And... Drink Tax (Redux)

This spoiled my breakfast this morning:

Since their enactment in 2008, Allegheny County's taxes on alcoholic drinks and car rentals have done virtually nothing to ease the Port Authority's chronic financial problems.

Here's why: The new taxes were intended to help the county's budget, not the Port Authority's.

The taxes are generating less than $2 million per year in extra revenue for the authority while producing $30 million to $40 million windfalls that county government has used to avoid raising property taxes.

What? What? WHAT?

"That is very clearly a point of confusion," [Port Authority spokesman Jim Ritchie] said. "People to this day just don't understand that this was not new money."

Now, that's an understatement. Did I just miss this? Was I not paying attention? Were there squirrels outside my window going at it like... squirrels, I guess, in heat? Was I so hopped up on NyQuil and ground up Flintstone Vitamins that I was delusional?

Please, someone tell me that this was hidden somewhere in the fine print near the bottom, like where the credit card rate jumps from 3% to 4 Gillion % if you don't buy milk on Wednesdays!

I mean, *I* used the might and majesty of this blog to argue that the drink tax was a sensible way of funding mass transit. I severed friendships over this. I burned down an apartment building in a Sambuca fueled haze for the Drink tax. Now I find out that it was just another way to suck money out of Joe Six Pack so that Dan Onorato and the folks on County Council wouldn't have to raise property taxes?

I ruined my liver for the busses, Dan, not so that some estate in Fox Chapel could save a mill or two off their taxes.

I feel dirty now.

Dirty and sober.

How to Spend $12 Million (Without Really Trying)

Frankly, this story really disappoints me:

Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato this afternoon said he will not fight a judge's order requiring him to use all excess revenue collected from the county's drink and car rental levies only on the Port Authority.

Instead, Mr. Onorato said he plans to give all the $12 million he collected in excess from both levies to the Port Authority for capital improvements in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. That will free up $12 million the county would have borrowed to fund the transit agency's capital needs, he said.

That's just sad.

I mean, you figure that even a CPA of Dan Onorato's caliber could figure out a way to reclassify County expenses as PAT expenses. It's really not that big a leap to imagine that there are certain budget items on the County ledger that could have overlap with the Port Authority of Allegheny County, with a bit of tweaking.

There are plenty of County employees that could be reclassified as bus drivers or mechanics. Make them drive the buses once around the lot every other day or give them a rag and have them wipe down an engine or two. Heck, there are so many consultants at DHS that they may be repairing buses for all we know.

Alternatively, Onorato could use Port Authority funds to find out how much bus exhaust do not contribute to the local air quality, instead of making the Health Department monitor the air quality directly. Oh, look: PAT buses didn't contribute 2.1 ppm of particulate matter in Clairton today, it only contributed .01 ppm...

Or perhaps, CYF case workers could be used as "underage mass transit chaperones," to, you know, prevent disturbances on the bus.

Onorato himself is somewhat in charge of PAT as County Executive, so his salary can be easily slipped in to the Port Authority's budget... and, of course, the County Executive needs staff to help him out on all these pressing PAT matters, so their salaries could be covered.

But he's not even making the Port Authority make a low interest loan to the County to cover expenses for 2009!

The milquetoast, underachiever that he is, Danny Boy's given up after only one bout with the Courts.

So disappointing.

And... Drink Tax

It find it scary when Monsieur Briem and I have similar reactions to the reduction on the drink tax by County Council.

Now, the reduction on the drink tax should mean that you unwashed masses can enjoy your Natural Light, your Bud Light, or your (God help you) Pabst Blue Ribbon for 30% less than you do now. Although if you're drinking any of those things, you're drinking less already... at least qualitatively.

However, as we've seen from the partial parking tax repeal (you remember that right?), just because the city decided to lower the parking tax, doesn't mean that the benefits will accrue to the consumers. The Parking Authority itself had to be dragged kicking and screaming to reducing its prices.

Of course, Monsieur Briem has also elsewhere mused on the elasticity of the demand for parking, i.e., people are willing to pay pretty much any damned price for parking downtown.

Now, high class drunks like myself would probably consider the hootch to be similarly inelastic, but, there are those that may decide that a drink at a bar is far too much money and would choose not to spend money going out. Indeed, this seems to be nub of the argument by F.A.C.T.: increasing taxes means that fewer people will spend money at local businesses, resulting in business closings, job losses, cats and dogs living together... you know, end of the world stuff. So, I can only assume, by F.A.C.T.'s argument, that if the drink tax goes down and prices therefore go dowm, more people will resume patronizing local eateries, bars, taverns, strip clubs, etc., and all will be well.

Unless, of course, (1) there's only a small, small marginal segment of the population that wasn't willing to pay an extra $.25 for their bottle of sex-in-a-canoe, and therefore the real impact to business is negligible or (2) the restaurateurs are aware of the stickiness of these the new drink, inflated prices and are not going to bloody well change them.

As for yours truly, the drink tax never really affected me much as I only ever drank alone, at home, in the dark anyway.

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

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