I Wonder if I give money to the Pittsburgh Promise, can I deduct that amount from my Allegheny County Property Tax? Because I would honestly donate the entire amount of my county property tax to the Promise if that were the case.
No. You are not UPMC and you didn't take Lukey golfing with Mario.
I've been waiting for this. I am just surprised it happened this soon. Maybe he is hoping it gets lost in the Holidays. This is so disheartening. Two more years of this crap. I really hope the newly elected city council member have the guts to stand up to the Mayor. I think the vote on city council pres will be the first test.
Here is what is interesting:
1. This is a tax credit -- not a deduction. That means they will dollar for dollar lower UPMC's taxes.
If you or I give money to the promise -- say $100 -- we would only save 100 times our marginal tax rate. For the highest earners that's 35%. So your donation to the Pittsburgh Promise saves you from paying $35 in federal taxes. A hypothetical UPMC $100 donation would save them $100 in local taxes.
2. Look at they way they tried to get this passed. Last week of council. Right before Christmas. Waive rule 8 so there is no public discussion.
On a bill that could pretty much end UPMC ever having to pay city taxes.
Someone might want to check to see if that bill gives Yarone Zober retroactivity immunity for waterboarding or the ability to tap your phone.
It's City Property Tax, not County,right? I wonder if the County will be lobbied to pass a similar bill? I suppose not, since the residency restrictions for the Promise are just the city. Any ideas?
I said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not totally unsold on this...
This is UPMC's way of saying "We know we should pay something for the services the City provides (since we good to bed at night on matrasses made of $100 bills), but we don't want to give it to YOU" - meaning, the City government.
I guess this is the city's way of saying "We know UPMC has way more clout in Harrisburg than we do, so the only way we can convince Jane Orie and Mike Turzai and the rest of the city haters out there to force hospitals to pay their fair share is if we promise control of the money WON'T be in the hands of Democratic elected officials, thus punishing the Democratic party and by extension, helping the GOP".
Personally, I think this sucks, on all fronts. The city is conceding defeat, which it should not, since there are a lot of hospitals/ universities/non-profits in this state that are swimming in money, and pay next to nothing for municipal services - even to governments run by Republicans! There are a lot of potential allies in the "T" to reform non-profit tax policy.
As for UPMC, the fastest growing portion of the City's expesnses in years past has been health care (not wages). In the end, who ends up on the receiving end of those insurance payments? The monopoly that is UPMC, for the most part (is there an AGH Promise in the near future?).
Now, the long term implications: will this "promise" actually stop the hemmoraging of young parents moving to the suburbs to avoid city schools, thus enabling the City to tax their wages and property after their kids turn 5 and enter kindergarten?
Or will this simply close the city Catholic High Schools that are left? City-based parents can still avoid city elementary and middle schools, and just pull their kids out of Catholic school after grade 8 and get the benefit of this promise by enrolling them in a city high school.
This will crush Seton LaSalle and Canevin, which still get a lot of city kids; North Catholic is already moving to Cranberry. Central and Oakland Catholic will probably be fine, since both have huge suburban bases now and will continue to draw from affluent suburbanites who wouldn't consider Canevin or Seton for their kids.
Two things to consider - it is completely unfair and it is underhanded.
UPMC was given kudos by everyone (even those who criticized PP) for making a sizeable "gift" to Pittsburgh Public Schools. Now, the rest of the information is included and it says "if the state ever wakes up and decides it is wrong to keep non-profit corporations exempt from local taxes - UPMC will get special privleges". The contributions to keep PP alive for another day will come at the expense of taxpayers. Everyone should pay a non-profit tax - especially the largest non-profit. I don't care if they are contributing to PP - that is what making a charitable contribution means. It doesn't mean you don't have to pay another fee and city government shouldn't be changing laws just to help UPMC.
Secondly, why didn't they announce this at the big Press event? Why did they wait to the very last minute to introduce it. Why did Council vote to change the rules so it will be voted on tomorrow? Why isn't there any public input on an issue this big? Why did they hide the fact special tax laws were being written to benefit just UPMC?
It is unfair and underhanded.
How 'bout the fact it includes all of UPMC's "Affliiates" -- will that include the FOR PROFIT medical centers? are the caddies on the golf outtings also exempt? hey? does it include Pitt?
Looks like someone else is going golfing with Lukey, Romoff and Mario...
from the Trib -
Councilman Jim Motznik, a close Ravenstahl ally, supports the potential tax breaks for UPMC.
"I think they're looking out for their best interests down the road," Motznik said of UPMC. "I think they're just trying to protect themselves where nonprofits have to kick in a certain amount. They've already kicked in."
