City Council Votes to Cut Off Nose to Spite Face

Pittsburgh City Council has given preliminary approval to a bill that would assist itself in cutting off its own collective noses to spite its collective faces.

"There are days when we look in the mirror," said Councilman Rev. Ricky Burgess, "and we think, 'Gosh, we're just so dangled ugly; we need to punish our ugliness.' We believe that this bill will resolve our problems once and for all.".

Following the release of new City of Pittsburgh Beauty Standards, citizens have complained en masse that Pittsburgh City Council is just too damned ugly and that "something must be done.".

The bill was sponsored by new Councilman Corey O'Connor, whose father had successfully sponsored a similar bill back in 2001. As a result of that bill, Jim Ferlo lost a significant quantity of blood, which led to his run for state Senate the next year.

The legislation would offer a bulk rate deal to Council members and their staff who are angry about how how they look. In all, a team of nearly a dozen surgeons will be on hand to assist.

Council has budgeted $150,000 for the procedures.

A final vote is scheduled for next week.

Allegheny County Changes Assessment Website Again

From the P-G:

Less than one day after Allegheny County re-posted new assessment numbers on its website it has modified the procedure for finding them.

The new real estate values, available now only for properties in Pittsburgh and Mount Oliver, were put back on line Monday, but they are on a separate page from the current base-year numbers. The change made overnight reduces the number of steps needed to find new values, but it appears to make it more complicated to find the old values for comparison.

The new values are posted on www.alleghenycounty.us. To find them click on the ship on the seal of Allegheny County in the upper right hand corner.  A new window will open with a prompt.  You will be in a dungeon.  There will be a KNIFE, a SHOVEL, and a GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL.  The only exit is NORTH, but the DOOR is locked.

Pick up the KNIFE, SHOVEL, and GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL.  Use the KNIFE on the LOCK and the DOOR will open.  GO through the DOOR into the HALLWAY.

EXITS ARE SOUTH, NORTH, AND EAST

Go EAST

You are standing in a room with a DRAGON, the dessicated corpses of property assessors surround his sleeping body.  There is light coming from an unknown source above you.

Use GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL

There is nothing to use GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL on

Use SHOVEL

You begin, quietly, to dig a hole in the middle of the room.  Suddenly, you strike something hard.  It is a BOX.  The DRAGON stirs slightly.

Open BOX

BOX is locked in an overly complicated manner.

Use KNIFE on BOX.

You jimmy open the lock on the BOX.  Inside there is a MAP.

Read MAP

The map is from FORMER COUNTY EXECUTIVE DAN ONORATO.  He apologizes for the problem with the assessments, but would like to remind you that he didn't raise property taxes while in office.  Also, your new assessment numbers are in THE CASTLE.

Use SHOVEL on FORMER COUNTY EXECUTIVE DAN ONORATO.

Yeah, I know, right?

LOOK

There is a DRAGON asleep several feet away from you and a hole in front of you containing a BOX and a MAP.  Exit is WEST.

Take MAP.

You put the MAP into your inventory.

GO WEST.

You are in a hallway.  Your Exits are NORTH SOUTH and EAST.

GO NORTH

You enter a very dark room.

GO NORTH

You enter an even darker room

GO NORTH

You are eaten by a Grue

YOU HAVE DIED
TOTAL POINTS 150.

County Submits Reassessment Plan to Judge Wettick

In motions before the court, County Solicitor Mike Wojcik added "Swivel on it."

Judge Wettick ordered the County to do something anatomically impossible, even for a medical student.

*Clonk*

And the can gets kicked down the road again:

Allegheny County will appeal a Common Pleas Court order to complete a reassessment of all property over the next four years, County Executive Dan Onorato announced this afternoon.

Mr. Onorato said the appeal would give the state Legislature time to deal with his call for a statewide solution to assessment problems. He appealed to the Legislature after the state Supreme Court earlier this year tossed out the county's decision to assess property at its 2002 value, establishing a base-year system similar to that used in most counties.

