Stick a fork in it. This dog won’t hunt. It is as dead as a doornail. Whatever adage, aphorism or idiom you choose, it’s quite apropos to describe the status of Allegheny County Chief Executive Sara Innamorato’s proposed, and unprecedented, 46.5 percent property tax increase.
County Council President Pat Catena has all but officially declared one of the, if not the, highest property tax increases in county history to be dead on arrival. That is, he’s pretty sure the measure will fall short of the 10-member supermajority of the 15-member Democrat-controlled council required for passage.
And as odd as it is refreshing, Catena, the council’s leading Democrat, and other county counselors, are openly preaching that “austerity” measures must be taken in the forthcoming budget.
Well, thank you for the opening, Mr. Catena. We commend for your rapt attention the latest Allegheny Institute Policy Brief (Vol. 24, No. 36) posted this fine fall Wednesday that benchmarks Allegheny County against others nationwide.
While we’ll let the scholarly study speak for itself, it shows how out of whack Allegheny County is with these compared counties in granular detail. That is, there appears to be plenty of room for austerity.
Or as Catena put it: “This needs an all-hands-on-deck approach.”
And no stone should be unturned. From procurement contracts to union contracts. From the number of employees to the number of services that might be worthy of outsourcing. And the list most assuredly can go on and on.
As the Allegheny Institute’s new policy study concludes:
“Benchmarking, along with the tools in the Home Rule Charter—particularly the sunset review of departments and next year’s once-in-a-decade Government Review Commission—are vital to making sure that county operations are efficient and affordable for taxpayers.
“Savings must be found in other departments and functions in the 2025 budget deliberations.”
The next step for Allegheny County government must be the running of a fine-tooth comb through every facet of its operations. The knee-jerk tax hike proposal, designed to cover years of government profligacy, clearly has bitten the dust, kicked the bucket and otherwise been put out of its self-fulfilling misery.
At least for now…
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
