While Allegheny County is going through the once a decade process of convening a Government Review Commission as required by the Home Rule Charter and the Commission is moving toward the end of its year long deliberations on proposals they would like to see taken up for Allegheny County (preliminary recommendations here) way over in northeastern PA Luzerne County is advancing a proposal to change its form of home rule government.
Luzerne is one of seven counties with a home rule charter in the state (we won’t include Philadelphia in this count, as they are a combined city-county are more thought of as a city than a county) and the most recent to adopt home rule. The County adopted a council-manager form of government akin to a school district: there are eleven members elected at large from the county and they hire a manager (there is no separately elected executive). An alteration to the form of government could involve reducing the size of the council or transitioning to a separately elected executive (two other home rule counties, Delaware and Lackawanna, have the “no executive” form of county government, while Allegheny, Erie, Lehigh, and Northampton have an elected council/commission and a separately elected executive).
