Bricks

New bricks being staged for installation at Soldiers and Sailors Hall in Pittsburgh a few years ago.

Cleveburgh Steel

Remember when the steel industry rated local news?  

The 24 hour news cycle can be brutal.  Just beyond greater Pittsburgh, but near the center mass of Cleveburgh is Trumbull County, Ohio... home to Warren, Ohio and part of the Mahoning Valley were these two stories recently:  

24 hours ago the headline was:  Valley employment picture improving

Then a half day later:Over 1,000 RG Steel Workers to be Laid Off.  All of those 1,000 jobs are located in Trumbull County, a county with a total population just over 41K in 2010. 

No schadenfreude here...  those headlines were de rigeur here we all know.  Still, the recent news for Pennsylvania is that mass layoffs are low and declining.


and while some say steel in the greater region is still improving, there are some bigger issues on the horizon.  Steel is ever more an internationally traded commodity.  Just yesterday the US slapped tariffs on steel imports from India.  Whatever the details are in that trade spat, the bigger issue that will only exacerbate the problems of domestic steel producers is the continued appreciation of the US dollar.  Stronger dollar = harder for US producers to sell products elsewhere.  It is a particular issue in the steel industry.

"We don’t want hordes of tourists coming in"

While this piece all seems to be in a political context, it really is much more.  See GlobalPost.com: Pittsburgh: an acquired taste

Lots of great wordsmithing in the piece.. really... but this one quote is really something and actually quite insightful when it comes to economic history:

“Go out to Monessen, and you’d think you were in Yekaterinburg circa 1990,” he said. Dan and I actually were both there at that time – a dying city of what was then the collapsing Soviet Union

.
Somehow they spelled it 'Yinsers' later on in the article though.   Alas. 

Zero is good

Nothing new for us... but check out the latest from Zillow on underwater mortgages in the US by metro area: Despite Home Value Gains, Underwater Homeowners Owe $1.2 Trillion More than Homes’ Worth

I believe it is showing we are by far the lowest incidence of 'underwater' mortages, i.e. those whose home values are less than their mortgage equity. 

But in particular check out where we rank in table 1: Negative Equity Snapshot... and in particular the last column there.  Zero is good!  Most of those numbers are still scary.

They have a neat interactive graphic of the national picture as well

When an exodus isn't

So these rumors have been bubbling for some time, but Jon Delano/KDKA talks about the next big office building that may be built downtown. New Skyscraper Could Be Built In Downtown Pittsburgh


But note this quote:

“We’ve really been fighting this exodus, if you will, from downtown Pittsburgh and from the region, and now that’s reversing,” Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald told KDKA Money Editor Jon Delano.

What 'exodus'?   I've been throught his before, the number of jobs located in the city of Pittsburgh has been one of the most remarkably consistent metrics.  Roughly 300K jobs were located in the city of Pittsburgh proper in 1960 and it has been about the same exact number over the last 20 years.  Given that large parts of the city are likely declining, that stabilility is being driven by the strength of jobs located Downtown and Oakland.  There may be fluctuations year by year, but clearly NO EXODUS.  That is the story, not that there is some rebound from a trough that didn't happen even through the 'great recession'.

If you really parse it, consider that Downtown recently had one large new skyscraper built in the form of PNC 3... has another large PNC tower already announced. For there to be continued supply additions despite all the new recent additions is a sign that there was no exodus in any recent past either. It all is an argument that sounds like what I reacted to when I once asked "Is Downtown Dead?".  The answer was no a decade ago and is clearly still no today.

But this new potential building is interesting.  If indeed it is for a new Chevron tenant, a potential mentioned here already, it really would be a big boomerang moment for the company that claims Gulf as one of its progenitors. Chatter is also that Chevron has been pressuring for the city to go back on its legislated 'ban' on new drilling within city limits.  If there is a big new project involving Chevron you have to wonder how that debate will progress.

and if yet another big tower gets announced... with presumably some tenants lined up since this type of thing will not be built on spec...  then I hope the bemoaning of a potential US Steel departure from Downtown will not be overhyped.  Personally I can't believe the building's landord lets US Steel get away unless they are confident they can line up new tenants once they are gone. 

