Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Council Makes Act 47 Request Official
As was mentioned in a blog entry last week, City Council today formally passed a resolution asking the Secretary of DCED to make a determination whether Pittsburgh is still a community in distressed status. Here’s what the language of the resolution states: “if the Secretary determines that the City is not eligible for removal of distressed municipality status, the Council of the City of Pittsburgh respectfully requests that the Secretary provide to the government of the City clear and definable benchmarks as to what would be further required to have the status of distressed municipality removed”.
Imagine if one of the benchmarks was a reduction of 10 percent of the City workforce by layoff or attrition each year for the next three years with a hiring freeze; or getting the pension funding level up to 70 percent funded by 2010; or immediately outsourcing every non-public safety service to the County, the private or non-profit sector. Benchmarks like those would be met with vitriol and claims of too much heavy-handedness by the state.
Here’s a prediction: the state will simply say “keep up the good work, but you are not there yet” without giving any bold recommendations. As we have pointed out before, there is no fixed time limit for distressed status and some municipalities have carried that tag for two decades. Given the magnitude of Pittsburgh’s issues, it could be a long time before the exit Act 47.
Besides, the Act 47 coordinator is the DCED Secretary’s person on the scene. If the Coordinator is not satisfied with progress, why would the Secretary be? Moreover, why not just ask the Secretary what needs to be done. Simple: Council has probably already done that and did not like the answer.
This is probably political grandstanding to get the attention of the Governor—to what end, we don’t know.
Imagine if one of the benchmarks was a reduction of 10 percent of the City workforce by layoff or attrition each year for the next three years with a hiring freeze; or getting the pension funding level up to 70 percent funded by 2010; or immediately outsourcing every non-public safety service to the County, the private or non-profit sector. Benchmarks like those would be met with vitriol and claims of too much heavy-handedness by the state.
Here’s a prediction: the state will simply say “keep up the good work, but you are not there yet” without giving any bold recommendations. As we have pointed out before, there is no fixed time limit for distressed status and some municipalities have carried that tag for two decades. Given the magnitude of Pittsburgh’s issues, it could be a long time before the exit Act 47.
Besides, the Act 47 coordinator is the DCED Secretary’s person on the scene. If the Coordinator is not satisfied with progress, why would the Secretary be? Moreover, why not just ask the Secretary what needs to be done. Simple: Council has probably already done that and did not like the answer.
This is probably political grandstanding to get the attention of the Governor—to what end, we don’t know.