Thanks for watching out for "the taxpayers" best interest, Jim.
How much money are we talking about in potnetial taxes?
Well at least we know UPMC's 9k golf outing fee for Luke paid off. Motznik and Payne are such sneaks, they are so far up the mayor's ass we can see they waving hello as Luke put on that big Alfred E. Newman grin. This is outrageous. These two council reps totally Pearl Harbored council today. Is UPMC going to offer free health insurance for the city employees too? I think that needs to be thrown into the deal. Way to go Motznik and Payne, you two sneaky bastards.
There will never be a day when UPMC "gives" anything to the city for nothing in return. Who couldn't see this coming?
The citizens of Pittsburgh, including me, will put in a petition that calls for a public hearing on this shortly. We need interested citizens -- to URGENTLY -- email me, Mark@Rauterkus.com, and I'll rush you a copy of the petition. You can sign it, get others to sign it. Then zip it back to me.
A public hearing can (perhaps) help get to the bottom of this.
The devil is in the details -- and he seemed to have de-cloaked for a moment on this one.
They are trying to rush it into law without due process.
Mark @ Rauterkus . com
PS: I'll do my best to be in council chambers at 10 am on Tuesday. Join in if you can.
Gotta Love how the "non-profit" UPMC keeps increasing their premiums while they post record profits quarter after quarter.
The Pittsburgh Promise looks to be nothing more than a PR move funded by those that pay the monthly health plan premiums.
They knew that eventually they would have increase their PILT. This was a pure business move.
I would like to see the compensation packages of their top executives.
Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas UPMC. However, if Rudolph and 24 other elves who are qualified voters in the City of Pittsburgh they can petition the Council for a Public Hearing and allow public debate on the issue instead of having it ramroded down the public's chimney! Then maybe the taxpaying elves can find out how much money we're talking about.. Probably a lot of reindeer feed.
I never liked the fact that those who cut checks for the city in PILOTs never put how much each of them paid. These amounts were kept 'secret.' That's no way to run a government. Pittsburgh Public Service Fund is tighter on the control it its leaks than the Kremlin.
Be open.
Be honest.
I never liked the fact that UPMC kept the members of its board of directors as a secret too. Until a couple of years ago, the identity of the members of the UPMC board was unknown.
I work for one of the UPMC board members, boy is this going to be a conflict of interest for me.
Now let's just assume the Diocese of Pittsburgh wants a Parochial Promise for the Catholic School kids . . . does this mean they can get a total tax credit for making a special contribution, too? Pretty soon we'll have no one to make payments in lieu of taxes, because they'll all be exempt - even from PILOTS!!!
Actually, a Parochial Promise would be wonderful. This talk of "total tax credits" and the difference between 35 and 100 percent is eluding me, though. I'm comfortable with a slight advantage towards mega-nonprofits and their outsized hypothetical tax burdens. I'm just not sure how the math applies.
We decided to accept and pursue the Pittsburgh Promise. Ergo, so long as we are pursuing it, it is a good place for UPMC gifts and/or actual post-Act 55 property taxes to go. Correct?
tom murphy did a good joe teaching luke how to rip off citytaxpers . his next peace of shit is he's giveing TONY POKORA A JOB.
YOU R RIGHT
This article is not clear on whether UPMC will receive the tax credits now. Many of UPMC's properties are already taxable; I even went to the trouble of cataloguing them as best I could before the county removed the search-by-name feature from the real estate website. So even if the state does not reform Act 55 to allow for taxation of (or at least leverage to extract PILOTs from) big non-profits, does the city already lose money on UPMC properties that are already taxed? This is a big question.
Obviously the whole thing is a bad idea, and defeats the purpose of UPMC's "donation" in the first place. It basically means that the city (and school district if they approve the measure as well) will be paying for the "Promise." It looks like a non-profit version of a TIF.
Mark: I think you're wrong about the board members of UPMC being "secret." That was always published on the 990. However, the salaries of Romoff and the other top executives were kept secret by the expedient of paying a for-profit subsidiary "management" company called Managed Care Advisory Services, which in turn paid UPMC management.
They gave up on this practice after Paul O'Neil made a very public stink about transparency on the board, and resigned. It wasn't long after that that UPMC decided to voluntarily comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, so that now you can even get their quarterly financial statements online. It seems they were trying to get ahead of the curve on this because of stuff like the Grassley hearings on non-profit tax exemptions that were going on.
Patrick: It's not only UPMC you have to deal with in trying to reform Act 55 and non-profit tax exemptions at the state level. It's the whole non-profit-industrial complex. I think Pitt is actually a bigger tax-exempt landlord than UPMC. And then you have every other hospital in the state, every college and university, the Catholic Church and every other church, etc.
