There is quite the scuffle occurring right now between the City of Pittsburgh and one of its two state financial overseers, the Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (ICA)–the oversight board. The City has asked for an audit of the ICA, and the State Auditor General will conduct the audit and the ICA does not seem to be opposed. A state Senator plans on introducing legislation to dissolve the ICA outright.
Under existing state law (Act 11 of 2004) the oversight board’s life span is “a term of at least seven years” but had to have approval of budgets and financial forecasts for the preceding three years and then the Secretary of DCED “…shall certify that the authority is no longer needed”. The oversight board’s records and then handed over to the City and a final report is delivered to the Governor and the Legislature. There was an effort to shut down the oversight board in 2005 by members of the Legislature, but it did not proceed. We made recommendations in 2012 about improvements that could be made to Act 11.
The DCED secretary is obviously in an important position in this matter currently, and that position, though it has been held by different people in the past decade, has ruled on various petitions that have affected state oversight of the City:
In 2007 City Council asked DCED to remove the Act 47 recovery team, and a 2008 ruling by the DCED secretary at the time kept it in place.
In 2012 the Act 47 recovery coordinators themselves asked to rescind Act 47 in Pittsburgh, and the DCED secretary at the time kept it in place.