Mr. Onorato said the assessment system has to be fixed on a statewide basis rather than county by county. A bill already approved by the state House would provide a two-year moratorium on new assessments in all county while the Legislature studies the issue and tries to come up with a new system.

Now, I'm not disagreeing with our County CPA that the Pennsylvania Property Assessment system is as ridiculous and inequitable as a 14 foot drinking fountain for little people.* It doesn't make sense, when the State Constitution calls for uniformity, that Murrysville can have a base year system, but Monroeville cannot. Indeed, this is going to have to be something that the legislature needs to work out and set right.

Candidate for Governor Danny-boy, can't have the burden of actually undertaking a court mandated reassessment, however. Any reassessment will inexorably lead to higher taxes in the County, which would spell doom for his campaign. Yes, better to letter the judges and representatives in Harrisburg take the fall than to sack up and show some initiative for once, lest the road to the Governor's chair be paved with hard decisions.

Of course, this isn't really leadership on Danny's part -- it's politics.

And the can gets kicked down the road to the next guy.

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* Let this simile roll around in your imagination for awhile.

Judge Wettick Orders Reassessment of Monopoly Board

In a stunning break from board game common law, Allegheny County Common Please Judge Stanton R. Wettick Jr. Ordered Parker Brothers, Inc. to reassess the value of its properties on its classic board Game Monopoly

"It is our determination that property values on the Monopoly Board, which have not been adjusted since its original creation in 1935, are fundamentally unfair, and we are ordering a total, and complete reevalution within 30 days."

Local players had argued in front of Judge Wettick, that their purchase of Baltic Avenue at $60, was not commensurate with similar properties along the right side of the board, and were therefore being unfairly taxed once they built homes and hotels.

"This is a victory, not only for us, but for property owners from Oriental to Pennsylvania Avenues," said R.U. Pennybags, Esq. who represented the plantiffs.

The Parker Brothers have indicated that they will appeal the ruling.

This is not the first problems the classic board game has faced this year. Several bankers went to jail in April, after it was determined that they were secretly embezelling money to fund the construction of hotels along Boardwalk. They were order to go to jail, directly to jail, without passing Go or collecting $200.

Really?

I remember playing Kick-the-Can as a child. Little did I know at the time that, if I wanted to play it professionally, I could have been a State Legislator:

House Bill 1661 would prevent any Pennsylvania county from carrying out a court-ordered property reassessment until June 30, 2011. That delay would give the Legislature a chance to do a study of problems that many counties are having with the existing property reassessment system. The study would also deal with whether the state, rather than individual counties, should perform the reassessments. Allegheny County is now facing a court order to reassess.

*Clonk*

Bully on Sen. Pat Vance (R-Cumberland) and Sen. John Eichelberger (R-Blair) for voting against a bill that's so clearly unconstitutional, and shame on Sen. Jim Ferlo (D-Lawrenceville) for voting for a bill just "to keep the process moving."

*Clonk*

It's like letting someone get mugged because "you wanted to see how it played out."

Of course, it's not nearly that noble: everyone in Harrisburg doesn't want to rock the boat... despite not being able to pass a friggin' budget... because raising taxes is tantamount to politically whipping out your love junk in front of preschoolers and the press: if you do it, you're going to get into serious trouble and be tagged forever as a sex offender.

Metaphorically speaking of course.

So here's the thing: you either support the State Constitution and its uniformity clause or you don't and you want to play political games... which apparently includes "kick-the-can".

*Clonk*

Property Assesments Part 4,328,489

Well, we're back to square one: the courts have ruled that Allegheny County's base year property assessment system is unconstitutional because of the gross inequities it creates in property values and we're going to see another re-re-reassessment maybe soon enough for the 2010 tax year.

But first, a moment of stupidity from the County Executive in regards to today's property assessment ruling:

"I'm a lawyer, and as county executive I don't believe judges should order something that the people in the county don't want," added Mr. Onorato...

