In a blog post earlier today, I asked what seemed like a fairly simple question: Why are students so worked up about Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's proposed "Get The Hell of My Lawn" tax ... when they merely grumble at tuition hikes that cost much more every year?
The answer to that question, it seems, is also simple. Students perceive a tangible return for the money they invest in their tuition. Even if they don't get to use the shiny new labs, those investments too enhance the prestige of the school -- and thus the value of their degree.
The way Ravenstahl has structured this tax, meanwhile, almost seems calculated to make them resent it.
Our intrepid reporter Chris Young was at a city council meeting on the tax today. Among the 50 in attendance were numerous students. He asked several of them a variant of the question, "Why don't you get this pissed off at tuition hikes?"
Not surprisingly, most students he spoke to agreed that, in the words of Pitt sophomore Austin Davis, "universities need to hold the line on tuition." But they also felt there was some kind of payoff. A Robert Morris student, Justin Lotz, put it this way: "Even though I'm charged fees [at school], we have more equipment. If I had to give a tax to the city, I wouldn't see any benefit from it."
I'll be honest: A part of me is tempted to say, "Grow up, students. Being a citizen isn't the same as going shopping." I pay tax money to pave roads I'll never use, and to subsidize a fire department I hope never to call on. I don't mind, partly because people out there are doing the same thing. It's part of living in a community.
In fact, students have a sort of touching belief that everyone else sees nothing but an upside in having them around. One student, for example, asked Young to "Imagine Oakland without college students." Well, I lived in Oakland for two years, and there are plenty of long-term residents for whom that is a constant daydream. But those residents learn to take the good with the bad, the excesses of Semplefest with all the advantages students bring. That's part of living in a community too.
But I can't blame students if they aren't racing to sing Kum-ba-yah with the rest of the city these days. As I noted in a column after the tax was first announced, it's almost as if city leaders were trying to make students as angry as possible. Almost all of the tax revenues are earmarked to pay off the city's massive pension debt ... which means "Many of the city's youngest residents would be footing the bill for some of its oldest."
That's not really the mayor's fault. The money is earmarked for pensions because, earlier this year, state financial overseers placed a mandate on the city to start paying at least $10 million a year into its pension fund. The overseers did absolutely nothing to suggest where that money was going to come from. So this is what Ravenstahl came up with.
The result is a revenue stream that pays for the one thing students will have the least sympathy for: a pension whose problems date back before they ever enrolled -- and whose beneficiaries may have retired before they were born.
Which is too bad, because the thing is ... students and the rest of the city have one big thing in common. In one way or another, EVERYONE is being beggared by colleges. Tuition goes up, while contributions to city coffers remain flat or decline.
And while it's fun, and fashionable, to blame Ravenstahl for all this, it's bigger than him.
I've been a reporter for nearly 15 years. And throughout my career, city officials have complained that the non-profits -- among the city's biggest employers -- need to do more. Ravenstahl doesn't have much in common with his predecessor, Tom Murphy ... except for the fact that both have pleaded for more support from the universities and other non-profits.
Why does nobody seem able to keep the real problem here in mind? That question, it seems, isn't quite so simple.
-- E-mail Chris Potter about this post.
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@ Llamagirl --
Good points, all. I'm not exactly defending the mayor here, but as I said before, for years, politicians have tried other approaches to extract revenue from the schools. One of my first press conferences as a reporter was about this very subject -- and that was back in the mid-1990s. Using students as "bargaining chips" does seem desperate, but no other strategy to date has worked. It'd be great if, along with efforts to oppose the tax, civic-minded students started doing more push-back on their schools, urging them to step up more. But of course, the schools would then say "any money we contribute to the city will be passed along to students in the form of higher tuition anyway." So we'd be right be where we started.
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Honestly, I don't think it's so much that we see tuition hikes as a tangible return. Instead it's more something we've learned to accept and expected prior to ever enrolling. It's easy to be apathetic about. This tax is new, something that no other city has. If it did get passed we'd probably take about a month to get over it and go back to our drunken stupor.
