It's Not Just Pittsburgh
Bill McGurn ·
Mar 14, 2011 at 11:48am
It's happening everywhere. The private sector has been responding to the laggard economy for a few years. By contrast, much of government spending has only postponed the day of reckoning for many public employees and their institutions. Here's one example from Pittsburgh:
When the federal economic stimulus money was allotted two years ago, there was both excitement about getting millions of dollars for Pennsylvania and fear of falling off the funding cliff when the money runs out in September.
In presenting his proposal for the 2011-12 budget last week, Gov. Tom Corbett gave his view of what that cliff could look like.
For public schools, state-owned universities and state-related universities, the drop off the cliff is huge.
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Comments :
Aug '10
Re: It's Not Just Pittsburgh
Even more of a shock will come as the revenues from all businesses reflects the downturn it has suffered. Real time disaster is always telegraphed a year out for revenue collections. You can imagine the shortfalls combined with shortsightedness .
Not a pretty picture. Castles made of sand.
Re: It's Not Just Pittsburgh
You know, I'd like to know how much stimulus money (remember that?) went to prop up these bloated public payrolls? And now that the stimulus money has run out....
I think they all expected that the economy would have recovered by now, along with tax revenues, and that none of us would notice that while we were trimming budgets and tightening belts, the public sector was expanding.
Aug '10
Re: It's Not Just Pittsburgh
Rob, Come on ,do you really think they think ? Well, you do appear to be a generous sort. Pigs at the trough rarely consider the source of their next meal. They do however run to the sound of the shovel loading feed . How they got them to run to Madison is another question. Perhaps they are hiding the grain shovels around state houses in the RustBelt where the action has to take place first. They don't have shovels in Illinois,New York, and California anymore. In their place are the various adaptations for the screen of Animal Farm (Orwell) or The Pigfather ( Puzo).