Darlene Harris, who became Pittsburgh's city council president with strong broken-field running, is showing all the right moves as Pittsburgh's elected officials approach decisions concerning the proposal to hand complete control of downtown parking to politically connected profiteers.
She not only stiff-armed advice ('the last thing you want in a situation like this is information or verification') from the mayor's questionable and seemingly self-interested choice to quarterback the process, but also asked pertinent questions about whose huddle the mayor and his curious new posse belong in.
Rev. Ricky Burgess' lonely objection -- that refusal to swallow the Morgan Stanley/Ravenstahl/[insert name of local fixer] line without reservation could have a "chilling effect" on bids -- necessarily assumes that bidders would be as credulous as is Rev. Burgess, and therefore can be readily dismissed.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
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7 comments:
From what I understand, there are three options on the table: Let Wall Street broker at our expense a long-term lease of our assets to its investors (Luke's plan), hand over our assets to the pension fund overseers outright (Patrick and Michael's plan), or keep the assets, take out a revenue bond to pay the pensioners, and jack the garage and meter rates to raise the revenue to pay it off (Darlene's, and for at least one passing moment, Chris Briem's plan).
We still need to do the analysis and get the facts -- but in addition to admiring Darlene's determination to do just that, I also have a hunch her plan may be the superior one. It may also be the most politically feasible alternative to the mayor's plan, which is handy.
Meant to link to evidence to that suggestion about Briem:
http://nullspace2.blogspot.com/2010/03/parking-begone.html
Whats your problem with Darlene? You just hate everyone and everything in the city
Anon.,
Is that snark? If it isn't you need to reread the post.
Maria: Can you be my barometer on this one? Is it inappropriate to liken a woman to Red Grange?
I don't see why it would be. Am I missing something?
Out of the loop and plan to catch up after my absence but maybe that is useful here. Keep putting in meters and jacking up rates and believe it or not the distance to suburban and beyond shopping, amenities and more, gets shorter. Going to read a week's worth now.
anyone know how monk is?
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