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PSU: Reset Your Sense of Proportion. Shut Down the Program for a While.

As rancid as we had suspected. Surprised however that such a report was actually produced.

A scathing report that excoriated top Pennsylvania State University officials, including legendary football coach Joe Paterno, for failing to protect boys from a sexual predator sent a warning to other universities about the need to fully disclose suspected crimes on campus. (WSJ, Maher & Miller)

Recycling a Facebook comment:

Shutting down the football program wouldn't be "punishment", it'd be penance. It would be a way to acknowledge, demonstrate and make memorable the fact that football isn't very important. The student-athletes would still get to take classes, and still get to go out on the quad to play football amongst themselves. But the entire community would get a reminder that this program is dust in the wind and ultimately not worth protecting like human life and human dignity. One year suspension.

Borrowing another comment from the Friend whose Wall I put it on:

I'm sorry, but I have a problem with people referring to the loss of money if there's some punishment. Dollar signs and King Football is what created this mess.

Try surprising people, Penn State trustees. Show you realize that dollar signs aren't everything.

RELATED:

But Jerry Sandusky isn't in prison in spite of Tom Corbett, he's there because Mr. Corbett did his job -- by building a strong enough case to take a predator celebrity off the streets.

Most people don't understand how cases such as this operate. It's easy to sit behind a computer and critique all aspects of a case when you do not understand the inner workings of the justice system and its oftentimes harsh realities for victims. (P-G, Jennifer Storm)

We have the impression that if Sandusky was an axe murderer on the loose, "celebrity" and "pillar of the community" or not, then prosecutors might have acted with a fiercer sense of urgency. Or dug a little more doggedly.

On the Crucial Public Necessity of Taking Free Stuff

Today we examine the custom of our civic leaders habitually arranging for themselves free event tickets from the developers they are responsible for regulating and to whom they frequently find themselves giving public money. Are there any reasons for concern, do you think?

For the record, I don't understand how a surround-sound system can shake a City to its foundations, yet revelations of tens of thousands of dollars worth of commercial event admissions are met only with smirks and soft pats on the head -- but there are so many things I don't understand.

"If it sounds like an appropriate request, I don't think we stand on ceremony," said Mary Conturo, the authority's executive director. (P-G, Joe Smydo)

Ah! Very good. It has to be an appropriate request. Now we're just down to how we distinguish appropriate economic development uses from personal and political uses. Any outing during which food and beverages are paid for out of a campaign fund, for example, would by definition be an outing in the nature of a political use. Or are we going too fast?

Mr. Fontana said he doesn't use the tickets himself but gives them to neighborhood groups and officials visiting from other parts of the state. (ibid)

"Other parts of the state" -- that's good! Pittsburghers, we can assume, are already passingly well aware of the awesome PNC Park experience, but visiting out-of-towners truly ought to be awed by our fairytale skyline. "Community groups," however -- do we mean "constituents"? "Voters"? How are we supposed to run against somebody who can hand Steelers tickets out to community group leaders? May as well just give them parking spaces, or have PennDOT mow their lawn.

Former Mayor Sophie Masloff received about 60 tickets to 30 events, records showed. She said she has given tickets to family members but never requested what she considered an excessive amount. (ibid)

"Family members". PROBABLY NOT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, Soph.

"Sometimes, they go to neighborhood organizations," city council President Darlene Harris, a Sports and Exhibition Authority board member, said. (ibid)

Hey! Wait a minute. I'm actually in Darlene's neighborhood -- and I've been here as long as she's been in office. Should I feel slighted? Sending me to a game would pay off in terms of "economic development" every bit as much as sending somebody from the community Conference, Alliance, Council, Federation or Jamboree. Is this an indication that I should have supported Vincent Pallus instead? We probably would have wound up with the same Finance Chair, and I could be getting my fair share of swag.

To improve accountability and transparency, city Controller Michael Lamb and county Controller Chelsa Wagner said, the authority should document the names of those receiving tickets and the reasons tickets are provided. (ibid)

That would be a good start. However sometimes these things get tripped up during the follow-through phase. Witness the Ethics Hearing Board, which meets each and every month during which WTAE reporter Bob Mayo throws cinder blocks at the City-County Building; and its mandated Gift Disclosure page, from which we learn that only one (1) city official has accepted one (1) gift once since 2009.

Personal use of tickets, Ms. Nadler added, is flat-out wrong. "You are never to use your position for personal benefit." (ibid)

Clearly she's not from around here, so moving right along...

"The bottom line is the SEA gives the tickets to the mayor because they want him at events," Ms. Doven said in an email, referring to the Sports and Exhibition Authority. "His appearance shows city support for what is going on in the city. That is part of his job as mayor. If the mayor has additional tickets, then his priority is to use them to promote the city." (ibid)

Technically, his purchasing a ticket would be more supportive of the city. In this instance the city is much closer to supporting him, right? Although I suppose there is room for discussion about the extent to which U2 and Bon Jovi benefited from the mayor's support. A long, gratuitously repetitive discussion over the next ten months, until it's impossible to think of the name "Ravenstahl" without thinking about U2 and Bon Jovi.

On Mr. Fitzgerald's watch, she said, tickets will be used only for business purposes and all requests for tickets will come from the executive's office. (ibid)

Excellent that he's gone on record -- but it begs the question, how is the city and region going to get along without his support? Sounds dangerous.

It also provided tickets to several legislators who were identified, including the Winter Classic and McCartney concert tickets to state Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, who could not be reached for comment. (ibid)

Some people are plainly too important to respond to such nattering. Yet somehow in this case the "no comment" is almost more open and honest. I work hard, I deserve tickets, nobody can stop me. That's the sort of bold leadership we've come to expect from state leaders.

