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Monday, December 23, 2002

By Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

When Joseph C. "Joe" Vignola, chairman of Gov.-elect Ed Rendell's Pittsburgh finances panel, became a Philadelphia County commissioner in 1981 he came across one of those dumb bureaucratic rules that wastes taxpayer money the world over.

At the time, every ballot in the county was printed by one company on a single, large printing press at a cost of $500,000. After the ballot sheets were printed, they were cut down to fit into the voting machines.

As a commissioner, Vignola's job was overseeing elections, so he asked why the county only contracted with the one printing company. Because they have the only press big enough to make them, he was told.

	Newsmaker profile Name: Joseph C. Vignola Date of Birth: Aug. 11, 1949 Place of birth: South Philadelphia In the news: Chairman of Gov.-elect Ed Rendell's Pittsburgh financial panel Quote: "My only requirement is make sure the money's there. What got Philadelphia in trouble was spending money they didn't have or reasonably expect to get." Education: St. Joseph's Preparatory, 1967; University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business, 1971; Temple University Law School, 1975; Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1987. Family: Son, Joe Jr., 13; separated.

That was asinine, since the big ballots were cut down anyway, Vignola thought, and he reasoned it would be easier and cheaper to simply print smaller ballots with normal presses. The idea cut costs in half, and for good measure he had the smaller ballot strips proofread by students at Temple University, where his neighbor was a professor.

Two decades later, Vignola is still trying to keep governments from wasting tax money. It is for a similarly simple reason.

"It's my money! I want to spend my money," Vignola shouted during a phone interview last week. "I don't want anybody to spend it for me."

Last week, Rendell named Vignola, 53, chairman of an eight-member panel that will study Pittsburgh's finances and Mayor Tom Murphy's $386 million budget, which relies on proposed new payroll and alcohol taxes that require state approval. Vignola wants the panel to figure out ways to keep the budget balanced, without those taxes, primarily by cutting costs, and get the ideas to Rendell by the time he prepares his budget address in February.

Rendell and Vignola have been friends since the mid-'70s when they both worked in the Philadelphia district attorney's office and, as University of Pennsylvania alums, would go to college basketball games together.

Vignola co-chaired Rendell's losing bid in the Democratic primary for governor in 1986, and Rendell returned the favor in 1988 when Vignola lost 67 percent of the U.S. Senate vote to the late Sen. John Heinz, in one of the most lopsided elections in Pennsylvania history. Heinz "was an unknown," Vignola joked last week.

During those races, Vignola became familiar with Pittsburgh, and he plans to return today to meet with Murphy, City Council members and other city officials. He learned he was on the panel 10 days ago at a party in New York, in the off-the-cuff fashion typical of Rendell.

"Across a crowded room, I wave hello and [Rendell] motions for me to come over. He says, 'I just told a reporter you're doing the Pittsburgh task force,' " Vignola said. "He knows I love government and I love the bureaucracy and finance of it."

After stints as a Philadelphia County commissioner, controller and city council member in the 1980s and early '90s, Vignola became executive director in 1995 of the state agency that oversees Philadelphia finances, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, called PICA.

Using a pool of bond money financed by Philadelphia wage taxes, the authority grants the city some $200 million annually and helps pay down its long-term debt.

To get that assistance, the city has to write five-year financial plans and adhere to them. Vignola's job is to make sure it does. If the city strays from the plans by trying to spend more money than it collects, PICA can withhold its money and even ask the state treasurer to withhold state funds.

"That's not an artillery piece, that's a nuclear weapon," he said, referring to his agency's power.

Gov. Robert P. Casey signed a bill creating the agency in 1991, when Philadelphia was facing a $219 million deficit and had a junk-bond credit rating, preventing it from borrowing money. Rendell became mayor the next year and submitted the five-year plan to PICA that returned the city to solvency and forged the fiscal reputation he ran on this year in the governor's race.

Rendell's plan included wage and benefit changes for municipal workers that still infuriate labor unions. Some of the muscle for those changes came from the 1991 PICA bill and still help Philadelphia today in budget battles with firefighter and police unions. It is precisely the kind of relief Murphy would like state legislators to give him, too.

Pennsylvania's firefighter and police unions have binding arbitration when negotiating contracts. That means whatever wages and benefits arbitrators award, the city has to pay, which according to Murphy and others wildly escalates municipal public safety costs.

But through PICA, arbitrators must consider Philadelphia's financial condition when making awards and justify in writing why they are increasing pay and benefits. Vignola said his commission will likely study similar rules to help with Pittsburgh's budget woes.

"I believe that is a linchpin in helping control the costs of employee compensation in government," he said of the arbitration controls.

"Fire and police do great jobs and I feel sorry for them, but what the General Assembly did in 1991 was a smart thing to do. Police and firefighters are not conscripted -- they agree to do these jobs. There's no reason the medical plan for their child's tonsils should be more expensive than the medical plan for my child's tonsils, when they have the same tonsillitis. I think that's wrong."

A bill the General Assembly approved this month regarding a state takeover of the Philadelphia Convention Center Authority would eliminate PICA's oversight of arbitration awards, however. Vignola is a critic of that legislation.

The Rendell panel will look at similar help for Pittsburgh and could urge the city to write five-year plans as well. But first, Vignola will start gathering up the city's budgets, the PGH 21 report Murphy's own financial panel issued last month, audits and other documents his panel will start studying next week.

"If I'm up late waiting for Santa Claus Tuesday night, at least I'll have something to read," he said.