EDITORIAL – Honest politics an unsafe bet

With a new civic center and a veritable license to print money on the line, it’s looking as… With a new civic center and a veritable license to print money on the line, it’s looking as though it’s business as usual in Pittsburgh.

The finger-pointing, which was somehow mercifully absent to date on the matter of the Gaming Control Board’s pending decision, teed off yesterday as accusations of political favoritism and position flew between Republican gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann, Gov. Ed Rendell and former Mayor Tom Murphy.

The Post-Gazette reported yesterday that Rendell announced a backup plan to keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh in the event that the slots license is not awarded to the Isle of Capri, the Penguins’ business partner, which earlier this year pledged $290 million in private funds for a new civic center and arena for the Penguins as part of their proposal in their bid for the slots license.

The “insurance plan” would call for $293.5 million in bonds to finance a new civic center in the event the slots license is awarded to one of the other 21 groups vying for it, a move Rendell says is only prudent given the unpredictability of the Penguins’ deal with Isle of Capri, which Rendell said he still considers the better option for the beleaguered hockey club.

The governor’s critics have insinuated that Rendell is just covering his back amid rumors that the seven-member board, three of whose members were appointed by Rendell, will ultimately award the license to the Forest City group, whose proposal does not include anything for the Penguins and whose boss is Albert Ratner, a repeated contributor to Rendell’s campaigns.

This may have been what former Mayor Tom Murphy meant when he commented previously that “the fix is in” regarding the slots license.

Meanwhile, Lynn Swann has officially endorsed the Isle of Capri plan, making known his desire to see a new arena for the Penguins to be built without any public funding. Seeing as how he would replace Rendell’s three appointees to the board with his own were he to get elected, it’s easy to see how he might want to go ahead and let Pittsburgh know which plan he’s on board with now, you know, what with the election and all.

Got all that? Let’s break this down: Rendell is accused of fixing the distribution of the license to favor his campaign contributor, Swann nudges Pittsburgh in the arm to let us know he can get us that arena without public money if we elect him, Tom Murphy is still not contributing anything particularly constructive and the race for governor is on in Pennsylvania.

We’ve got two vitally important projects on the line here. We have a civic center that could serve as a home to one of our beloved sports teams and help rejuvenate the rapidly dying major concert scene in the city. We’ve also got the imminent construction of a casino of some kind that will, for better or worse, greatly impact the neighborhood it occupies and the region as a whole. This whole thing needs to be handled with some finesse.

And this is what we’re treated to? Is Rendell just covering his back so he can have the board award an automatic fortune to one of his buddies? Or are his opponents circulating rumors to scare us into thinking he is, just so Pittsburgh will pull the all-sports ticket and vote for Swann in the election? Is Rendell’s exceedingly vague backup plan even any good? What exactly is Murphy insinuating? Who’s on first? What’s that smell?

It’s disconcerting that the same kind of backdoor politicking and shadiness that got Pittsburgh to bankruptcy court not too long ago is taking center stage with such an important decision. Pittsburgh needs the parties involved to step up, be more forthcoming with their rhetoric and their plans and put the economic needs of our city before election-year politics before the Pens skip town for a city that can get things like this done and we end up married to an empty Mellon Arena and our slots parlor somehow ends up next to a blast furnace on Neville Island.