Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald says he is considering going to court over County Council’s adoption of $20 hourly minimum wage for all county employees by 2026.
Let’s hope he follows through. For the county Charter will be left fast on the road to being a dead letter should he not.
Not only does the outgoing ACE argue that the measure will cost tens of millions of dollars and force a tax increase, he argues that the council’s move is a clear violation of a charter provision giving the executive branch exclusive purview over wages.
Thus, County Council’s overreach is a separation of powers issue, he argues. For the council to have such power, it would have to propose amending the charter and put the change to a public vote.
Again, follow-through is everything. A failure to take this matter to court would only embolden future County Council power grabs.
Speaking of court action, Fraport Pittsburgh has filed its response to the Allegheny County Airport Authority’s appeal of a Superior Court tribunal’s ruling that the longtime operator of Pittsburgh International’s “AirMall” was improperly removed last year.
The authority said it booted Fraport primarily over alleged security breaches. But the Airport Authority appealed the appellate court’s ruling, saying, in effect, that it could do anything it wanted to do. It’s the typical kind of hubris we’ve come to expect from the Airport Authority.
As reported by the Post-Gazette, and quoting Fraport’s response to the Airport Authority’s appeal, the authority “seeks reargument because: It disagrees with the panel’s decision and review of the record …; it contends the panel should defer to the trial court’s contractual interpretation despite the panel owing no deference to that determination …; it believes the panel overlooked an argument that [the authority] never made …; and it argues that the panel considered an argument that Fraport Pittsburgh Inc. … purportedly never made when, in fact, that argument was made before the trial court and the panel.”
Indeed, it will be up to the courts to give the final determination if the Airport Authority rode roughshod over Fraport, as now appears to be the case.
And, as we’ve opined previously, should that behavior be court-confirmed, it is incumbent that the appropriate controlling legal authority conduct a top-to-bottom review of just what has been going on at the Allegheny County Airport Authority.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
