Why everyone cares about Senator Byrd's health these days

For July 4th..... just for lawyers, Constitutional scholars and the few defense wonks out there

Polysign points out that The Continuity of Government Commission just issued another report on issues revolving around presidential succession. Think you know your civics about who becomes president in contingencies? Think again. There are folks worried about the odder possibilities out there.. Stuff I was once taught on just how confused the issue can be is boiled down in one of the earliest posts here: Slim Pickens Revenge (or What I would blog about if I were Tom Clancy). and before you write me off as nuts, I didn't make any of that up.

July 4th

Can we identify where this photo is taken from?

Image via: United States Flag Store. You can purchase a high res version on their site.

Pittsburgh as design hub

I have no idea who this is... but a detailed comparision of Pittsburgh and Cleveland with regards to their potential to be a 'design' hub is here at a site called Bright Innovation.

economics of hillsides

DNJ at the Post-Gazette looks at the some of the problems associated with hillside development in town.

Unfortunately my collegue Steve Farber has retired and left town, but one of his specialties was just that. The problems have not gone away, and in most cases have only gotten worse, not just for the city and its historical hillside developments.... but in a lot of new developments that are built on or near hillsides... ever see those large machines that 'grind' away the sides of hills for infrastructure development (or mining I suppose they were intended for)? I am pretty sure nobody knows or accounts for the risks associated with much of that. Think about recent news from Kilbuck for an obvious confirmation of that. Anyway...this seems on topic:

An Ecological and Physical Investigation of Pittsburgh Hillsides
ECONOMICS REPORT to the City of Pittsburgh Hillsides Committee
Economics of Hillside Slope Development
November 30, 2004

Raises the obvious question: Does the City of Pittsburgh Hillsides Committee still exist? I really don't know.

A bit of auto-blogging

Not around this week so I left this to go off to fill a day. I get asked how many folks read here. I really don't know. Yes, I do have a hit counter and , but I have been told by more than a few readers that they read via RSS readers out there (Google viewer, bloglines, others?) and obviously those readers are not showing up on in hitcounter metrics unless they click through for some reason.

Nonetheless, I never actually made this chart before. For those who are interested this is what my hitcounter says are unique daily readers here since inception.

Now I can say there are different factors that would tell me those numbers there are either over-estimates of daily readers or under-estimates. Again, most reading via RSS readers are not showing up. I really have no idea how many of those folks are out there. At the same time I am not sure all those 'readers' should 'count'. Given the esoteric topics I put up, what I notice is that search engine hits here are often for things that really have little to do with the blog itself.. so I suspect random folks out there click though, quickly determine there isn't much here for them and move on. There are even a handful of math majors every day looking literally for 'null space' whom I think find little to help them with here.

So there you go.. take it FWIW.

afternoon musings

Not around to comment on the Act 47 machinations... but man is that weird.

Top of the fold front page comment in the Financial Times that pokes a bit at recent 'livability' rankings that have come out: If cities are so liveable, why are people not living in them. The irony will be obvious when you see the news tomorrow.

But Pittsburgh comes in the top 5 of Forbes latest ranking of most affordable places.

and steel demand may at least be stabilizing.

June 1975

Unemployment is up. Pittsburgh regional unemployment at 7.5%. The US is at 9.4%. Detroit jumped another remarkable 1.4 percentage points ove rthe previous month and is now just a blip below twice our unemployment rate at 14.9%. I really don't think that has ever been the case, but we would have to ask the historians to confirm that.

June 1975 is the last month that Pittsburgh's unemployment rate was 1.9 percentage points below the US. For consistent data I have since 1969, the most Pittsburgh has been below the US is 2.1 percentage points in April of 1975. More than that and it's kind of uncharted territory.

The McCullough/Acklin Race

I had this huge rant on just how screwey this whole situation with County Councilman Chuck McCullough is... but I thought the better of it. It's not worth repeating since I typed most of it before and before that even. The one key thing that really gets me is just bizarrely quiet folks are about the situation. For alleged behavior half as egregious you would normally have politicians on both sides speaking out. The utter silence is just plain odd. Remember, this is probably the guy I was pretty sure had the Republican's best shot at being elected County Executive some day. Think about that some.

