What a joke.
Allegheny County Council has voted to remove from the November ballot an issue that would amend the Home Rule Charter to allow it to, without any stated limit, lift its spending cap.
In backtracking, it cited not only growing public backlash on the matter but the county’s increasingly challenging financial situation, including, but hardly limited to, a massively underfunded pension plan.
But the council left in place a companion ordinance that authorizes a second ballot question that, if approved by voters, would allow council members to hire staff and receive health and life insurance, in addition to pension benefits.
So much for the body being a part-time “citizens’ council.”
Send in the clowns. Whoops… don’t bother: They’re already here. And a stinging rebuke most likely awaits them on Nov. 3.
Allegheny County Chief Executive (ACE) Sara Innamorato announced at Tuesday’s council meeting that she’s expecting her first child. Current policy for county employees will grant her 12 weeks of parental
leave. But she used her news to shill for a county proposal to mandate that all private employers in the county – no matter their size, for-profit or non-profit — offer their employees 18 weeks of paid parental leave.
“I will be so disappointed in myself as the first county executive who will give birth in office to not be able to provide parental leave for other families who are struggling every day and just want that time to recover and bond and to build their family,” she said. “That’s what people in Allegheny County deserve.”
But it’s certainly not the kind of deleterious public policy that the private sector deserves.
The Post-Gazette reports that Innamorato said “County Council members were briefed on the economic impact the paid parental leave policy would have on the county before Tuesday’s meeting, a presentation that drew on data from states that have instituted similar policies.
“She said county employers could expect about 1.7 percent of their workforce to qualify for the policy and, in other states, about 40 percent of those who qualify for the benefit take advantage of it.”
Then, Innamorato added this:
“Nothing in the available economic data points to an apocalyptic picture for businesses,” she said. “It only applies to a small percentage of the population. It reduces turnover. It improves morale. … It is really a net positive measure by all means.”
So, if 18 weeks of parental leave truly is the hunky-dory be-all and end-all – “a net positive measure by all means,” by garsh – Innamorato should release the “economic data points” she claims support the proposal.
Well?
Colin McNickle communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
