Tuesday: PERESTROIKA!!! (Hold The Glasnost...)

This is revolutionary news:

The changes to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's Act 47 recovery plan -- which include putting some of the mayor's own proposals in writing -- focus on merging services such as payroll preparation, tax collection, computer services, personnel, parks administration, legal services and some police work.

"We're basically looking at changing the function of city government to concentrate on public safety and public works. Administrative functions would then become part of a countywide system," Peduto said. (Trib, Jeremy Boren)

A productive Monday on the 5th floor, though that is not so unusual as has been rumored.

Peduto, council's Finance & Law Committee chairman, said he formed a coalition that includes members Darlene Harris, Theresa Smith, Doug Shields, Bruce Kraus and Motznik. (ibid)

Tonya Payne would not be available for this business because she seems irreconcilably bearish on the need for Act 47's existence. Ricky Burgess would not be available because he is acting as ballast for the Mayor's original position. That leaves Patrick Dowd as the mystery insurance vote for now -- a mite odd since these technocratic reforms seem right up his ally. His would make for powerful objections if they were to materialize.

According to information in this article, a very rough $10 million in annual savings could materialize from this transformation, which would be just enough to plug the budget hole. It would not be anything near enough to solve our swiftly approaching legacy costs crisis, but it should be enough to obviate the need to raise city taxes for the extent of this 5-Year Plan.

Among the proposals under discussion is the possibility of extending the city's 0.55 percent tax on payrolls to nonprofit organizations. That would require the approval of the Legislature. Anticipating the significant odds against the Legislature agreeing to that change, Mr. Ravenstahl and council members have also discussed alternatives including the imposition of fees of $25 for each hospital admissions and new levies of $50 to be paid by colleges for each undergraduate. (P-G, James O'Toole)

It's unclear whether the proposed consolidations would eliminate the thirst for some of those revenue-generating tactics.

It needs to be recognized at this point that Mayor Ravenstahl's longstanding appearance of fealty towards UPMC looks greatly diminished now by his insistence on inventing ways to tax them. This blogger hopes that even if the consolidations go through and are fruitful, the payroll prep tax continues to be vigorously pursued as a matter of justice.

While the outcome remained in question, the atmospherics of the new talks represented a distinct change in tone from the acrimony that has divided council and the administration in recent budget deliberations. (ibid)

SAKES ALIVE, I hope above all else that O'Toole is correct in that assessment. The most striking (to me) exchange during last week's budget showdown went largely unreported and spoke to its importance:

Mayor Ravenstahl frequently argued the point that without a little unity up in this City already, it would be frightfully difficult to lobby the State Legislature for any kind of relief.

Councilman Shields then brought up a couple of urgent letters he had written to Ravenstahl in the past -- one on stimulus funding, the other on the financial "meltdown" -- that he said went unanswered. Yarone Zober could be heard to sigh to his neighbor at the table, "This is what we're here to talk about?"

But Shields pressed his case in terms of Ravenstahl's unity -- and finally asked in a voice that quavered with understandable embarrassment:

"How do you have, how do you build 'unity' when you never have a standing meeting with the Council president?"

Ravenstahl -- who had not until that point been stumped or even slowed by anything the Councillors flung at him -- thereupon was at a looong loss for words. Finally he grumbled, "I'm here today."

That's when it fully dawned on me what had instantaneously dawned on Comet Senior Political Analyst Morton Reichbaum a week prior, while watching Councilman Peduto rail upon the Mayor's absence. He asked me, "Do these guys talk to each other at all?"

The answer, obviously, was no.

I hope I don't need to describe what happens when adversarial colleagues don't keep at least cordial lines of direct communication open. Frustrations fester and breed suspicion. Dark fantasies and conspiracy theories erupt. Sinister caricatures of The Other take the place of reality. And in regards to executives more especially, information about the world becomes ever more carefully and artfully filtered through only chosen subordinates. Historians never stop writing about the dangers of that.

In this instance, Shields pointed out to Ravenstahl that if he had been consulted about the proposal to triple the commuter tax before it was released to the media, agreement would have been ruled out; Shields takes the position that that seizing a big chunk from a minimum wage-earner's paycheck is cruel and unjust. And it sounded as though he'd already staked out that position politically and publicly, so he had no alternative but to oppose it moving forward. A progressively scaled tax might have went down easier.

Somewhere in the middle of the long oration which continued, Ravenstahl interjected, "I think this is part of our problem..." I wish we'd have gotten to hear the end of that thought, because it seemed like we were making progress at long last on the underlying dynamics. But Our Council President would not be stopped, so we'll have to wait for another occasion.

Now here's the beauty part: after that exchange, Peduto and Ravenstahl started going back and forth, not so much at each other's throats but rather in a kind of swift cha-cha. Bill pitched an idea, and Luke made a concession but offered a warning. Bill offered another suggestion, Luke counter-offered. It all very quickly went over my head but for a dream-like moment I thought to myself, "There's my city government! Look at them go!"

Yet all too soon arrived Councilman Kraus's fateful turn, wherein he attempted to contextualize and clarify the "beach vacation" accusations of the previous week. This led to Ravenstahl's "[Something] is a joke" moment, and right away we knew we had arrived at a deeper, tougher layer of the onion.

All of which is to say -- I hope last Wednesday's Council session really did let loose enough pressure to make genuine breakthroughs possible yesterday. I hope James O'Toole really is correct about this "distinct change in tone from the acrimony". I hope this avenue is pursued much further by all involved. If it takes more and perhaps routine rounds of quote-unquote "compelling" to achieve these dynamic results, that will be just as enjoyable to cover.

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Of course, in a City as complex as ours, it will also be necessary for everyone to carefully and maturely compartmentalize their specific gripes, so as not to pollute the fragile understandings which are flowering in other arenas. I'm confident we can handle that.

Today for example, I am off to witness the Planning Commission's deliberations on the North Shore Uglitheater. With fairly widespread public opposition to the terms of the development deal in general, and near-unanimous antipathy for the facility itself, I haven't felt this kind of suspense surrounding a decision since election night in Iran.

It seems rather academic, but there is a disagreement over whether former Stadium Authority chair Debbie Lestitian was in the midst of a term on its board or whether she was acting on borrowed time. This report suggests that she was recently renominated to a new years-long term, but it also suggests a lot of things that did not in fact go down as planned.