City of Pittsburgh officials and managers showed up at City Council Chamber today to defend their take-home cars, and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration argued that the city's nine legislators have no right to enact policy limiting the assignment of such vehicles.I suspect that Specter means "pornography," not "obscenity" as in Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's well known remark that "hard-core pornography" was hard to define, but that "I know it when I see it."
That special meeting on Councilman Ricky Burgess's legislation to restrict the number of take-home cars sparked another in a series of debates between some council members and the administration.
"It is our very strong opinion that this bill violates the separation of powers doctrine between council and the mayor," said city Solicitor George Specter. He called it "an unlawful imposition on the mayor's executive powers."
Council President Doug Shields and others responded that the legislation largely mirrors the city's Act 47 recovery plan, passed into law in 2004.
"This administration is trying to pick and choose what parts of the law to comply with," he said. "The mayor is going beyond the powers vested in him."
At one point Mr. Burgess asked Mr. Specter to define "serial noncompliance," suggesting the city may be repeatedly ignoring city code.
[snip]
Mr. Specter said council's right to legislate policy doesn't mean it can manage departments. "It's kind of like obscenity -- where you call it like you see it -- when you cross the line into micromanagement of operations," he said.
See, the deal is that you can define what is "obscene" by law.
Kind of funny that the City's lawyer would get it mixed up.
7 comments:
Perhaps the two most enlightening things in this article were:
1. The Mayor seems to be asserting George Bush's power to ignore laws of the legislature.
2. They want to monitor the location of city vehicles to protect against personal use... except high level officials like the Mayor. God forbid we catch him at another Toby Keith concert in the police SUV
serial noncompliance
Repeat after me, 10 times if you are of the Dem party: "Purse strings."
Repeat it 100-times if you are elected to city council.
They need to -- they MUST -- attack at the money aspects.
For example: Any car that is not in the parking lot (city car pool) nets a $50 fine for the last person to have that car -- and $150 charge back to the employee's department.
That is just at the top of my head, quickly. The point of the matter is that money, policy, charges, and fines can be put into legislation and not into management -- IF -- they are creative. Trouble is -- they (city council members) don't know purpose and they (city council) are not creative. And, they don't have the moxie to do what must be done.
The fight has to be about purse strings. Otherwise, council stays meaningless.
Well, a point is that the new members of Council - Burgess, Kraus and Dowd, are pushing for cost savings and for Council to have a role in decision making. The funny thing is that the Mayor and Council are members of the same party, yet they are in conflict in indeed much the same way Bush and Congress are. Council sees what the voters of the city refused to; that Ravenstahl could care less about belt tightening, he wants to be the Mayor of a big city, not a distressed city.
What the council does is much like what the mayor does. They need to appear to make a fuss. The need to appear to make division. But, in truth, they are like different peas in the same pod.
They are all of the same party -- and they all behave that way too.
"1. The Mayor seems to be asserting George Bush's power to ignore laws of the legislature."
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought, "Hey, wait a minute...that sounds like a familiar statement. I know I've heard it before pretty recently. Who else is it that does that? Oh right, George Bush."
That is just at the top of my head, quickly. The point of the matter is that money, policy, charges, and fines can be put into legislation and not into management -- IF -- they are creative. Trouble is -- they (city council members) don't know purpose and they (city council) are not creative. And, they don't have the moxie to do what must be done.
The fight has to be about purse strings. Otherwise, council stays meaningless.
You must be kidding or just blind.
They (city council) are doing everything they can to just try to make these kids do a simple task like follow the laws that ARE WRITTEN. I doubt that they (the mayor and his bunch of &%^%#%&)
are capable of taking the time to read anything. They just go and do what they want weather it means breaking the law or not.0aybe the never learned how to read. Then council who by the way is finally a pretty good group of people with the exception of the puppet Motznik and the coward Payne are there trying to protect us, the tax payers who have to pay for every law breaking mistake these kids are making. They (city council) i'm sure would much rather get on with the jobs they are elected to do but are unable to get anything accomplished because they have to spend all their time cleaning up the messes and spilled milk from the idiots running the administration.
Thank goodness we have a council that is paying attention. Other wise the city could just go broke with law suites caused by the mayor constantly thinking he is above the law, yes just like GW Bush. The mayor and ALL of the people in that office are pathetic. I say get rid of them before them run this city any further into the ground.
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