Too fucking bad Dan: Allegheny County's current assessment system violates the standards set in the Commonwealth's Constitution. I don't think any lawyer worth a bucket of warm spit could reasonably argue that it's OK to violate the supreme law of the land if people really, *really* want him to do it.*

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Dan Onorato is doing everything he can to avoid making an actual hard choice on this matter, lest it affect his run for Governor.

I wonder if he knows that the Governor's Office doesn't come with a Commonwealth issued backbone and that he has to bring one himself.

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* For the the record, lawyers who have names that rhyme with, say, "Galberto Onzales" or "Marriet Hyers" aren't worth a bucket of warm spit.

A Brief Aside - Reassessments

Briefly, as I'm busily working on deconstructing the underlying meta-narrative that is carmenformayor.com in order to prove that I'm not some misanthropic shill for any particular campaign, I just wanted to point out that Danny O seems to be a bit craven and cowardly when it comes to this whole Assessments brouhaha.

Now, remember, Danny wants to be governor, and the worst thing any politician could ever, EVER do is make the citizenry pay for services that they receive... I mean, raise taxes. The County, if my estimation is correct, needs to both have sufficient revenue and have consistent revenue in order to make its yearly budget. Assessments, as they currently stand, are providing neither. Rather than manning up and tackling the insane position amongst some residents that the value of their property could never go up from what they bought it for in 1954 (even during one of the biggest real estate bubbles in modern history), Danny opted to waffle, imposing an obviously unconstitutional base-year system.

Now that the PA Supreme Court has laughed the base year system right out of the docket, Onorato's elected for two different routes: first, trying to make a Federal case out of it and, second, trying to screw around with *everybody's* taxes in the Commonwealth. But, this isn't a real solution either and it's not like he's taking real leadership on the matter; he's just trying to pass and spread out blame.

Of course, if, by some strange turn of events, either of these paths actually lead somewhere, Danny-boy might have inadvertently be responsible for raising taxes on everyone in the Commonwealth. Now, obviously he's betting that by the time this case makes it through to the SCOTUS or through the State Legislature, he'll already be in the Governor's chair.

So, in my not so humble opinion, if this 3rd rate CPA wanted to commit political sepuku, he'd actually take a solid position on the assessment, even if that meant that County taxes may, eventually, go up. It may not be politically expedient, but at least it would show some real cajones.

So well done with the political limp-dickedness.

This Post is Not a Repeat from 4/13/06

So there's this episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard and the Crew of the NCC-1701-D get stuck in a loop of time, forced to relive three days of their lives over and over again until Kelsey Grammer shows up out of a temporal anomaly.

The lawsuit against the Allegheny County Assessment system is kinda like that:

Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr. today declared unconstitutional the state law that allows counties to use a base-year system for property assessments...

The decision is a blow to Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, who in 2005 settled on a base-year system after he refused to implement figures from a new reassessment. Those numbers, which would have gone into effect in 2006, would have resulted in assessment increases averaging nearly 20 percent for all homeowners...

The current case was filed in 2005, just 23 days after Mr. Onorato announced the county would move to a base-year system in which property assessments would be pegged to their values in 2002.

The plaintiffs argued the base year would violate the uniformity clause of the constitution because values in some communities are dropping while other's rise, creating an inherent inequity...

Now, keep in mind that this is not the original lawsuit, but the lawsuit against the policy that was developed in response to the lawsuit...

I think.

At this point it's like reading Joyce... upside down... and on crack. Only more difficult to follow.

Now, here's the bad news to homeowners: there is not going to be a simple resolution to this problem that actually complies the State constitutional uniformity clause. Somebody's going to be pissed no matter what decision and somebody is going to get screwed. No politician is going to take the blame for how screwed up everything is. It's an unwinnable situation: Kobayashi Maru.

But, then that would make the assessment situation like Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan* and Cheers co-star Kristie Alley.

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*KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!