Category: Good Government On The March || By

Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato wants to block users from searching the county's real estate website by the names of property owners.

According to Justin Vellucci of the Tribune-Review, Onorato told county council the website "has been used for purposes other than those intended by council, such as locating law enforcement officials, teachers, judges and victims of violent crimes."

Interestingly enough, according to Vellucci, Onorato's spokeswoman "could not provide details on those incidents Friday."

Hmm. I don't want to say Onorato might be blowing smoke, but there's a definitely a whiff of something in the breeze.

I don't deny that some baddies have likely used to the property assessment website to look for information on people. Here's the thing: Bad guys have always been able to find out the addresses of people they wanted to harm or stalk. I'm not convinced that the real estate website is such a clear and present danger. And whenever a property is bought or sold, the listing is published in the newspaper anyway. This is a fig leaf at best.

. . .

But do you know who else people can search for on the website? Politicians. They can find out what properties that elected officials own. They can see if those properties are being maintained. And they can see if those local officials are paying their real-estate taxes on time. That includes your school board members, state legislators, borough councilors, township commissioners, etc.

I am not accusing Onorato of any wrongdoing. But I'm against almost every measure to restrict access to public records that the public pays for. We already block the public from searching too many records in this state. (Pennsylvania's open records laws are among the worst in the nation.) We don't need to add more restrictions.

And I am 100 percent against measures which make it harder to keep public officials accountable.

If you care about holding your public servants accountable, write to your county council representative and tell him or her that removing the names from the property database is a bad idea:

• Joan Cleary, District 6 (Baldwin, Baldwin Township, Brentwood, Castle Shannon, City of Clairton, Jefferson Hills, Pleasant Hills, South Park Township, West Elizabeth, Whitehall)



• Dr. Chuck Martoni, District 8 (Braddock, Braddock Hills, Chalfant, Churchill, East McKeesport, East Pittsburgh, Edgewood, Forest Hills, Monroeville, North Braddock, North Versailles Township, Pitcairn, Rankin, Swissvale, Trafford, Turtle Creek, Wall, Whitaker, Wilmerding)



• Bob Macey, District 9 (City of Duquesne, City of McKeesport, Dravosburg, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Township, Forward Township, Glassport, Liberty, Lincoln, Port Vue, South Versailles Township, Versailles, West Mifflin, White Oak)

. . .

Braddock's Defeat: Alert Reader Derrick notes that the vacant A.J. Silberman & Sons wholesale grocery warehouse on Braddock Avenue in Braddock has already found a new owner, according to the Trib:

Trau and Loevner Inc., a supplier of imprinted sportswear, plans to relocate its distribution and warehouse facilities from Shadyside into the three former A. J. Silberman & Co. warehouses in Braddock.

The company recently completed the purchase of the 62,000-square-foot complex for $795,000. Its current site at 5000 Baum Blvd. in Shadyside was acquired by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said Martha Graham of Massaro Properties LLC, who represented Trau and Loevner in its purchase.

Silberman, a wholesale supplier of food, cigarettes, candy and beauty care products, is relocating to the former Mitchell Plastics Inc. building at 267 Blue Run Road in Indiana Township.

A reader from Braddock who wants to be anonymous writes:

The new tenant was described to me as a "T-shirt firm," apparently someone's idea of how to slander a long-established Western Pennsylvania business.

The Silberman boys never shared their father's feelings about helping poor Braddock. No doubt also, the idiots in charge of the Borough Council and the greedy tax collection firm compounded the problem.

What is unpleasant is the role of the state and county agencies in moving a major employer out of the Mon Valley so they can claim it as a new industry for Indianola (near Fox Chapel/O'Hara Twp). There was no chance this business would have moved to Ohio or another state.

There was a book a few years back titled "A Confederacy of Dunces." This problem resulted apparently resulted from an "Aggregation of A--holes." Sad.

The large mayor was so busy attracting non-paying artrists to Braddock he was unable to be a factor in preventing the loss of a major employer.

That's the nice thing about Braddock ... just when you think things can't get much worse, they surprise you!

. . .

A Discouraging Word: I'll add one thing ... Why, indeed, was the county involved in "helping" Silberman's relocate to poor, disadvantaged Indianaola?

A lot of people have found fault with the Waterfront development in Homestead, specifically that it turns its back on that community, Munhall and West Homestead. But one thing that impresses me is that Park Corp. and Continental Real Estate said they were going to tear down the Homestead Works and build a shopping complex ... and they did.

In McKeesport, Duquesne, East Pittsburgh and Turtle Creek, where abandoned mill sites are being handled by Allegheny County and the Regional Industrial Development Corp., it took 15 years just to pull down the buildings, and big tracts of property still remain empty.

Perhaps Homestead Works was easier to redevelop than National Works because it was adjacent to Pittsburgh.

But why --- 20 years after Westinghouse closed the East Pittsburgh Works --- isn't there more activity at the RIDC-run Keystone Commons? It's near two exits of the Parkway East and just a few minutes from the Pennsylvania Turnpike, connected to both via Route 30, Route 48 and the Tri-Boro Expressway.

Although there's arguably a need for RIDC and other county redevelopment agencies to work on certain projects, the agencies we have aren't proving their worth, and I suspect private developers would have done a better job in Duquesne and McKeesport by now.

Maybe RIDC and the county could spend more time in areas that need to be redeveloped, like the Mon and Alle-Kiski valleys, and less time in Warrendale (at the RIDC-run Thorn Run Industrial Park) and Indianola, where private industries have no trouble developing on their own.