisms by claiming Peduto was "playing politics." That was bogus, but it's an accusation that will acquire more currency if Peduto finds himself isolated on City Council.

Meet the new boss, same as all the old bosses

Luke Ravenstahl is a young guy, but for some reason, when he talks about making Pittsburgh cool, he reminds me of one of those middle-aged high school teachers who tries to be the students' pal. They were nice and all, but their jokes were corny and their trying-too-hard-to-be-hip references were always six months behind.

In other words, the mayor is a new dog, but he's full of old tricks. With the city struggling to stay out of the red, he wants to give away tax breaks for new housing Downtown, without explaining where the demand for this new housing coming from, and why, if there is such demand, developers have to be bribed to build it.

As evidence of the city's emerging hipness, he cites American Eagle Outfitters move from Marshall Township to SouthSide Works, apparently forgetting that American Eagle received more than $6 million in state aid to shift its headquarters from one part of Allegheny County to another.

Then again, maybe he hasn't forgotten, because, as the Post-Gazette notes, "He wants to replicate that development's style elsewhere, and intends to tap Gov. Ed Rendell for dollars to get that done." Oh, and he wants parking garages to offer free spaces during select days, like Light-Up Night, even though free holiday parking in 2001 and 2002 failed to save Lazarus and Lord & Taylor.

The mayor, given a chance to start things anew, wants to keep doing everything the same. What's so cool about that?