But the thing about McCullough is again how he got elected despite having 'dropped out' of the race and against an opponent who had a lot of political support in town. Jim Roddey and others would regularly talk up Acklin in public and in the media heading into that race. Kevin even had the (potentially counterproductive I admit) Post-Gazette endorsement for the race. All the charges against McCullough were front and center in th enews heading into election day in the spring of 2007 ... and yet he won despite all of that .... by a decent margin no less.

So how did he do that? Below is a somewhat quick and dirty map of the results between Acklin and McCullough in the 2007 Republican Primary for the County Council at Large seat. It's potentially one of those maps that can be over interpreted. When I first made it up I ran into a problem quickly that I couldn't come up with a percentage of votes for either candidate because in a whole lot of voting districts there were literally no Republicans. Even in the districts where there were some Republicans, a lot had total votes cast in this race of under 10 ballots or less. So a district might be shaded one way, but there is a big discepancy in the number of votes it represents. So the first thing I did was to arbitrarily shade out the districts with 5 or fewer total votes cast in this race. You will see the swaths of the city and a few other places in the Mon Valley where I have shaded grey. Again grey here means total votes cast in the Republican primary were under 5, as in the digits of one hand. Lots of the areas I left shaded don't have much more than 5 votes.. But I picked 5 arbitrarily as a cutoff.

Note also that I couldn't quite figure out what would be color-neutral shading. No matter what I tried there was some color-symbolism. So here the red and greed are arbitrary, not intended to mean anything else.

Oh yeah, the map:



What's it mean? As some have explained to me the general explanation for McCullough's victory was his suburban residence. Municipality of record is shown on the ballot in this race so it was McCullough (Upper St. Clair) vs. Acklin (Pittsburgh). The map bears that out pretty much. Acklin's support was mostly in the city. If you break out the numbers.


_____McC___Ack

City 977 2,307

Outside City 25,514 17,865


_____McC__Ack

City 29.5% 69.7%

Outside City 58.5% 41.0%


So what jumps out is that Acklin won the city, but the city just wasn't a factor in that race. Note how few Republicans voted in the primary within the city. All of 7% of the Republicans votes in this race came from within the City proper. Granted for primaries like these, city R's may not have a lot of incentive to come out and vote, so you don't want to infer too much about the number of votes that may represent in a general election... but still.

Smoky and Hip

Couldn't pass this one up. Jim R. catches the Miama Herald's latest contribution to Pittsburgh hagiography of late: Going with the flow has served Pittsburgh well - Home to H.J. Heinz, the Steelers and Andy Warhol, the Iron City has morphed from smoky-industrial to vibrant and hip..

the long squiggly ghost

Reading the PG's Next Page contribution today: The big leap in transit we didn't get -- but could and it's reference to Curibita, Brazil to solve our public transit predicaments.

The references there are all back to the earlier Next Page piece: The Long Squiggly Line.

No time to repeat myself, who wants to endure that anyway. But most of what I would say would be the same as before. The confusion with and idealization of Curibita is just too superficial to be meaningul. In the replicable ways Curibita is already the model for much of the Port Authority design here... Or is it the other way around?! If so what does that say about seeking lessons from them.

The longer rants go like this:

Confusing Counterarguments

False Choices and McAnalysis

Rethinking price elasticity for gas and Curibita

But on the bigger issues facing folks these days: The False Choices phrase is probably the best way to put it. I've been staying out of the current Port Authority system design debate mostly because it was so frustrating having the Port Authority refuse all my requests for information during the route cut debates not so long ago. There just isn't time to deal with that again and it convinced me they don't really want any more than token public comment... I've even had (slightly) better response getting pension data out of the city over the years.

But there is clearly this plan going on to shape the public comment as it were to work like this. Two major options presented. Port Authority will take that in and somewhere down the line, pretty soon I imagine, someone down there will start to say that the public made clear it 'prefers' one option. No mention will be made that there were just a very limited set of options to begin with and the logical leap to being strongly behind one of them will not make much sense. Watch and listen... it will be the spin at some point.

The single most endangered mall in America is.....

Coming up first on US News' list of most endangered malls in the nation is none other than Century III Mall. Not a surprise.

