The mayor of Pittsburg has announced that negotiations to find an alternative to the proposed university student tuition tax is now going for a vote by the City Council. The 1 percent tax to be paid by students and likely collected by the colleges has been held up pending some kind of negotiation with the universities who are not in favor of the tax.
As I've said before, this is a back-door tax of a community's nonprofits but unlike an actual tax, the proposal does not affect donative or grant sources. It effectively just makes the cost of going to the school slightly higher for each student. And, as I've been saying, my bigger worry is how this might get translated in other sectors like health care. I do not believe this strategy is so easily or appropriately applied to any nonprofit but universities (well, ok, MAYBE arts groups).
See the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette or the San Francisco Chronicle for more on the story where I must admit a moment of amusement. Both stories end with the line that the "schools are willing to negotiate if the tax is taken off the table". Hello? The universities already failed to find an alternative.