Now the real question.  Remember it's not only this new potential tower, but the PNC tower just beginning, that will be added to Downtown office space.  Presumably all that new office space that will have respectable occupancy rates and Dilbert-density employee counts.  So with most bus routes being eliminated and with parking supply Downtown essentially capped, does anyone want to spot the over/under for what daily parking rates will be Downtown in say 2015? 

Inflection? Mirage? or Markovian Balk

I will point out that one week ago the Pirates pulled ahead of where they were last year at this time.. at least in terms of how far out of 1st place they are. Will mid-season have the same hype?

View of Pittsburgh from over the pond

Via the Guardian in the UK is this online oped: Regeneration in practice: lessons from across the pond

Recognize the photo?

Speaking of History

An anniversary of one of the more dramatic and heroic stories of Pittsburgh past is coming up.  This week is an anniversary of what happened on May 23, 1978 atop the remnant of the Brady Street Bridge  (its successor to be renamed the Birmingham Bridge a year later) which was being prepared for demolition.  Local ironworker Ralph Winner had to have his leg amputated by Dr. Joseph Young nearly 126 feet in the air.  Winner was preparing the bridge for its demoltion when shifting girders trapped him atop the bridge.

Not just this one story, but it seems to me that Pittsburgh is responsible for a remarkable part of the modern history of paramedicine in the United States, yet I am not sure there is a full history of it written up.

and the Pittsburgh Press version:

Like it's 1999

1999 is like an eternity ago. Since it is back in the news it really is more a reminder of how history has mostly forgotten (not on this blog I will mention) the whole history of Grant Street '99.   For one view of the whole matter review this old column by Dennis Roddy: Judging Right of Free Speech.

No matter how high profile you think any recent news in the nexus of local politics, the internet, journalism and hyperlocal muckracking has been, the history of Grantstreet99 is more seminal and impactful to this day. What am I talking about?  No bells and whistles for the earlier days of the internet. Still viewable is this April 1999 version of the website known as GrantStreet99. You will get the drift pretty quickly.

The story is not about some lone contrarian voice, nor about any particular accusation highlighted on the site at all...  but the lengths then superior court Judge Orie-Melvin went to silence the web site and its author. Why? She didn't like the criticism.  So the then anonymous webmaster ('blog' was yet to be coined) was sued for defamation in Common Pleas Court... after Orie-Melvin had been denied standing to sue in Virginia.

The litigation of Grantstreet99  would in the end be decided by none other than the ubiquitous Judge Wettick, and eventually backed by the state supreme court, who ruled against Judge Orie-Melvin and protected the anonymity of the GS99 author.

Unverified as best I can tell, but one has claimed the identity of Grantstreet99 incidental to other litigation against Allegheny County.  Just seems like he might be worth interviewing in light of recent developments. 

If you don't think it all that important a little episode, consider the counterfactual and what it would have meant if Orie-Melvin's case had gone the other way? 

Pittsburgh Scoring Jobs

Some new jobs numbers are out for April. These are the Pittsburgh jobs, not the state data in the news today. Not much change from trend. Region up YOY and for April only below the 2001 über peak that I have argued is a bit anomalous.

Maybe we will just summarize in a graph below.  Note always the scale of the axis.  So the slope of the trend I put in there may appear larger than you might think. It is not the largest rates of job growth, but when you think about it, it is a lot steadier than some in town presume.   Why is it not so large?  You have to consider that by the middle of the 1990's the natural population change for the region turned negative.  More deaths than births reflect changes long ago, and are not really reflective of current economic competitiveness in any way.  Yet fewer people mean fewer jobs needed.  Roughly 2/3rds of the regional economy is for jobs that provide goods and services to the regional population.  So at the end of the day there were jobs being taken outof the local economy no matter and continue to this day.  Pittsburgh remains the only large metro region with natural population decline.  Still, for everyone who is convinced all positive economic stories of Pittsburgh are ephemeral, or for some who believe it is all outright fiction, here is my annotated version of the last 20 years of job growth in the Pittsburgh region. Unctuous bafflegab it may very well be.

