A glutton for punishment

Chris Briem invites DeSantis supporters to face some unpleasant truths. They don't take it very well.

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.

DeSantis poll

In reference to some comments on my previous post, we received a phone call tonight for an automated poll for the mayoral election, sponsored by the DeSantis campaign. My wife took the call. Much to Mark Rauterkus' dismay, it did not include third-party candidates.

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.

City living

A debate has erupted over at the Burgh Report over whether Mark DeSantis' pledge to end the city's residency requirement for employees is a good idea. In response to someone who claimed the city school district has declined as a result of the end of its teachers' residency requirement, I posted this response:

First of all, no suburban district has a residency requirement. So the idea that teachers have to live in the communities in which they teach in order to be successful is ridiculous. Thanks to grandfathering and the exemptions that were handed out as part of the CBA, plenty of Pittsburgh teachers and administrators lived outside the city even before the residency requirement was lifted. And the reason it was lifted was because Philadelphia had problems recruiting teachers due to its residency requirement, and by state code only Pittsburgh and Philly had such rules.

I suppose the best reason to not require employees to live in the city is that it automatically increases the pool of potential employees. That may not matter much to the police -- I have no idea if recruitment is an issue, especially in light of the budget cuts. Perhaps police who live in the city do garner more respect from the citizens they ostensibly protect. But as the admiral noted, there are vast differences among Pittsburgh neighborhoods, and living in one of them may not give you an appreciation of the others. (I, for instance, live closer, in geography, to Dormont than to East Liberty.)

I don't like the idea of a change in policy being made strictly for an endorsement. But arguably the morale of an employee is better if they can live where they choose, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Yes, there is a cost, and I've certainly criticized past efforts to keep unions happy at the expense of taxpayers. Yet somehow I doubt we're going to see hundreds of for sale signs go up in the city as a result of this. I suspect there are plenty of police who like living in the city, or for other reasons aren't inclined to move.

And if we do see a mass exodus, then my friends we have problems. Because what does it say about our city if we have to force people to live here? (link)

Cops and robbers

Good for Mark DeSantis for leaving Downtown to talk about a good bread-and-butter issue in the neighborhoods. (Thanks to the Pittsburgh Comet.) And why am I not convinced that we really need to spend more than a half-million dollars to re-open the West End police station?:

Reopening the station in January won't carry a high cost, said Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, because the building is already operating as a station for motorcycle, traffic and bicycle officers.

Yet, Deputy Police Chief Paul Donaldson said the station will require seven new sergeants, two detectives and one crime analyst. Those salaries total $564,560, but the cost and additions won't necessarily improve police response times even though it's the main complaint from West End residents who have lobbied for the station's return. ...

Statistics show overall crime in the West End did not increase after the station closed in 2003, and there's some evidence that suggests cities both larger and smaller than Pittsburgh can function with fewer stations. Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Lexington, Ky., Raleigh and Tampa have fewer police zone stations per capita compared to Pittsburgh.

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.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

I agree with my fellow bloggers that it was wrong for the city Planning Commission to have reversed its decision on the UPMC sign in response to pressure from the mayor's office that, it appears, may be the result of a cozy relationship the mayor has with the medical giant.

However, I don't understand what the fuss is about over that sign. The USX building is a big ugly slab of a building whose appearance can only be improved with the addition of the large sign. And buildings aren't just to look at--they serve a function, and in this case, one of those functions is commerce. Cities don't exist merely to look pretty on a postcard. (Mike Madison has some good thoughts on this here, here and here.)

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.

He's got my support

DeSantis for Mayor is live. (Hat tip to Rauterkus.)

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.

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.