Posting from another blog thread -- I think:

I'm going to pick on Bram again. He wrote, obviously you've (city council critters) got to do both. The the overall city stuff and the neighborhood stuff are both important.

WRONG Bram. Neighborhood stuff is NOT the job of council members. That is the micro-management stuff that council should NOT be doing. That is the political plowing.

In the past, the city and council got turned on its head by the likes of Tom Murphy and Tom Cox. That (past) administration did NOTHING for neighborhoods. So, the members of council had to do the over reaching.

Those ills got the city into trouble. The Neighborhood Needs money $1M to each council member/district was the last big blunder that finally put the city into its OVERLORD status.

As council does neighborhood stuff -- then they are inefficient. Lapses in accountability are easier to make as a legislative body does administration's work. They have made purpose fuzzy -- and accountability shrinks.

Lapses in legality should not be tolerated by voters. Pittsburgh should NOT elect anyone who can't write legislation and understand what's what in those realms.

Even in this present mess and folly -- it boils down to members on city council turning over the crafting of legislation to the wish/whim/work of the Director of the Law Department. The city's attorney should NOT be crafting the city's laws. Shame for council for going down that road. Now council is heartbroken because the lawyer changed his tune.

Who is the piper and who is doing the dance? (council chases its tail, again)

Council members and staffers need to have their noses personally stuffed in legal books for days at a time, trying to fix the problem.

The rub comes in that the brains behind those noses are not of the capacity to understand what's in the history, present and future so as to navigate the city's legislative positions.

Bram says, "Free Council! Let 'em hire a lawyer!" I say, "Lawyers are not free. Council members should be able to write their own ordinances on their own. The boss of the city's law department should not hamstring council. Council's folly makes it easy for them to be snared. If council can't can't write legislation then council members should QUIT.