Afternoon news implosion

So this is ominous via the Atlanta Journal Constitution today: Delta Cutting Staff.

If you do not read the tea leaves they don't leave it to the imagination with this quote

"Meanwhile, Delta said it plans to further cut back international flights, just a day after celebrating the opening of Atlanta's new international terminal with additional gates for growth."

The new terminal down in Atlanta will of course be serviced by the Pittsburgh-made shuttle that were sold to them by Bombardier.  So we are a leader in transit systems... just not ones we actually use ourselves. 

Of course it was already a bad news day out at the airport: Frontier Airlines cancels new Pittsburgh-Milwaukee service (after just TWO WEEKS?)

and I swear I was about to post a comment to the effect of.. will we ever see the fountain at the point work again. Apparently hope springs eternal.

Assessments... yeah, assessments. What is there to say? Later.
Since it is soon to be international Facebook day, I thought it might be worth remembering the zenith of Pittsburgh.com.  It is a bit scary to think what the Facebook IPO would price at if it were still 1999.
and this sure seems relevant to us. From the Walkonomics Blog: Does hilliness affect walkability?
My inner Libertarian is confused by this subsidy a bit.

Sic Semper Census

So sometimes the media really confuses me.  The USAToday is running a story on some census data dumped today:  Census data shows minorities now a majority of U.S. births. OK.  but the picture they run with the story is of a Pittsburgh hospital with local babies wrapped in Terrible Towels.  So the picture is of the region that the story least applies to in the entire nation. Huh?

Probably a lot to parse in that data when I have time.  My quick look just at Allegheny County looks like the estimated population change between 2010 and 2011 is mostly being driven by an increase in population among those 25-44.  Not much growth, maybe even some decline in children and decline in elderly (65+)... so the news from earlier in the year that Allegheny county might be growing of late looks to be in those prime workforce years.  Reinforces my belief that it is a worker migration story. 

PG is running a story on how the Borough of Zelienople in Butler County is appealing their census 2010 population count: Zelienople Census County Questioned .   I had some long-ish comments on Zelienople's appeal in a a post here from February: The Politics of (really) small numbers. it is kind of an interesting question what is up.

The biggest news in Census land these days.   The House of Representatives apparently introduced an appropriations bill that will defund the entire American Community Survey program and other long-running programs. Not replace them with anything.  So in our data-driven world, one of the main sources of data will go away.    

Almost, almost, last Maglev post

As contrasts with what was the first post here that mentioned maglev.

So I give them credit for tenacity for sure, but the ghost has abandoned ship.  The results of the final auction of assets of Maglev Inc. which took place on March 6th have been filed.  By news accounts the total public funding into the local high speed maglev venture amounted to $23 million in federal and $7 million in state funding over the years though I suspect a full accounting has not really ever been completed. (Why not? Oh, nevermind that) There was at its inception there was even private money from Japanese investors.  I've wondered whether they got any of that back over the years?  A bit more surprising if you follow that link was that even back then in 1990 they were really planning to imminently float a larger financial package in the markets. Merely a question of which financial advisor to use.  Decisions, decisions.


It was all such a pretty picture.

I digress.  Did they make back 10 cents on the dollar?  In its final tally the auctioning off of Maglev's assets brought in a gross total of $549,202.16.  Before that money was paid to anyone some auction expenses of $40,059 were due.  A buyers premium collected by the auction house amounted to $82,380.  So if my math is right is works out to maybe a bit under $427 thousand payable to debtors and debtors in possession.  Probably will not cover the unpaid rent let alone legal fees to close this all out.

All that is left to write is the history.

