The Artist: Kellee Maize

The song: Third Eye



Kellee Maize is from Pittsburgh and you will be hearing a lot more from her I am sure. I caught her live performance at media relations impressaria Jennifer England's first On the Spot benefit fundraiser, and it was all terribly legit and hardcore, notwithstanding the slight Ke$hakira vibe in the above music video.

"Spitting rhymes like a full clip," I believe is what it's called. You can access her other tracks here.

Snowmaggedon Task Force: Prepare More, Communicate More, BUY MORE.

It has just recently grown debatable how immediate and dire is the City of Pittsburgh's financial peril, but today we are reminded that only six months ago, our vulnerabilities were laid bare to a more palpable kind of emergency.

Are there any correlations? It would appear so:

Recommendation #4: It is the finding of the Task Force that the City must invest in larger scale plowing and dumping equipment, especially large dump trucks, grades, back hoes and high lifts...

Recommendation #5: It is the finding of the Task Force that the City must make it a priority to purchase public safety vehicles that are capable of responding in all potential emergency situations, especially snow-related emergencies... (TFEOSP, click through to Final Report)

Those are two out of nine recommendations in the 275-page report, so clearly there is much more to chew over. I may read this one in its entirely; it looks set up to be a thriller.

MORE: Trib, P-G, newer P-G (with DPW director Rob Kaczorowski reacting a mite defensively).

Peduto: "The State Had a Plan" [*-UPDATED: with link to Lamb's plan]

Looks like I'm gonna have to eat some crow after all:

Those who oppose Act 44 try to scare people with claims that we will have to make severe cuts, or raise property taxes – or worse. They say that the state will come in and mandate terrible tax increases and harmful cuts to the city. It is unfortunate and of course it is not true. WE can also find a way to get to the additional $27 million – it is possible. If we do, we will then have a more stable pension plan, will not have to borrow money and will not have given away over $3 billion in revenue over the next 50 years. (People for Peduto e-blast)

Is Councilman Bill Peduto coming out provisionally in-favor of the state pensions takeover? If so that would require altering the rhetoric from something other than "state takeover".

"State plan". "Selfless relinquishment". "Not it." "Union kyrptonite."

ANALYSIS: My actual concern with the concept is this: let's grant his math is correct and under the "takeover" the city will have to scrape only an extra $27 million worth of ink out of the budget next year, and let's grant that this can be done. Would not those pension payments due to the state inflate to even crazier levels the following few years?

The political calculus reads: hmm, that's interesting, nobody needs to actually amass five votes to approve the takeover! One needs only to play a prevent defense against the Mayor's plan (the lease), the Council President's plan (bonded debt) or the Controller's plan (unicorn milk *-UPDATE: sell-hike-borrow) getting any five votes of their own -- and the takeover wins by default.

But even further, hmmmmm ... take a look at the swingingmost votes: Harris is singularly unlikely to stick a fork in labor's eye, and Dowd is singularly unlikely to jump onto a Peduto brand bandwagon. Maybe it would have been best to keep this effort entirely obfuscated like a Palpatine, but now it's been e-blasted and blogged upon. Whoopsie.

The Big Lease: Our Scholars Return!

The numbers are in:

The valuation results indicate that the parking garages and the meter system are worth approximately $199.8 million and $201.3 million, respectively, in net present value for the next fifty years ... These results incorporate fixed values for inputs such as elasticity of demand, annual growth rate, and the discount rate. Simulation analysis tested the sensitivity of the valuation in the presence of parameter value uncertainty to a likely range of parameter values. This generated valuation ranges of $152.4 million to $236.5 million for the parking garages, and $133.8 to $234.3 million for the parking meter system. (FSG, page 19)

So if guns were held to Council's "independent" consultant's heads, they'd avow the lease on the table to be worth $401.1 million. Which is exactly $50.6 million less than LAZ Morgan Draper Pryce is offering us.

And if you let them play it safe and account for all remotely likely variables, they would offer a possible value range between $286.2 and $470.8 million. Which, at its highest extreme, would be only $20 million or 4% higher than what is being offered.

That's what they're saying, right?



Right. But we knew that already. Pittsburgh will require relief from the state and/or statewide reforms to stay above the 50% pension funding red line and out of trouble permanently. And we can rely on them to do so right after they seriously regulate drilling.

Doug Shields on Fighting Drilling

"It really doesn't matter if you win or lose. It's how -- it's putting the fight on. We don't know what discussions and results are going to come out of this."

City Council member Doug Shields talks about how perceptions of natural gas drilling are changing rapidly for the worse at the grass roots level. He says his proposed ordinance that would ban all drilling within the City of Pittsburgh is intended, in part, to provoke realizations of such realities among state legislators while there is still time.

Section 5.1 of his proposal would ban the drilling. I asked him about the sections appearing thereafter, abbreviated here:

5.2 Corporations engaged in drilling in the City shall not have the rights of persons.

5.3 They shall not have the authority or power to enforce state or federal preemptive law, or to overturn municipal law.

5.4 No permit, license, privilege or Charter of any state or federal agency that would violate this ordinance shall be deemed valid within the City.

"It's pretty radical isn't it?" he responded coyly.

"That's the bill. What it ends up at the end, I don't know. I don't control that, how can I control that with, you know, nine members of Council?"

But is Shields comfortable with so much of his bill flying directly in the face of fairly well-established case law?

"It's called: the opener. It's the opener.

"And Councilman Dowd, his opener was -- and I don't fault Councilman Dowd at all on his legislation, not in the least, I have no criticism to offer -- but his opener was, 'Okay, we're going to go the zoning road.'"

