Good grief. Another month and another Allegheny County authority head granted a dubious “performance” bonus.
Fast on the heels of Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis being granted both a whopping bonus and an outlandish pay raise, the CEO of the Port Authority of Allegheny County, Katharine Eagan Kelleman, has been given a $23,000 bonus.
For what?
Port Authority board chairman Jeffrey Letwin says it’s for meeting or exceeding “a series of key performance indicators.” What those are isn’t exactly clear. Shouldn’t they be? Why, of course.
But Letwin praised Kelleman for her “leadership” during the coronavirus pandemic, navigating staffing and funding shortfalls until the federal government bailed out its finances and completion of a draft 25-year improvement plan.
But ridership for Allegheny County’s mass-transit agency remains 60 percent below what it was before the pandemic hit in February 2020 after being down more than 80 percent.
We’ve heard of no dedicated cost-cutting measures.
Neither have we seen anything in the way of planning for what might be the inevitable – permanently lower ridership as pandemic-induced work-from-home and other changes become the norm rather than the exception.
And that 25-year improvement plan proposes a modern public transit insanity – using the least cost-effective mode of mass transit – light-rail trains – to serve points west and north of Pittsburgh proper.
It’s a boondoggle in the making that the federal government all too willingly will throw billions at in the name of “improving transportation infrastructure” and “progress.”
And, lest we forget, the cost to provide bus service rivals much larger transit systems with far larger populations.
Letwin additionally justified Kelleman’s bonus – not to mention what’s sure to be a very generous new contract extension — by saying that Kelleman “is going to be in demand, so we need to keep her.”
Kelleman’s five-year pact, set to expire this year, pays her $230,000 annually. Her contract calls for annual bonuses of up to 10 percent of her salary.
But Kelleman was quick to point out to the Post-Gazette that she pretty much has no desire to go anywhere else, saying she has had 33 addresses in 13 cities before moving to Pittsburgh from Tampa four years ago.
“It makes me appreciate what we have here,” she said. “It’s the best place put down roots.”
Translation, Kelleman isn’t going anywhere. So, again, why is Letwin saying gobs of money must be thrown at her to keep her around?
Sadly, both the Port Authority and Airport Authority boards are out of touch with reality, if not out of control.
But, just as sadly, this is what Pennsylvanians have come to expect from blinder-wearing municipal authorities living in fantasylands that answer to no one but the political benefactors who appoint them.
Toadies of a feather flocking together in protecting the practice of bad public policy.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