Don't get me wrong.  I love trains and all, but why did anyone ever believe this would happen?  It was all such a cognitive dissonance with reality that even when Maryland appeared to drop out, leaving Pittsburgh to 'win' the competition for demonstration money for this, the result was to find new regions other than Pittsburgh to consider.  It just wasn't ever going to happen here.

If it ever happened it wasn't just an incremental technology for us, but akin to Merlin returning the visit to Connecticut.  I just looked it up and did the division:  Amtrak's service from Washington, DC to Pittsburgh covers all of 299 miles in just barely under 8 hours.  An average of under 38 miles per hour, and that is if it isn't late.  Faster than George made it which is something.  On a bad day the train might not be able to keep up with Lance Armstrong.

Billboard Alley Redux

So the news has this: Advertisers, city council continue 'Pittsburgh' sign dispute

Something new about this whole argument?

Seems not.  From the Mount Washington News, December 3, 1954 (also see related article on page 1)

Anyone notice we were a bit more precise in our geography a half century ago.  The whole argument goes back much further.  See The Index from 1906: Billboards, a menace to health. Or for the more complete treatment: Fighting “Civic Smallpox”: The Civic Club of Allegheny County’s Campaign for Billboard Regulation, 1896-1917, by Kristin Szylvian Bailey.  Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, January 1987.

I mean.. this new episode in Pittsburgh's billboard saga is more bar stool than fauteuil on the chair-scale.

and a reader pointed this out to me.. I have not really been paying much attention to the comments via facebook now running on the PG.  But on this billboard meme are some curious exchanges on all this yesterday. See:   Bayer wants repairs to iconic Pittsburgh sign. Doug continuing to fire away is not all that surprising.. but some completely non-sequitur hating on community benefits agreements in there?  I am pretty sure there were no CBA's in existance in 1954.  The billboard seems to also be the cause of all the young college graduates leaving town.  Good of an explanation as any of the others I guess. 

Bets, bets and more bets

So most skipped over the story of how Neil Bluhm may be buying out the remnant of the late Don Barden's ownership group down at the Rivers Casino.

Don Barden had a diverse mix of equity ownership, but it was still highly leveraged and in the end the collapse of some Lehman Brothers financing undid his ownership of the enterprise.*  At its nadir Neil Bluhm came into the picture provided the capital to keep the enterprise going, but with Barden and his ownership group becoming a very minority owner.

Who had Don Barden recruited into the original mix?  One of the more interesting players was the Retirement System for the City of Detroit. They originally were not directly equity owners but had this loan guarantee which made them some $$ if their backing was never needed. Of course it didn't work out that way. When all imploded, their loan guarantee cost them money and in return they got a small bit of the equity already well diluted in Don Barden's shell. Just last year the ownership of that group was restructured and the Detroit pension system had to put up $54 million in cash. See: Investor's Double Down on Rivers Casino.

I can't tell from the reporting if the latest machination includes Bluhm buying out the equity of the pension system or not. Below is the picture of how the refinancing/recapitalization worked out. Only a dotted line out to the Detroit Pension folks. Beware the dotted line may be one lesson. Who knows what the Detroit pension funds are holding the remaining casino investment for on their books. If the pension system's equity does get bought out, one thing that likely will result is that they will have to reconcile the value of the asset on their books; likely a small fraction of what they put in at any point. It is a loss that has already not gone unnoticed in Detroit.

Given that it the pension system's investment started as a loan guarantee, it was in a sense a highly leveraged derivative not all that much dissimilar to what has put JP Morgan the news of late. Sort of like they sold a put they never expected to be in the money. They could pocket the up front premia and walk away.  As much as I can tell from the superficial reporting on the JPMorgan fiasco, I think they were selling selling credit default swaps with a presumption they would not be needed and in a nearly idential way the bet turned sour. 

The result is that the pension system's  IRR must be a big negative percentage of their original 'investment' at this point. Will we ever know what their potential % loss was?  Even though the Detroit Pension system has a lot more openness than say the City of Pittsburgh's pension system.. probably not. Speaking of openness, note that the city of Pittsburgh has not put out for public consumption any investment info since 2010.  In Detroit at leastyou can read their monthly or more frequent board minutes.