Shields offered an analysis of that zoning road:

"If you write zoning law -- this is what the adult bookstore industry ran into with suburban communities in the early nineties -- they're legal, and as a legal use, then you have to provide for them under zoning code. But you can't say, 'Okay, you can come here, but, you can't be within 1000 feet of 800 different things', which basically is just as problematic as what I'm throwing on the table. Because [a court is] going to say, 'Yeah, you provided for it, but you wrote the law in such a way that you really didn't.'"

Speaking for both Councilman Dowd and himself together, he says, "We'd write something else, but the fact of the matter is, the state has preempted us on everything, and basically we're being treated as a colony."

##

To illustrate his point of political disenfranchisement, Shields cites the state Supreme Court case of Huntley & Huntley vs. Borough Council of Oakmont.

"Joe Massaro and his neighbor wanted to drill a gas well. A shallow well, I understand."

"Oakmont has the protection of the Municipal Planning Act of the state ... which asserts that there is zoning authority here at the local level, and the Supreme Court agreed with the Borough of Oakmont."

"And Huntley & Hutley and Mr. Massaro could not drill their well. I don't have the protections of the Municipal Planning Act as a city of the second class. I don't even have that. I think I'm being treated differently. I think there are inherent dangers to the public in this thing."

In addition to the host of environmental dangers we keep hearing about, Shields cited the city budget.

"What the Mayor's office said was," he began, having dug out a news clip, "What the Mayor is focusing on is balancing the two, noting that 'the City is going to prepare for any possible pollution, well fires or other risks.' Why? Because this business is inherently risky. This business just had four gas wells blow up in the last month and a half.

"Right now, we're talking about 10% budget cuts across the board. What am I going to prepare with? I can't even get a playground or a rec center open, and we're talking about preparing for 'pollution, well fires or other risks.' And I say, well, I really don't want to. And I don't think the taxpayer wants to either."

##

Shields hands me a couple sections of the Pennsylvania Constitution which guarantee that The People have the right "to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of natural scenic, historic and aesthetic values of the environment," and that all rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution are inherent to The People.

Moreover, he cites a section pointing out that state's natural resources are "the common property of all the People, including generations yet to come", which he says contradicts gas industry claims about the supremacy of individual property rights.

"No state legislature can preempt that," Shields insisted.

However, these portions of the Constitution come out of what's called the Declaration of Rights. In another state Supreme Court case, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. East Brunswick Township, the Court said pretty clearly that reference to the Declaration of Rights is inappropriate where municipal corporations are concerned. Individuals may enjoy protections under those stipulations, but not cities which purport to be acting on their behalf.

In response to that, Shields tells the story of a water treatment plant near New Castle that is under stress from shale drilling operations, and that "the treatment for Marcellus Shale water is dilution."

"So the only treatment is, if you've got one bucket of water, with dirty water and bad chemicals in it, you add ten more buckets and you throw that in the river. But cumulatively, the amounts are beyond the pale."

Another treatment is to add Chloramine -- which, when performed at the Sewickley Township Water Authority, required public notice to go out warning dialysis patients and fish owners to stay away from public water.

I attempted vainly to steer the discussion back to the likely projected legal outcomes of his course of action, including practical outcomes in terms of legal expenses and what could happen next. Shields steadfastly steered it instead toward outcomes regarding the environment and public health.

"What tomorrow brings I have no idea," he said by way of attempting to resolve the impasse, "but I know if I don't put something into play here, then nothing will be done. Because no one's doing anything."

He reached that realization that fully, he recounted, when someone with which he was discussing legislative strategy said, "Doug, don't you get it? The government is the oil and gas industry."

##

Doug Shields is aware that some folks deep within politics view his crusade rather cynically, as a way to "make a big name for himself" (my words to him) in advance of elections this coming May.

"I made a big name for myself a long time ago. My support base is there. They know who I am and they know what I do. If someone wants view politics as a little cartoon in the Sunday paper, let me assure you it is not."

The Song: THRILLER

The effect: Drip wipes.

The Insecurity Bulletins: Embarrassing, Check.

I haven't been giving much attention to the ITRR security bulletins story, because I don't know -- it's like, "Of course The Man is spying on you and tracking hippie activists. What episode of Benson are you living in?"

But since the Slag Heap has been all over this like biocides in frackwater, and the furor is mounting higher than we might have expected, I figure I'll toss in the bit that irritates me:

"When there's a public gathering, a public meeting, who knows what intent people might have. So it just alerts local officials of the possibility. It alerts them to be on their guard." (WTAE, Bob Mayo)

That was Gary Tuma, Gov. Ed Rendell's press secretary, defending the surveillance program to a local reporter on Sept. 9.

Slam cut to an evening press conference on Sept. 13:

"This is ludicrous," Rendell said. "And I apologize to any of the groups who had this information disseminated about their activities. They have the right to protest."

Rendell said he was "deeply embarrassed," and said the fact that the state was paying for such rudimentary information was "stunning." (AP, Marc Levy, via Wash. Exam.)

The Governor was also "appalled," making for at least three colorful, high-impact words to illustrate his patriotic empathy. Yet apparently this did not culminate toward his becoming very "wrathful" over the whole thing:

Rendell said James Powers, the director of Pennsylvania’s Office of Homeland Security, which distributed the intelligence bulletins, would not be fired because “there’s shared responsibility here.” (Patriot News, Donald Gillian)

Perhaps he means that variety of shared responsibility which can lead to lawsuits after any dismissals, during which the injured party presents e-mails and memorandum from the Governor which read things like, "Yeah, baby. The spying program sounds good to me. Let's do this thing, but for gosh sakes keep it quiet." Perhaps?

Personally I'm not calling for anybody to get fired. Mistakes get made as well as stupid or silly decisions. But this whole "Gosh, I'm such a great and innocent guy who was ill-served by my staff" routine isn't quite taking.