Last month the NYTimes had an interactive chart on the Fall of the Mall.

board openings

Just reading the news over City of Pittsburgh board appointments I am reminded of this:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05313/603268-100.stm

I think at the time I put my name in the hat to be on the sinking fund board, I thought it was for pensions.

and I think the Zoning Board opinion by Mittinger that is at the center of some of this is here.

another angle on education in Pittsburgh

Just getting around to this. I have to admit I haven't read the actual report, but Hoagie has a pretty thorough (if opinionated) synopsis of the recently released audit of the city's housing authority. His first critique is that the housing authority spends too much on education and training especially compared to the city of Pittsburgh. The numbers he has which I am sure come from the controllers report are $523 per employee in 2007 at the HACP vs $75 per employee for City government proper.

But wait... think about those numbers for a minute. I really don't know how the $500 or so compares... but isn't the shocker just how ridiculous that a major employer of any kind spends all of $75 per employee per year for education, training and travel expenses. That is the real story if those numbers are accurate. I would think even crossing guards could use $75 in retraining every year, but almost every other employee certainly needs a lot more than that just to maintain proficiency in each of their respective professions. Wow. Maybe the Controller can audit workforce training standards in the city.

But beyond that.. Unless there is something else brewing , it really is quite a whimper of an ending to the tempest of news there was over the vast Housing Authority spending scandal that briefly took over the local news cycle. If I recall this all correctly, at one point Pat F. was trying to spin this all as if he was a whistleblower on machinations within the Housing Authority. I wonder if anyone will ever sort out all the internal politics that were going on behind the scenes to that. Of course, it all got subsumed by the great billboard blow out.

What is up with the billboard anyway? If we make it a few more days it will be 6 weeks without even a mention Pat F. in the news which will the longest we have gone on that in a few years I think.

Credit where due?

Over on Pittsblog I mentioned recently how Tom Murphy is getting nary a mention in the positive press the convention center is getting of late. Good or bad he built it. It's the fact that he is being written out of history that is curious. The unhistory of the former mayor has reached the point where he isn't even controversial enough to rant at anymore and that post only drew a few remarks. I'm waiting for someone to actually say to me: Tom who?

Look, if you get me talking about the monetization of Pittsburgh's water authority in the early 1990's or the sale of city tax liens later on I will rant against how irresponsible the city's financial policies were through the 1990's. But I still am amazed that Tom Murphy gets no credit for the things that everyone agrees he is almost single handedly responsible for. Thus the story I see today about the city's bike trails and growing recognition in bike-world. Yet again not a single mention of Tom Murphy who was the one who pushed the bike trail system his whole time in office. It's hard to believe any of it at all would exist without those efforts.

I have said it before and will say it again... it's just a token of recognition, but let's rename the Hot Metal Bridge (or at least it's bike/ped twin some prefer) for Tom Murphy.

G20 thoughts and more

More G20 suggestions being sought. Here's one. Pirates are playing while our foreign visitors will be in town. I'm sure the Secret Service would love not having thousands hundreds of baseball attendees going in and out of PNC park during that time. Gotta be enough logistical problems as it is. It is Pirate baseball in September; just conceding the game could be an option. But is there any reason the game can't be held at the home field of the Washington Wild Things? Maybe Altoona or Johnstown. It would be a big event. Attendance might wind up being higher than it would here. Ignoring what the Pirates record will be by then, any sane person will want to avoid Downtown and environs the whole time the G20 folks are here.

It's really really goodbye to St. Francis. I thought we said goodbye long ago.

Pittsburgh property for sale on ebay? No link yet, but see this weeks City Paper just out.

Metro crash in DC prompts story here about how unlikely ti would be here. I believe that for the T, but I also remember the head-on East Busway crash in 1996.

Jason Altmire is pushing rail between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Not a big surprise when you look at his district. What gets me is that Detroit is falling apart, yet even they are way past the talk about it stage and are adding commuter rail between Detroit and Ann Arbor. Nobody anywhere is mentioning PatTrain. Seriously thought, why is nobody really thinking about any form of transit between Pittsburgh (the city) and Cranberry? Anybody have old maps of commuter rails lines that used to run in Pittsburgh. We should map those out more formally.

bad air again

The AP is reporting that EPA will report tomorrow that two local census tracts are among 600 with concentrations of air pollutants that put them at a much greater risk of contracting cancer. The two census tracts are 492700, in Clairton, and tract 499300, in Glassport. Those two tracts are here:

Just say no to pie charts - Act 47 version

Most are tuned out to the machinations of the current debate over the City of Pittsburgh's municipal budget. In particular the debates over the proposed 5 year Act 47 plan. Even if you are not so concerned with the city budget directly, this all has lots of implications across the state and for other cities into the future.

