Pittsburgh’s biggest nonprofits need to pay their fair share

Darlene Harris was defeated for reelection by Bobby Wilson in the Democratic primary in May, but the longtime North Side councilwoman is going out swinging.

It happened Wednesday at a City Council meeting called to ask questions about the upcoming November referendum on whether to raise property taxes by a half-mill in order to dedicate $10 million a year to the city’s parks.

“How much [Regional Asset District] money do we get?” Mrs. Harris asked. (The five largest parks get nearly $7 million annually, while the 160 smaller ones get nada.) “Who started this campaign?” (Mayor Bill Peduto, who supports the referendum, had conversations with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy about how to get more money for the parks.)

“We don’t get nothing from any of the nonprofits,” Mrs. Harris said.

OK, so that wasn’t a question, nor was it grammatical, but it did set up a fair argument. Before homeowners pay $50 on every $100,000 of assessed property value, why don’t the large nonprofits that skate entirely on property taxes kick in something? “Half of the city is not paying anything, and using more of our facilities than homeowners,” Mrs. Harris said.

It’s not quite half, but it’s getting closer all the time. Ira Weiss, solicitor for the Pittsburgh Public Schools, put the percentage of nontaxable property in Pittsburgh at 40% to 45%, but that’s been growing as the universities and hospitals buy and build in Oakland.

“There is no question that we need to find a way to have the mega-nonprofits pay more for services we all use, and for the cost of public schools which are available for all,” Mr. Weiss said.

In Boston, likewise chockablock with universities and hospitals, the largest

nonprofits make payments in lieu of taxes, but not here. When Mr. Peduto took office in January 2014, he dropped the lawsuit that departing Mayor Luke Ravenstahl had against UPMC to strip it of its public charity status.

Mr. Peduto pledged then to end the short-term deals that stemmed from the city going hat in hand to the largest nonprofits every few years for a few million dollars.

“The city is left in a position where it has to beg for money,” he said in November 2013. “We need something that is a more structured approach and on a long-term basis.”

By the summer of 2015, Mr. Peduto said he hoped to have a system in place by the end of the year with “the big four”: UPMC, Highmark Health Group/Allegheny Health Network, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. What’s happened in the four years since?

“Talks are active and ongoing,” mayoral spokesman Tim McNulty said Thursday. The city might as well run that on a loop.

People who ought to know say it’s not UPMC (which contributed $100 million to the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program for city high school students) holding this up. That leaves three suspects. I’d love to be a fly on the wall if either Pitt ($4 billion endowment) or CMU ($2 billion endowment) were poor-mouthing. The Pitt website says “we aspire to be university that strengthens our communities,” and no Pittsburgher needs a map to know that both universities are just a Frisbee toss from Schenley Park.

Given the thousands of students who enjoy the city’s parks — and are protected by its firefighters and police, drive its streets and so on — it seems right that the big nonprofits kick in something. City Controller Michael Lamb, a political rival of Mr. Peduto and an opponent of the referendum, noted their contribution of “goose eggs” but also believes the city could put “a lot more money” into its parks without a tax hike. (Nobody believes it could find $10 million a year, though.)

Mr. Lamb told council the feel-good TV ads that the park conservancy has begun buying — which never mention the referendum — are a textbook setup for what comes next.

“There’s going to be a massive campaign on television, and no counterweight to those ads,” Mr. Lamb said. In an off-year, low-turnout election, that’s bound to have a big impact, he said.

I won’t say this is an easy call. The tax would work out to a dollar or three a week for most property owners, and the parks do have limited resources. It was said at the meeting that 69 full-time public works employees work in the city’s five regional parks — Emerald View, Frick, Highland, Riverview and Schenley — and only 33 cover the other 160 parks. Anyone with a lawn mower knows that’s not enough.

But the mayor, the five council members who showed up for this meeting and the four who didn’t should have been looking for more funding for parks before anyone started campaigning for a tax hike. The universities and hospitals that have big, beautiful parks in their front and back yards shouldn’t expect struggling homeowners in the far corners of the city to pay for what the nonprofits won’t.