Ravenstahl Tax Abatement Details Now Officially Overdue

Twelve days ago, on Thursday, 1st March 2007, Pittsburgh Interim Mayor Luke "Flip Flop" Ravenstahl held a meeting at the now-closed Reizenstein Middle School in East Liberty. At this meeting, Master Ravesntahl hauled a bunch of "pleased-as-punch" neighborhood leaders in front of the press to extol the unlimited virtues of his property tax abatement plan. His rival for the Democratic mayoral nomination, City Councilmember Bill "Cojònes" Peduto, responded by noting that the interim mayor was providing no details about his abatement proposal, and had no analysis to back up the notion that the his plan was really a good idea. As Mr. Peduto noted in an earlier discussion of the Ravenstahl proposal, "He has no plan. He had a sound bite and a press release." Once again, as is so often the case, Luke Ravenstahl was caught saying the nice words that everyone wanted to hear, but was being decidedly parsimonious with the details.

While the Ravenstahl campaign probably didn't feel particularly concerned about Mr. Peduto's charges, they did at least make a token effort to parry his accusations. There was plenty of data and plenty of specifics available to back up what the interim mayor was saying, they told us. As the Post-Gazette reported on 2nd March, just one day after the East Liberty meeting:

The mayor's plan would waive the first $2,700 in city property taxes, for 10 years, on units of new housing built Downtown and in 21 other neighborhoods. The neighborhoods were chosen based on a formula involving dozens of factors, including stagnant development, population loss, low education levels, single-parent families, tax delinquency and violent crime.

[Interim Mayor Ravenstahl] said the full data would be released within 10 days.

The Tribune-Review's reporting on this meeting states that the details of the Ravenstahl proposal would be made available in "seven to 10 days". His homework is now officially late.

The Interim Mayor's ten days to provide "the full data" expired yesterday. I gave him an extra day to compensate for unforeseen delays and for the press to have a crack at the data. But this morning, there is nothing in either newspaper about his abatement proposals. Not surprisingly, none of the television stations have anything to say on the matter. And there isn't even a press release on the city website to trumpet the full details of the Ravenstahl proposal. This last fact is highly noteworthy, since the press release section of the city website -- indeed, nearly everything about the city website -- is usually nothing less than a festival of fluff concerning everything Ravesntahl. If the interim mayor had anything at all to say about handing out a tax break to a large portion of the city, we would at least be sure to have seen something posted there.

Why does it even matter that Luke Ravenstahl is late with providing this tax abatement data? What's the big deal? The answer is that there are at least three very good reasons why this one little thing speaks volumes about Luke Ravenstahl's ability to serve as our city's mayor.

First of all, this one incident fits a continuing pattern of behavior on his part. Time and time again, Master Ravenstahl he makes sound-bite-worthy promises in very general terms, but then fails to follow through in taking care of anything specific. He did it when he promised, weeks ago, to hold debates in the lead-up to the May 15th primary. That sounded great, in a general way, but he still has yet to agree on a single specific time and place for any of these debates, and has also, according the the Post-Gazette's Early Returns blog, been working to cut the number of debates down from the Peduto-proposed 8 to only 5 or 6. He did the same thing when he promised, in a general way, to re-establish the city's ethics board, but then did nothing to ensure that they could hold even a single successful meeting.

This same pattern keeps repeating itself, and it's enormously disturbing. This isn't Peter Pan. You can't "keep moving Pittsburgh forward" just by wishing it to be true and repeating banal slogans in front of the television cameras. As a mayor, you actually have to do something to make these things happen. And Luke Ravenstahl continually fails to do take even the tiniest first steps required to make his promises anything approaching a reality.

Secondly, Master Raventahl's failure in meeting his self-imposed deadline to release these details matters because his opponent in this primary election, Mr. Peduto, has already done so. The very idea of instituting a property-tax abatement within the City of Pittsburgh, in fact, came directly from Councilmember Peduto, who first started to examine this issue more than a year ago. The councilmember commissioned a detailed study to examine how these abatements could be implemented with maximum impact on our city, while still having a revenue-neutral effect on the city's budget. The resultant report has been available online for more than a month now. It sets out a convincing argument about Mr. Peudto's own tax abatement plan, which is far more limited in scope than what is (apparently) being proposed by Interim Mayor Ravenstahl. Mr. Peduto's detailed analysis shows that his plan would have a neutral, and possibly even a positive, net effect on city finances, and thus makes his ideas far more likely to pass muster with our Act 47 financial overseers.

It would be nice to be able to really compare the proposals put forward by both candidates. But because Master Ravenstahl is running several months -- if not several years -- behind his opponent, and because Master Ravenstahl can't even keep his own promises when it comes to releasing these details on time, it remains impossible for any citizen in Pittsburgh to make such a comparison. Indeed, the only comparison we can make at this point is that one of the two Democratic candidates, Mr. Peduto, makes his promises only after careful thought and deliberation, and only when he knows that they are likely to be kept. The other candidate, unfortunately, makes his promises without any thought or deliberation, and typically with his fingers crossed in hope that he not have to keep them at all.