So what eh? The City of Pittsburgh isn't actually violating any law or regulation in putting out so little information.  Pennsylvania has literally over 3200 individual pension funds out there. ... It remains a big mystery not only why the public knows so little about what the specific investments are in all of them... but why nobody ever cares to ask. I have to bet that if there was a comprehensive look at all the specific investments made by all those plans there may be a few surprises in the details.

* as disclosure I once worked at Lehman Brothers, though I couldnt begin to tell you who put money into casinos. Straight LIBOR derivatives is all I got close to.

Cleveburgh Casino Concerns

Big day Monday up at the other end of Cleveburgh.  Some day someone is going to have lots of fodder for a paper on the spatial patterns of local casino markets.  What do I mean? Up in Detroit the headlines are all about how: Ohio's new casinos could cost cash-strapped Detroit $30 million a year, analysis predicts.  The analysis comes from Mckinsey and it is not alone.  It is the same concern up in Erie.  In Pittsburgh before it was built the notional new local casino here was expected to draw most of its business from a cachement area of 150 miles or less.  How close is Cleveland?  or more importantly, how much of population within 150 miles of Pittsburgh is also within 150 miles of Cleveland?  Break out the compass and dividers.

According to the AP, it is such a big deal that: Cleveland Casino may begin Rust Belt revival.  Really? They are not dumb up the turnpike there, they know full well what some of the indirect economic impacts are likely to be.  They also know some of the odds. Once they get going it is going to be interesting to compare the payout rates for slots up there vs. here.

In the end it may all be about the food.  One thing that may be a real competitive advantage up there....  the spread.  Speaking of competitive advantage, the bit of underappreciated news from last month is that down in West Virginia they seem to have implicitly voted for keeping their casino instead of having to move it to attract the ethylene cracker that was big news here.  Voting with their (virtual) chips is one way to describe it. 


And Inspector Renault may not be as prolific as Yogi Berra (Happy Birthday Yogi!) but he was just was wise.  Funny how they are already squabbling over the money the new casino may bring in up in Cleveland.

A bit non sequitur, but speaking of Cleveburgh... from last year, but after my oped on Cleveburgh that was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I didn't notice this very anti-Cleveburgh piece from NE Ohio: This idea is the Pits.  All I can say is folks read some things a bit too literally.  I saw some commentary back then on the piece that suggested I was proposing some sort of Cleveland-Pittsburgh government be formed and how bad that would be. Yeah, that is what I was proposing??

From the Null Space A&E desk

File under things that are just what they are.... A sublime performance from last week.

Does cutting public transit limit access to church?

So, here is yet another angle on all the transit cuts inbound here: From uscatholic.org: Does cutting public transit limit access to church?

With a focus on Allegheny County of course.

If you missed it.. some colleagues of mine did a bit more formal calculation of the numbers that will be impacted by the transit cuts.  See: Impact of Port Authority Route Eliminations.

But if you really want to start adding up the costs of all this, I still say start with this unfortunate natural experiment and read this journal article and extrapolate: The Benefits of Prenatal Care: Evidence from the PAT Bus Strike.  by William N. Evans Diana S. Lien. Department of Economics University of Maryland and CNA Corporation. March 2002. 

Such a long way in such a short time from when Allegheny County and the Port Authority were on the cutting edge of public transit in the nation.

Nobody's on nobody's side

Long story... but I'm back.

So I learn from Early Returns that the City of Pittsburgh's euphemism as oversight board, otherwise known as the Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (ICA),  is still around.   Who knew?

They seem to be looking at the city's debt.  I need to update my graphic below which is my calculation of the long term trend in the city's debt when calculated per household. But then I realized it really is a philosophical question these days what the city's debt is. 

