Fiddling while Pennsylvania bleeds

State revenue has been down for six months straight. Pennsylvania's shortfall is nearing $1 billion. The state has a hiring freeze and travel has been scaled to a crawl.
 

What should we do now, Gov. Ed Rendell?

Let's spend $4 million on the biggest nightclub and amphitheater you've ever seen on Pittsburgh's North Shore!

There's a brazenness, a kind of frat-boy puckishness, to going ahead with this plan, questionable even in the best of times, during an economic meltdown. It's reminiscent of the way the guys in "Animal House'' chanted for a toga party in the face of adversity.

I'm not going to knock the Steelers and Continental Real Estate for asking. That's what developers do. They ask for money and keep asking until the government says no. So after picking up a four-acre riverfront parcel from the city's Stadium Authority at the low, low price of $1.37 million, they're asking the state for $4 million toward a $12 million amphitheater that holds 5,500 people.

Its indoor incarnation would shrink to 2,600, and the rock club can hold up to 400. I'm sure that would be way cool, but why should taxpayers subsidize a new nightspot over all the existing ones?

I called the governor's office in Harrisburg and reached Chuck Ardo, his spokesman, who said his boss would have an answer on this funding request in the next two or three weeks.

I forgot to ask if his decision depends on whether the Philadelphia Eagles or the governor's second-favorite team, the Steelers, or some un-Pennsylvanian squad of interlopers wins the Super Bowl. But it sounds as if Rendell is leaning toward throwing millions down for this fun house regardless.

"The governor believes that investing in programs that attract more development is always wise,'' Mr. Ardo said.

I thought the two multimillion-dollar stadia and the multimillion-dollar light-rail extension were supposed to be the catalysts. I guess that's always been the trouble with government catalysts. Ya gotta keep catalyzing 'em.

The idea that government might finally have figured out the difference between its wants and its needs, might move away from the ephemeral and the discretionary and concentrate on the absolutes, could die right here. Subsidizing a supersized nightclub cannot be listed among the state's necessities in 2009, if it ever could.

I can't imagine anyone, liberal or conservative, thinking otherwise. I called Matt Brouillette, president of The Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative think tank, to let him hit the question out of the park.

"This is not a proper core function of government when we are struggling to pay for roads, highways and bridges,'' Mr. Brouillette said.

He says that both Republicans and Democrats in Pennsylvania have been pushing this type of economic development forever. He pointed to a Tax Foundation study that said Pennsylvania spent more on economic development in 2005 and 2006 than any state other than Ohio, and the results in neither state are good. He'd file Pennsylvania's long-running effort under "utter failure.''

I'm not the absolutist Mr. Brouillette is. Like many, I judge economic development case by case. But I'm certainly with him here:

"Pennsylvania has a more opaque earmarking system than does the federal government. Nobody is voting directly on these projects. They're part of a grand wish list sent to the cosmic Santa Clauses in Harrisburg, Gov. Rendell and the legislative leaders, who pick and choose who gets the grant or handout and who doesn't, who gets the candy and who gets the coal.''

Mom-and-pop businesses can't afford the legions of lobbyists and public relations firms who go after the big money, Mr. Brouillette said.

Mr. Ardo of the governor's office said that money for these projects does not come from the general fund but from bonds used solely for economic development. This is "long-term borrowing with the expectation that these projects will generate jobs and secondary activity that will help defray the costs.''

Isn't that comforting? We'd be borrowing millions in an iffy economy in hopes we can get people to party on one side of the river rather than the other. We'd call that stimulating the economy because we all know Pennsylvanians will party their brains out until they run out of money.