I don't see how this will crush the Catholic schools.
The city schools still suck at this point and need a lot to be fixed. The catholic schools are much better and always will be. People will still send their kids to Canevin, Seton and OLSH.
Matt, Just for the record, when was the last time you were actually in a city public school? Lumping all city schools together and then categorizing them with my favorite (NOT) word, is really NOT good analysis . . .
"Lumping all city schools together and then categorizing them with my favorite (NOT) word, is really NOT good analysis . . ."
No Matt is right the city schools suck, all of them. Some city schools are better than other city schools but that doesn't translate into being a good school. Even the best of them lag behind most suburban schools, produce results at or below state and federal standards. Even the "best" school in the city Taylor Allderdice failed to meet federal standards for the second year in a row and is one year a way from sanctions.
The PP will probably modestly increase enrollment in the PPS but not the way the city or program planners hope it will.
The parents who pulled their kids out of Allderdice in record numbers the last two years are not looking for or in need of scholarships for their kids. These people can afford to pay city taxes AND the cost of private school. Like many of the others who've moved out of the city they have the means to provide for their kids education and left because of the quality of the schools and aren't going to be tempted by the PP.
The people who are going to be tempted by promises of scholarship money are those lower income folks in the outlying areas with truly disastrous school districts; like Wilkinsburg, Duquesne and Woodland Hills many of which will use the address of family members to enroll kid in PPS and not contribute one penny to the city's tax base.
Expect higher enrollment of more troubled kids, more incidents of crime and violence, lower achievement and UPMC not having to actually deliver many scholarships at all.
Some of the Elementary Schools in Pgh Public School system are fine schools.
Pgh Public Schools has serious trouble in the high schools. Big issues in middle schools too.
The "high school reform" is such a joke because it has done nothing for the high schools yet. That is where the attention is needed.
The Pgh Promise was the first thing that the high school reform folks did. This from early 2007. It has nothing to do with how we educate the kids in grades 9 to 12. Nothing. They miss the mark.
CAPA is the best high school in the district, BTW.
The Dice and Schenley are sorta even. But those two are way better than the rest.
We need a Vo Tech High School! That should be what they open (re-open) next.
"Some of the Elementary Schools in Pgh Public School system are fine schools."
You keep telling yourself than Mark.
Honesty works.
Your delusional Mark. Like many other city parents who'd rather believe what you want to believe rather than face the fact they by remaining in the city and keeping your children in its schools you've chosen to deny the opportunity for the best education available.
Rand will tell you, the federal government will tell you, the state and the test scores will tell you that the schools are all failing to meet minimum standards, but you'll keep believing that because your kids school is a little better than the one in the next neighborood that it's a "good" school.
I been there and done it Mark, I sent two kids to the "good" city elementary schools in the city, Minadeo, Colfax, Linden and despite IQs in the 130 range and excellent grades in the "gifted program" I've also had to make the decision to voluntarily hold one back just to give her a chance to catch up to her peers in a moderatley good suburban school district.
Until you put a city kid into a truly competitive system that stresses adcademics in instead of politically correct bullshit as I've done and watched them try to recover years of missed opportunities, you'll never know how much city kids are missing and your only fooling yourself.
You really lack the persepective to understand just how wrong you are Mark.
A reference point when discussing the quality of urban schools - when i graduated from Dice in 1989 we were considered one of the top urban high schools in the country...but still admissions at selective universities did not consider Dice to be in the top half of all high schools. Even being among the best of a larger subset of other Urban schools does not mean much if everyone in the subset is mediocre.
"when i graduated from Dice in 1989 we were considered one of the top urban high schools in the country"
A very long time ago Allderdice was one of the better schools period. Their honors program was top flight, very highly regarded and graduated kids who got into the best colleges, they won several Blue Ribbon School awards from the US DOE ...
Then came the late 90's Mark Brently, Randall Taylor, John Thompson and the usual cabal of "community activists" who complained that the program was almost exclusively made up of white and Asian kids. They demanded and got spots reserved based on race, lowered the standards and made the whole notion of it being an elite program pretty meaningless and the whole school has gone down hill since.
Unfortunately though residents of the community continue to repeat the legend of Allderdice's past glory without bothering to learn if it still applies today and outfits like Newsweek, the Washington Post and others reinforce the myth by using utterly subjective standards to give it high rankings.
To many, some here judging by the comments earlier about Schenely, it's more important that someone graduating from the honors program be exposed to "diversity" and able to recite politically correct political propaganda than actually be able to test above the minimum academic standards in math and writing for a college as difficult as say Pitt.