As for Justin Lotz comment, I hardly agree. I see a great deal of return from the taxes I pay to the city, quite possibly more of one than my college tuition has ever given me. But that's the thing, I already pay taxes. Ravenstahl set himself up for failure when he proposed this tax by accusing all college students of being freeloaders and complaining about the $2,600 he pays in property tax compared to us students who "never pay a dime". Completely forgetting many college students do live here and many of us pay just as much as he does in taxes. To be honest, if he had a different approach from the get go, he most likely wouldn't have so many opponents.
That's the thing though, it seems like the whole tax is just a strange ploy to go after the "non-profit" corporations, after all, Ravenstahl did make the comments “We value Pittsburgh’s nonprofit community. They are our major employers, and a big part of why our economy continues to be strong. However, we can no longer afford to provide city services to those who are not paying their fair share.” Last time I checked I was an individual citizen who pays her taxes and isn't an independent corporation. I'm all for going after the "non-profits", I'd just rather not be used as a bargaining chip.
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It's true that the city has ignored some savings recommendations made by the ICA. It's also true, though, that the ICA insisted on millions of dollars in additional pension payments ... while providing almost no guidance whatsoever about where the city was supposed to get the money. As Charlie Deitch's piece noted this week --
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A71802
-- the idea was supposedly to allow city officials to make these tough calls on their own. But the whole pont of creating the ICA board, as I understand it, was that city officials couldn't be trusted to make the tough choices. Makes me wonder what the point of the ICA is. They'd probably be doing us a favor by dissolving and directing THEIR budget to be paid into the pension fund.
As for Costa's apparent willingness to intervene, I can't say I'm surprised. This is what ALWAYS happens when a powerful special interest feels threatened -- some faithful politician comes to their rescue. (Consider the Purely Public Charities Act, a mid-1990s state law that made it almost impossible for local governments to challenge tax-exempt status. Some of the city's problems began right there.) If that had been someone other than Ravenstahl arguing before the ICA board, I suspect, a lot more people would have taken note of the connections he pointed out between the colleges and board members. (I mean, how much time have we spent trying to connect the dots between a campaign contribution and a contract? But nobody thinks these connections are worthy of discussion?)
As I've said here and elsewhere, Ravenstahl has made it easy for us to miss the big picture. He's proposed a tax that would hit many of the city's youngest residents, all to benefit its oldest. And his "students are a burden" rhetoric has made things worse. But I think a lot of us are ignoring the larger point. We have large, very powerful, institutions -- places that can afford more than just one $650/hour attorney, by the way -- fighting like hell to maintain their perogatives. For years, politicians have tried various means to have those institutions pony up along with the rest of. None of those attempts has been successful.
When people say "why isn't Ravenstahl going after the big institutions directly?" they act is if it hasn't already been tried. If students feel like they're being pushed around, and taken advantage of, by forces more powerful than they are, well ... they aren't alone.
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I admit, I'm starting of waffle on this whole thing. Maybe part of it's Rep. Costa's move; I don't like the idea of the state scrambling to take legitimate options off our Home Rule table and away from our own politics. But I keep getting hung up on what I first read about this issue from the suburban Republican who authors That's Church: not one more penny until government cleans up its own act.
Your logic and Ravenstahl's logic is sound in a closed system -- excepting only in part that this tax is directly billed to students and not the nonprofits themselves -- but there is a HUGE element missing! Cost-cutting recommendations from the ICA and our Controller (D-Here) are gathering dust. Fire stations slated for closure remain open for political reasons, yes I will call them political reasons. Service consolidation with the County is being forever jawboned and never pursued -- and I'm looking forward to Public Works consolidation. Unions are still being obliged in every contract. There is no serious talk of moving to defined contributions or 401(k)'s. $650/hr attorneys are being hired to lobby our own Council and to perform a year or more's worth of work to fight for a tax increase.
How then can we expect students, or the parents of students, or people who have BEEN students, or people who don't like the idea of new taxes, to get on board with this "fair share" argument? Government needs to pay its fair share too.
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