It didn’t take long for newly inaugurated Allegheny County Chief Executive (ACE) Sara Innamorato to make a mark on her new job. That would be a pox mark on sound governance.
One day after she became the county’s fourth ACE, she announced raises for several hundred full-time workers and several dozen part-time employees: Full-timers will be paid at least $18 hourly this year, increasing annually to $22 an hour by 2027.
Included part-time workers will see an immediate $3-an-hour increase to $15 an hour.
The rationale, in part, is that these raises already had been budgeted for 2024 and that such wage hikes are needed to attract people to fill the roughly 1,000 vacant county positions.
Gee, how about this new government first conducting an in-depth analysis to see if those vacancies even should be filled, eh?
Innamorato also says the cost of any raises will be absorbed through increasing productivity and lower employee turnover. We can’t wait to see the study proving, or even suggesting, so.
And, nod-nod, wink-wink – no, make that a vigorous head shake — the stage has been set for likely more expansive raises among the unionized work force.
But unless county government can pare costs elsewhere, you can bet there will have to be a tax increase. A none-to-dissimilar proposal illegally approved by County Council last year (overturned by the courts after then-ACE Rich Fitzgerald filed a lawsuit challenging the council’s purview) would have cost about $30 million annually, Fitzgerald said at the time.
And, as we’ve already alluded, that’s likely only the beginning of tax hikes, given Innamorato says, as the Post-Gazette reported it, that those higher wages for non-union employees will give union employees a stronger footing when they negotiate with county officials at the bargaining table.
“We have set, on our own terms, a higher floor for them to bargain from,” she said.
Higher union wages. Higher taxes. And we will wager little or no belt-tightening.
The P-G says the ACE claims there will be no fiscal effects on this year’s county budget – “but it’s unclear what impact might occur in future years. The new executive said her office will work with county budget officials to understand potential implications.”
One would have thought that would be the process before granting such hefty non-union raises and setting the stage for even higher wages for the unionized county workforce.
And, lest we forget, Innamorato’s laundry list of other coming expenses for which there is no specified source of funding, from new administrative positions (think a green guru and private employment practices gendarmes) to child care and, in essence, unearned vacation and sick time available immediately at the outset of non-union employment.
All in all, it is an inauspicious start for Sara Innamorato as Allegheny County Chief Executive. And we’re certain more inauspiciousness is sure to follow.
But we expected no less.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