Without much more comment than that. In lots of ways these graphics speak for themselves. This is the current 2009 budget of the City of Pittsburgh expressed with the help of IBM's Manyeyes site. You can click either of the graphics to get the full interactive version of each.

2009 City of Pittsburgh Budget Expenditures

2009 City of Pittsburgh Budget Revenues

Follow those stories

City schools enrollment again in the news.. I put up a plot of the time series for city school enrollment in the past. One problem there is that I am told some of those past numbers (pre 2000 or so) may be somewhat mythical which may explain the curious shift in trend all of a sudden around then.

*******
The story I caught that I thought came from Melbourne's The Age, but was really sourced from the UK's Daily Telegraph... looking at population loss and vacancy issues seems to be fodder for Toland's piece today. If you are interested, here is an old map of population density in Pittsburgh. A larger PDF version is there if you click on it.

******

and then there are the hotels. You realize this G20 thing isn't going to be so easy when you read today about the work stoppage at the Hilton Hotel Downtown. Anyone know which delegations were slated to be staying there? Anybody have time to go through and update us on the great Pittsburgh hotel mystery. I still want to know if those 4 hotels in (or near) East Liberty are still progressing. I know folks have been relocated to make way for the one I am most curious about, the Hotel Indigo announced that is going right in the heart of East Liberty.. but I have not noticed any construction yet. According to the original press release construction was supposed to start last year and the hotel was supposed to open by the 4th quarter of this year.

The UnStadium UnAuthority

or I suppose I should say the now leader-less UnStadium UnAuthority. The City's web page on the Stadium Authority says Sophie is still on the board although it says her term expired earlier in the year. Maybe she can be reappointed and put in charge?

First off, one has to ask why the Stadium Authority still exists. The stadia in town are all under the purview of the Sports and Exhibition Authority. (answer = debt)

Begs the question of why the Stadium Authority exists in the first place. The full answer is here in its bureaucratic best:

Proposal for the Redevelopment of Redevelopment Area # 16 in the Twenty First and Twenty Second Wards in the City of Pittsburgh, County of Allegheny, Pennsylvania.

I'd like ADB to beat those semantics.

Complete with an image from our paleo-future:

Look at that image and tell me we what it looks like? and I forgot Mike found a color version of that picture.

The introduction of that proposal has a summary that goes like this:

With the completion of the new Stadium, Pittsburgh will reassert its position of leadership among the foremost urban centers of the nation. Its image of having developed a renaissance program will be enhanced and the community will be the owner of one of the few new modern sports centers in the country. The recreational needs of the area residents will be fulfilled. The local economy will be stimulated. The Stadium Project is important to future renewal activities in the North Side, Downtown and in Oakland. It is important in the construction of a new interstate expressway system providing connections from West Virginia to Erie. It is important to the thousands of Downtown workers who need parking relief. In summary, the Stadium Project will be another major step forward in the comprehensive development of the City and the Pittsburgh region.

That was 4 stadia ago.

City-County Consolidation again

City-County Consolidation is percolating through the news again. See Sunday's oped, but also the complementary news article focused on an interview with Jim Roddey.

Not a comment on Grant and Terry's piece at all, but the very best editorial on the topic to ever appear in the local media was this from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1929 when the region came closest to ever implementing a pseudo merger of city and county. Really it was more of an editorial cartoon, but whatever you call it.. this type of graphic will never be repeated:

The little cannon in the parapets were a bit gratuitous.

Written more than a few years ago, so not a comment on recent machinations at all, but my own past thoughts on: Why Regionalism is So hard.

The news article quotes Jim Roddey as saying 2003 was when he first suggested consolidating some city and county services. That has been an active focus of work for a lot longer than that. Some of the best work looking at city county service consolidation came more than a decade ago (getting old I just realized... closer to two decades than one) from my friend and now retired colleague Jim Deangelis. A summary of just some of his work is here and here. Read those and tell me we don't continue recreating the wheel here.