So remember the whole debate over the notional 'asset' the city's pension fund now counts.  A promise of future parking tax revenue is actuarially monetized to be counted as an asset.   I still want to know ..... if it is really an 'asset' could the pension board sell it to a third party?  Is that almost the definition of 'asset'. OK,  skip that, but it has a big corollary that goes like this:

So if the pension board is counting the diverted parking revenues as an 'asset'.. is it not the case that the same promised revenue stream is an equally valued debt to the city of Pittsburgh's accounting? 

Why ask why?

But if you look at my un-updated graphic below (from this old post) you see the long term trend in city debt when caluclated per resident household in the city of Pittsburgh.  What you see is a big jump in the mid/late 1990's when the city of Pittsburgh floated a big Pension Bond to put $$ into the pension fund.  So was not this big new and notional asset in the form of parking revenue meant to do the same exact thing?  Yes? No?   Think about it?  The difference between the two capitalizations is that one was at least a bit more honest than the other.  Sure seems to me that one side of a ledger got some money that is mostly being ignored on the other. It all might work out if there was a City of Pittsburgh central bank, but otherwise a bit problematic. 

 

Diasporan of the day

RIP: Claude C. Davis, one of the Tuskegee airmen originally from Pittsburgh.


 

The Great Allegheny County Assessment Paradox

Let's call this the great Allegheny County assessment paradox.

Washington Plaza Downtown is being put up for sale with an asking price of $55 million.

Note that its current base year assessment: $23 million.

Its new 2012 assessment: $30 million.

I have no idea, but I bet they are appealing nonetheless. Sure, they are asking for more than they will likely get... but are they going to get half of what they are asking.  And have we fixed the transfer tax problem here in Allegheny County?

Note from the story the current ownership of the building...  the Detroit public pension system. Maybe they will make up what they lost on their casino investment here?

Note also the view from the window.  Circa May 1, 1964. Alcoa would own the building until 1973. Everything in town is connected.

My mind wanders.  So if the building's assessment went from 23 to 30 million, it is highly likely that the property tax bill on the property is going down.  If so it leads to a simple and unavoidable conclusion.  A lower tax bill ought to be capitalized into the value of the building.  In other words, a lower tax bill should push up the value of the building.  Detroit's public pension system is thus going to benefit from Allegheny County's assessment. 

Peak Labor

So you may miss the big story in the latest labor force data being reported.  No equivocation necessary in that the data is showing the region's labor force is larger than ever in the past.  And I know the story is usually written in terms of local folks moving in and out of the workforce, but it really is much more a migration story.  Labor force participation rates are far less volatile than people think, certainly less volatile than regional migration flows.   Add in the fact that in general labor force participation rates are still declining nationally then for there to be an increasing labor supply locally you can do the division to inpute what must be the continuing migration story for Pittsburgh. 

The Variable Rate Bond that keeps on maturing

So...  I just don't have it in me to go though the history of all of this.  But if you recall the miasmic variable rate bond the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority had out there and thought maybe it was all resolved merely because it has not been in the news of late...  well...

No... it all is hanging out there evermore. See this PR just fired out there late on a Friday afternoon (the time period you use to send PRs to die): Fitch Rates $72.75MM Pittsburgh (PA) Water & Sewer Auth Bonds, Series B-1 of 2008 'A/F1'. They were contracted to do the rating, which suggests to me a new debt offering is out there.

Note...  "seventh supplemental bond indenture".... but who is counting any longer?  Been a long time since the variable rate basis of the PWSA bonds was even noticed. I still want someone to audit those bonds just to come up with a number for how much of the debt went toward anything remotely defined as capital investment.. and how much just went into financial machinations to pay itself off.  If not an audit, there has to be a case study for someone to deconstruct.  For a public finance handbook.

and completely random stream of consciousness....  but don't you think they could use the potassium permanganate to find some of the leaks in the system.  Probably not the best idea I guess, but I bet it would work.  Crowdsource finding the purple throughout the city...    iPurple?