The entire PPS system has become nothing but a leftist indoctrination camp and the only kids who come out of it today and succeed are those who are exceptionally bright and self motivated to begin with and have parents with the financial means to supplement their education at their own expense.
I can tell you from personal experience; if you're a parent with kids in the PPS don't assume that because your children are getting top grades in the gifted program(s) or scoring above their classmates on standardized testing that they're actually learning anything meaningful or relevant to getting into college.
Odds are very high that they're not despite any manufactured indicators to the contrary.
If everyone could see the night and day difference a year and a half out of the city schools and into a truly good schools centered around academics has done for my daughter you'd all pull you kids out of the city schools over night.
Dice's "public" downfall started with the grade inflation scandal and the following front page WSJ article where principal fisher was changing grades based on parental pressure...exchanging the appearance of doing well for actually learning something is a problem everywhere.
Grade inflation is a larger problem for the entire PPS system, Fisher wasn't the only one doing it, the entire everday math program that Thompson implemented against parent opposition is one big grade inflation scam for the whole system.
I'm keenly aware of the nature and extent of the problem and it's why I warn parents with kids in the city schools NOT to assume that their high IQ kid is actually acquiring math and other skills just because they're in a gifted program and getting all A's on the report card.
If my son and daughter weren't ten years apart in age and I hadn't been told by the admission people at several colleges how utterly unprepared academically my son, graduating from Allderdice's honor program with excellent grades, was I'd have never thought to take the time to look deeper into my daughter's situation and out how far behind in math, science and history skills she was.
If you love you kids and care about their futures get them OUT of the PPS now!
It's wasn't just Fisher, Allderdice or even PPS...
http://www.nysun.com/article/66711
I'm not delusional. But, we generally agree on the core concepts. The schools are in big trouble. The city is on the brink.
You are groundless if you want to talk about my kids and how we raise our children. Globally, you may make some sense. In this (my) specific instance, you're clueless. The specific claim -- about me and my situation -- does not apply.
And, I understand that the life situations that we've built are unlike that of most others.
I'm glad your situation with schools and such is working out.
And here's a collection of reviews of the Everday Math program the "good" schools in the PPS are using...
http://www.nychold.com/em.html
Probably the most succienct, though certainly not the harshest, is this one:
"Despite good coverage of some topics, it may be difficult to identify a situation where the use of this program is very appropriate. If expectations are high, then the program seems to be inappropriate due to the lack of support for the mastery of central topics. For situations with lower expectations, the program may contain too much attention to the higher-level topics and not enough attention to support success with addition and subtraction. Thus, it is difficult to recommend this program despite the circumstances."
If you're expecting your kids to gain math skills in the PPS, you're in for a rude awaking upon graduation.
"If everyone could see the night and day difference a year and a half out of the city schools and into a truly good schools centered around academics has done for my daughter you'd all pull you kids out of the city schools over night."
What about those of us who CANT get their kids OUT of pps? Not everyone can up and move, nor can everyone afford private school. By slamming the pps rather than offering constructive solutions you are throwing away every kid that has no choice but go to school there. That is unconscionable to me.
"By slamming the pps rather than offering constructive solutions you are throwing away every kid that has no choice but go to school there. That is unconscionable to me."
There are plenty of constructive solutions out there, they've been offered time and time again. People in the city first and foremost simply refuse to face the issues primarily because of the politically correct thought police that the board runs and secondly because of the absurd amount of influence the teacher union has and their interest in keep things just as they are.
What you should find unconscionable is a school system that puts every political agenda of the radical left well ahead of academics on their list of priorities.
The PPS, like most medium to large urban school districts, is a lost cause that CAN'T be fixed. Can't be because it is run by people who like having control of a socialist indoctrination center where they can prepare the next generation of the functionally illiterate, dependant class who will look to them for all things as adults.
When you and the other parent who remain in the city system finally wake up and realize that nobody in the PPS system gives a hoot about educating children and deem their own agendas far more noble and important, then you will have taken the first step toward coming up with your own solutions.
Unfortunately though as the last mayoral election clearly demonstrated, most city residents aren't even close to being ready for that first step. Fools that they are actually believe city government cares about their interests and needs and that the PPS care about what's god for their kids - and they simply don't.
And Jennifer just so you can't say you didn't hear it, here's one very constructive solution that would go a long way to helping the kids stuck in poor schools and systems like the PPS;
Support and vote for ONLY those candidates for public office and those political parties that support school vouchers for everyone.
Stop feeding the machinery of the teachers' union that has created the problem in city schools and give every parent the right to send their child to the school of their choosing.
Every vote for a candidate who opposes vouchers is a vote to keep using tax dollars to subsidize institutionalized mediocrity.
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