Records showed that city Councilman Bill Peduto received tickets to two events, but he said he actually received tickets to three. Twice, he said, he took international visitors to baseball games. Once, he said, he took family members. (ibid)

See? What a wuss.

Clearly, the rules are too loose and must be tightened. In the age of transparency, the agency's records are a muddy stream that don't even reveal why officials are receiving tickets. This is nonsense and part of the petty, grasping behavior that this region should have outgrown years ago.

Stop it. (P-G, Edit Board)

Plus one.

Directly underneath our public officials' hilarious rationalizations for such graft is the idea that, "Everyone else is just jealous. You wish you were running this town, so you could do it too." That's the precise mentality that needs overthrowing forever. We're not going to get the leadership we deserve until we change the culture of entitlement, this sense of royal privilege.

This SEA business is a great place to start, and the media would do well to force the issue relentlessly.

Soon...

Hill District Grocery: Moving Backwards, Not Getting Done [*-IMPROVED]

Seriously, can anyone make heads or tails of this new C-P article?

Subcontractor quotes come in high after hitting the streets of reality (or whatever the diddly) all the time, but miracle of miracles, somehow things get built. There have been multiple huge gaudy press events with mayors, county executives and URA officials. So even if the problem truly has been inexperience, incompetence or non-criminal corruption among the development team, could not said public officials have gently redirected the responsibility into more reliable hands by now? In-charge people are the best at being in-charge.

DIMLY RELATED: The Penguins are looking to the creators of Philadelphia's "Xfinity Live!" for ideas on how to develop the arena footprint. A local architect / planning bloggers' review has surfaced terming that development "a Downtown Simulator" for "suburbanites too scared to walk around Center City."

*-IMPROVEMENT: It has been brought to my attention that this blog post evinces "lazy writing" and "evasive circumlocution". So indulge me in a mulligan as I highlight two pull-quotes from AmyJo Brown's City Paper article:

"There's a core feeling in this community that this project is being made to be more complicated than it needs to be," says Cheryl Hall-Russell...

"There's no one person they're blaming for it, but there seems to be this thought process that they — ‘they' — don't want us to have a store," she says. "They tell me that ‘you're going to discover that ‘they're' going to put barriers in your way. We believe in you, but don't underestimate ‘their' power to stop this from happening.'"

Yeah, mark me down as one of those.

UPMC Not Claiming it is a "Purely Public Charity".

It wasn't that long ago that health care titan UPMC ceased using fanciful terms like "excess margin," and instead began admitting it achieves "profits".

Now, in the wake of a Pa. Supreme Court decision making clear what sorts of organizations are properly tax-exempt under the "Purely Public Charities Act", UPMC is steering clear of public officials' assertions that the health care giant is not in itself a "charity."

UPMC declined an invitation to discuss the issue at Pittsburgh city hall -- perhaps turned off by a concurrent examination of its labor relations practices. Yet even in responding to media reports about the court ruling and threatened tax-status litigation:

But in a written statement, UPMC spokeswoman Susan Manko said UPMC provided $565 million in charity care and other community benefits last year and "any sort of new tax scheme would certainly result in less (not more) monies for our region."

UPMC also pays more than $55 million in property, parking, business taxes and other contributions to local, county and state governments. Since 1989, UPMC has provided contributions totaling more than $40 million to city and county governments and school districts. (PBT, Chris B. Mamula)

UPMC is electing to make a practical argument. It is not saying that it is a charity, but rather that it is charitable. Crucially, it has yet to represent that it would be able to pass the court's test to continue being considered exempt from certain taxes.

This may be indicative that prospective litigation against all the major health care nonprofits' tax statuses, if indeed pursued forthrightly, would be likely to bear fruit.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS COMET READERS CAN DO:

1) When you receive your County property tax bill, respond only with a letter explaining that you already pay income taxes and sales taxes, that you provide for your family, and are great help to your employer and your chosen industry. Inform them also of your support of community and charitable endeavors, including the Boy or Girl Scouts, the PTA, Race for the Cure, and if applicable the Pittsburgh Promise. Imply that this is far more important than paying property taxes for public safety, public transit, public education, public debt and public asphalt -- and be sure to state clearly that you plan on transforming yourself into more of a miserly, uncharitable bastard if charged with tax evasion.

2) As consumers and equitable providers of public safety, transit, education, debt and asphalt, go and get yourselves together, hire an attorney, and take the nonprofits to court on your own. Even if Pittsburgh City Council is not now merely feinting towards the permanent legal solution -- in an attempt to negotiate and be bought off cheaply with a measly couple more million in "payments in lieu of taxes" through the Pittsburgh Public Service Fund -- even then, the political makeup and intestinal fortitude of the Council may not survive through the requisite seasons of elections and expensive lobbying.

It was groups of citizen-plaintiffs which finally took down Allegheny County's inequitable and unconstitutional "base year" property tax assessment scheme, despite endless political machinations. We can support the populist rhetoric now faddish in Council Chambers, but perhaps ultimately we will have to do so also with improper, unconstitutional tax exemptions.

PNC Bank Seems Confused by Furor

Allegedly, a glitch on its own end and/or 3rd party carelessness resulted in a foreclosure and eviction, but...

We've contacted PNC and will post their response when we hear back. (CP Slag Heap, Lauren Daily)

That's how it's been for weeks. Maybe if more people kept asking them more. Ahem.