Trending

So if you caught this story in the Trib yesterday..  Pittsburgh region's profile rising among Chinese, The chart below may say it all with China and India being the largest drivers by far of recent immigrant flows coming to and settling in Pittsburgh.  File under factoids that surprise folks locally, but yet there are more folks born in Asia living in Pittsburgh these days than there are folks born anywhere in Europe. I've had people strenuously argue the point with me.  Surprising most likely because the switch happened in just the last decade and maybe because some do not realize how long ago it was that European immigration into Pittsburgh slowed. When you realize than the local foreign born population born in Europe is much much older than the population born elsewhere outside of the US... in a decade or so the composition of the local foriegn born population is going to be an even larger majority Asian.  Basically, there is no reason to think the trends in the chart below can't be extrapolated into the foreseeable future.

What 'up' is

So if you read this headline today: Pittsburgh leads nation in foreclosures in early part of 2012


Relax a bit.

If you get past the headline you will note that it is talking about how Pittsburgh had the biggest percentage increase in foreclosures. Biggest quarterly percentage increase more precisely.

If you read the actual press release RealtyTrac put out you will learn a few interesting things.  Even with Pittsburgh topping the percentage increase, it still does not come close to cracking the top 20 regions in terms of the actual foreclosure rate.  That must say something about how low foreclosures here were before that even after such a big jump we are not ranked high afterwards.

Also.. and more importantly, the weird factoid on Pittsburgh's increase was a quarterly jump and as pointed out in both the article and press release there were some anomalous things going on in the numbers resulting from the robosigning.  Also note the press releases other big observation:

Despite the quarterly increase in more than half of the metro areas tracked in the report, first quarter foreclosure activity was still down compared to the first quarter of 2011 in 135 out of the 212 metro areas (64 percent).

Now go back and read the headline. 

There are bad investments and there are bad investments

One of the owners of the Rivers Casino says the business is a terrible investment. Just terrible.  In context you can't ignore that the statement is made as part of litigation to lower the property's assessed value for tax purposes. 

So here is the deal.  Maybe he is right, maybe he isn't.  The Rivers Casino could be an awful investment or a great one.   What is a bit clearer is that the value of the casino has only gone up since he invested in the business.  When Don Barden and his coinvestors were supplanted as the equity owners of the casino there were no table games in PA casinos. No assurance there would be table games in the future. Since then the law changed and they all jumped into table games quickly.. because it made such financial sense.  Table games have been very very lucrative for Pennsylvania casinos.  Not only do tables games incur a lower tax rate on gross revenues but they bring more people through the door which has been pushing up slots revenues as well. Add in the detriorating economy at the time and other reasons to think that the price paid at the time was actually pushed down from what it might have been a year earlier or a year later.  One way or another the value of the casino has gone up since that investment was made.

Consider that if it was a bad investment, the new owners were clearly warned of that fact by just how well all the previous investors fared. The 'bad' part of the investment was not hidden and assuming the investors were not unsophisticated they took all the available information into account when deciding what price to pay.

Remember it was not just the late Don Barden who took a bath, but his co-investors and even the folks who backed the loans he took out.  That would include the Detroit public pension system.. someone may need to check to see what the outcome was of that story.  The point is that the casino was probably worth what it was paid by the new owners at the time they made the investment.. and the whole enterprise can only have increased in value since. 

Recall Don Barden's financing scheme for the casino early on.....

The incredibly disappearing (super?) voter

So a curious election to be parsed and parsed.  Of note seems to be the low turnout.  Without looking back at the long historical data explicitly, it is a good guess that it was the lowest number of ballots cast in an Allegheny County election cycle ever.  I bet the presidential campaigns will be parsing the turnout data down to its lowest quantum before November comes around in order to figure out who did, and who didn't, make it the voting booth.  I guess we don't have booths any longer.  

Works out that the election yesterday had 6-7% fewer ballots cast than just last year's primary cycle. It is hard to compare different elections, but there were reasons to vote this cycle. A couple heavily contested congressional races to begin with and at least the rump of what was a competitive Republican primary for president.  Overall though it was far less than half the ballots cast 4 years ago when the Pennsylvania primary was still a big deal in the Democratic race for the Democratic nomination. 