And finally, Master Ravenstahl's failure to provide these details is important for third, yet very critical reason. His tax abatement "plan", if one can even call it that, has been cited as one of the few decent arguments in support of his candidacy. In an earlier post, I noted that the following:

After months of pleading, by myself and others, throughout the burghosphere, I still have yet to encounter a single worthy argument in favor of retaining Master Ravenstahl as the Mayor of Pittsburgh. At their worst, the few things written in support of him fall into the "give the kid a chance" or "isn't it cool to have someone so young" line of thinking, and are oblivious to what our interim mayor has done with the chances that he has already had. At their best, these arguments voice support for the self-interested benefits that one's own group, neighborhood, or even self will reap in the wake of a Ravenstahl victory. But not one statement has described even one positive result for the city as a whole that Luke Ravenstahl has either provided or promised as mayor. His actions thus far have largely consisted of a string of failures, and his promises for the future are either all-but-exact copies of Mr. Peduto's plans or simply remain unpresented by the interim mayor's campaign.

In response to this statement (and much to his credit), one of Interim Mayor Ravesntahl's staunchest supporters, Matt H., noted the following:

OK. I live in the Elliott section of the city. An area that has been in total decline thanks to many years of zero help from the Murphy administration. Right now I am working with Councilman Deasy and some other elected officials to develop some NEW housing and the rehab of vacant homes here in Elliott & the West End. The proposed tax abatement from the administration will help my projects that I have going here in Elliott. Why wouldn't I want to support a candidate that is going to directly help my area with a plan? Peduto's plan does nothing for my area.

The cynical part of me would note that this particular argument, as I had already remarked, does nothing more than "... voice support for the self-interested benefits that one's own group, neighborhood, or even self will reap in the wake of a Ravenstahl victory". In a general way, self-interested politics like these, in which one group is continually played off against another, are a big reason why Pittsburgh is such a mess today. But ordinary self-interest will always be part of politics, and Matt H. is certainly within his rights to view things in this manner. After all, that's precisely the way that many people make their political decisions in any modern democracy.

Instead, my present concerns with this argument are far more practical in nature. How on earth can anyone tell whether their neighborhood is or is not included in the Ravenstahl abatement proposal? The city's only press release on the topic fails to mention the specific neighborhoods involved, noting only that it includes "... Downtown Pittsburgh and 20 other neighborhoods – East, West, North and South - that need an additional boost due to population decline, increasing crime and diminishing quality of life". The Tribune-Review describes the Raventahl proposal as one which will affect, "... residential housing Downtown and in other neighborhoods designated as 'growth zones'", and goes on to note that the abatement, "... would be available in 21 other city neighborhoods where development has been virtually nonexistent".

A later Tribune-Review article on this same topic notes that the proposed abatement will affect the city's Homewood neighborhood, along with Fineview, where the Ravenstahl family itself may take advantage of this tax break (how's that for self-interested politics!). Apparently Shadyside does not qualify for the Ravenstahl abatements, so new Steelers coach Mike Tomlin will be paying full freight when it comes to city property taxes. But it does seem like both Upper and Lower Lawrenceville are included, from what one can glean out of a few comments in the press reports. But if you don't live in one of these four or five neighborhoods that are specifically mentioned in these reports, you are currently left in the lurch by Luke Ravenstahl's failed promise to provide us with details on his "plan". Your only hope is to take a wild guess as to whether your neighborhood contains enough "... stagnant development, population loss, low education levels, single-parent families, tax delinquency and violent crime" to qualify for Master Raventahl's largess.

As far as I can tell at the moment, there is no proof that even Matt H's own western neighborhood, Elliot, is part of the Ravenstahl abatement "plan". I'm rather sure that Elliot is included, of course. Matt H is a bit of a Ravenstahl insider, and is in a position to know about these things. Maybe he was even present at the interim mayor's March 1st meeting with neighborhood leaders, and was privileged enough to hear some of the details first hand. But the rest of us aren't so lucky. It has to be said, assuming that the names of all 20 targeted neighborhoods were made available during that meeting, that the local press has done a pretty poor job of telling us about the few details that are known about the Ravenstahl proposal.

It may very well be the case that Mr. Peduto's own tax abatement plan -- and it at least can be fairly referred to as an actual "plan" -- is simply inadequate. It may be true that the Peduto plan ignores many of the residential neighborhoods in the city which would reap enormous benefits from a tax abatement of this kind. But the only reason why we can even argue about the Peduto plan is that he has had the courage to make the details about it available to us.

Personally, I would much rather have a mayor that I could argue with and about, than one who simply doesn't tell me anything at all about his plans for our city's future.

UPDATE: Reader, blogger, and fierce Ravenstahler (Ravenstalite? Ravenstahly?) Matt H. has kindly provided a list of all 21 neighborhoods included in the Interim Mayor's abatement proposal. They are: Allentown, Arlington, Beltzhoover, California-Kirkbride, Downtown, Elliott, Esplen, Fineview, Hazelwood, Homewood North, Homewood South, Homewood West, Knoxville, Larimer, Lincoln-Lemington Belmar, Lower Lawrenceville, Manchester, Spring Garden, Upper Hill, Upper Lawrenceville and West End.