Allegheny County Council ought to leave placing a drink-tax referendum on the November ballot to the public.

Last week, county council voted unanimously to give itself the power to put referendums on the ballot -- a move portrayed as needed to clarify legalities because the county's home-rule charter says the public can do so, but is silent about council doing so.

That was a mistake because it leaves the door open for county council to dodge tough decisions on a host of future issues and invites litigation over its validity.

Such litigation might well come from Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation (FACT), the group of county restaurant and bar owners that's gathering signatures for a referendum that would propose reducing the 10-percent drink tax to 0.5 percent.

Three referendum ideas that county council was expected to address at a special meeting on Tuesday seem to be reactions to the referendum FACT is pushing for: one that also would cut the drink tax to 0.5 percent, another that essentially would eliminate Port Authority and one that would reflect the stance of Dan Onorato, county chief executive, and would offer voters a "choice" between keeping the drink tax or raising property taxes.

That one is backed by Rich Fitzgerald, the Democrat who's president of the Democratic-controlled council.

County council might as well ask male voters if they've stopped beating their wives yet. However they vote on such a "loaded" question, taxpayers would lose.

And with the Port Authority drivers' contract having expired and that issue heading toward fact-finding and a possible strike, a drink-tax-or-property-tax-hike question also would undercut Onorato's pledge to force cost savings in the next contract by implying that the county will just keep taxing at existing levels, one way or another, to fund the transit agency, even though the 10-percent drink tax likely will bring in far more revenue than is needed for that purpose.

That's the exact opposite of what council should be doing -- holding the line on or reducing taxes and spending.

Referendums ought to be a check on elected officials' power, not a way for them to undermine ballot questions proposed by the public.

If county council persists in this sort of "passive aggressive" approach to the public, voters won't need a referendum to put a stop to that.