That scale of decline over just a year can't be attributed to a decline in the voting age population in itself...   but I tell you what is a part of it.. There is an ongoing a decline in the population in ages that make up most of the county's supervoters.  Still an older voter demographic I assure you, but when it comes to voter turnout even small changes in elderly demographics gets magnified in the ballot counts.  Worth looking into.

Anyway... here is the recent history in ballots cast in Allegheny County elections.  In this range for sure yesterday was the single lowest ballot count.

Rumor has it

Some say there is an election today.  If they say so.  Actually in the region here the primaries of note in a couple congressional races probably will increase turnout here compared to much of the state.

Anyone notice Pennsylvania's web page looks like it has had a major overhaul.  Is that new or am I just really slow to notice?

and if only politics was like a drawing for the daily number....  Pennsylvania would have a 75% chance of having a native son win the Republican primary for president today. I guess it does not work that way.

Yet despite the foregone end in the Republican primary, which is the highest profile contested (technically at least) race this cycle, the number of new voter registrations appears a bit higher than normal..  likely because that primary was not accepted to be overcome by events until near the voter registration deadline.

Routine is as routine does

I have to admit I am somewhat mystified as to why this story is running now.  Wouldn't this story have made a lot more sense running earlier in the year, or last year, or the year before??  But hey, if you missed this in the PG over the weekend: In Ohio, reassessments are routine.  Still makes me say again that the story of property assessment in Allegheny County is about as close as you can get to Groundhog Day over and over again.


There are lots of angles to the story of how Ohip conducts property assessments.  Here in Allegheny County, once most of the assessors were fired the subsequent assessment functions have been outsourced to firms like Sabre Systems and Cole, Layer Trumble, both of which are Ohio firms.  Why Ohio firms? Because there would be no reason for a Pennsylvania firm to become an expert in mass property assessments given the dearth of assessments going on in the state. Ohio, as the article notes, has statutorily routine reassessments and it is no coincidence that the firms that do that kind of work are located there.  Problem is that because there are no local firms specialized in mass reassessment work, there is that much less local knowledge built up.  So we have created a self-reinforcing cycle: no local expertise in mass assessments for tax purposes leads to less than optimal reassessment work which then creates greater public angst against doing any property assessment at all.  Methinks some actually want the assessment system in Pennsylvania to fail.


Yet the real story at the moment may be just how moderate the angst level has become over all things assessment.  Really.  All numbers need context and the story yesterday mentions early on that there are 44 thousand assessment appeals Allegheny County must deal with as a result of the assessment.  Sounds like a big number... 44 thousand and all.   That is 44 thousand out of almost 600 thousand individual parcels in Allegheny County.  When you take into account all the public rhetoric encouraging virtually everyone to appeal the number of appeals at this point is remarkably small.  For an assessment from values over a decade old at this point, it would have been unreasonable to expect much fewer appeals.  Even if every single valuation was notionally 'perfect' I have to believe 5-10% of folks here would file an appeal just on principle.


Anyway...  for the greater pespective: what may be the greatest coverage of local assessment anger is all in this one photo of 2,000 angry denizens of the South Hills.  Anger for 1,999 of them at least and one kind of happy looking dude if you can find him. 

Aberration or trend?

Looking at data for the Port Authority as reported to APTA, if you look at year over year changes in ridership, the most recent data for February 2012 an interesting factoid pops up. 

Adding together all modes, the year over year increase in ridership at the Port Authority is the biggest such increase over the last decade with the exception of one period: the year over year increase between September 2007 and September 2008.  My memory can't recall what might have been causing a pop in ridership back then, but maybe it was all the volunteers in town for the presidential campaigns?  That is less than a guess even, just the only thing that came to mind.

Anyway, it still is a pretty negative trend in the long run, but this is what it looks like plotting out the year over year changes for every month. I didnt appreciate how well they were doing ridership-wise between 2004 and 2006, a period when Allegheny County was clearly losing population at a pretty steady clip.