Allegheny County is in a world of financial hurt. And it’s going to cost taxpayers dearly.
The Post-Gazette reports that a consultant’s study had concluded that the county will have to increase funding to its employee pension system by as much as $100 million annually for the next 20 years to meet its obligations.
That’s $2 billion over two decades.
And as Allegheny Institute Research Director Eric Montarti told the P-G, “That money has to come from somewhere.” And it won’t come from the Magic Rescue Fairy. It will have to come from taxpayers, he adds, in one form or another. Montarti says it could mean a local tax increase.
The P-G notes that the county pension fund “owes $1.4 billion more than it can pay — an unfunded liability equal to almost half the government’s total budget.”
Call it “The Great Allegheny County Pension Fail.”
It turns out that the county has not earmarked enough money to fully fund the pension plan since 2004, when Dan Onorato became Allegheny County’s chief executive (ACE).
In conjunction with two successor ACEs and several iterations of County Council, the only phrase that comes to mind is “gross dereliction of duty.”
In the just-ended state legislative session in Harrisburg, the state Senate rejected a House move to increase the Keystone State’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, phased in over a number of years.
Of course, the ignorami among the economic illiterati bemoaned the defeat as something akin to being un-American.
But as the Employment Policies Institute noted, citing methodology developed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a $15 minimum wage and tipped wage increase were estimated to have the following negative impacts on employment:
- Pennsylvania could expect to lose more than 85,779 jobs. Sixty-four percent of job losses would be among women while 70 percent would be lost among 16- to 24-year-olds.
- The restaurant and bar industry would account for roughly half of all job losses.
- Tipped employees would account for 31,923 of all jobs lost, meaning (had the wage-floor increase been in effect for this year) that roughly 1-in-4 tipped employees in Pennsylvania would have lost their jobs.
So, a government policy that kills jobs – and kills jobs grossly disproportionately for women and young people at that – somehow is.. American?!
Mental exams – Stat! – for the General Assembly’s “progressive” booboisie (BOOB’-wah-zee).
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
