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New government getting to its feet
Sunday, December 24, 2000 By Jeffrey Cohan, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Baumhammers, Taylor, Cornelius. New county government. Fifth-Forbes. Road construction, and more road construction. New stadiums. This has been a year of nonstop local news stories. To wrap up the old and preview the new, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staffers have prepared a series of articles that recap what happened and lay out what's to come in 2001. Today, Jeffrey Cohan looks at the new county government that came into being in 2000.
The seven members of Allegheny County's 15-member council whose terms end in 2001. Democrat Joe Natoli has said he will not run.
The players: Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey and the 15-member County Council.
What happened in 2000: They led the county's home-rule government in its first year of existance.
Major issues: Adopting an administrative code to guide the day-to-day operations of government and restoring the county's financial health.
Controversies: The Democrat-controlled council defied Roddey and exempted row officers from the county's uniform, merit-based hiring system. And Roddey defied a Washington, D.C., group that wants a Ten Commandments plaque removed from an exterior wall of the Allegheny County Courthouse.
It may seem like yesterday that Allegheny County's voters picked a chief executive and council to lead the brand-new home-rule government.
But another election is looming in 2001, in Year Two of home rule.
Chief Executive Jim Roddey and the Democrat-controlled County Council will confront several important issues next year, and events will unfold against the backdrop of an election that could dramatically change the balance of power among them.
Seven district seats on the 15-member council will be on the ballot in 2001, giving Democrats a chance to reinforce their veto-proof majority and Republicans a chance to shatter it.
Property-assessment appeals, the proposed U.S. Airways-United Airlines merger, and merit-hiring lawsuits will command the attention of politicians in the Allegheny County Courthouse next year. But the overarching issue is the election.
The county's home-rule charter, narrowly approved by voters in 1998, provides for a relatively strong chief executive and relatively weak council. But the charter does give the council an important weapon -- the ability to override a veto of the chief executive with a two-thirds vote.
Council Democrats have used that weapon or the threat of it to pass laws, approve appropriations and set policies that Roddey, a Republican, opposes.
Row offices are exempt from the county's uniform, merit-based hiring system; Sheriff Peter DeFazio staffs satellite arrest-processing centers with his deputies; the district attorney gets an extra $300,000 to spend in 2001.
The 10 Democrats on the council, the bare minimum needed to override the chief executive's veto, made all that possible.
Councilman Rich Fitzgerald, D-Squirrel Hill, maintains that the Democrats' veto-proof majority provides a counterweight to Roddey, requiring the two political parties to reach compromises.
"The public likes cooperation, rather than one side streamrolling the other," Fitzgerald said.
But Roddey can virtually eliminate the threat of an override, and thus greatly increase his power, by helping Republicans obtain a sixth seat on the 15-member council.
Seven seats are up for re-election to start a system in which council terms are staggered so that half the seats are up for election every two years. After the 2001 election, all council members will have four-year terms.
Of the seven seats on the ballot in the May 15, 2001, primary, five are held by Democrats: Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline; Eileen Wagner, D-Scott; Richard Olasz Sr., D-West Mifflin; Joe Natoli, D-Morningside; and Charles Martoni, D-Swissvale. The other two seats on the ballot are those of Ron Francis, R-Ben Avon, and Tom Shumaker, R-Pine.
Wagner appears to be the most vulnerable, because of the five districts, hers has the highest concentration of Republicans -- 38 percent.
But Roddey would most like to dislodge Olasz, an outspoken critic of the chief executive.
"If there is a good candidate to run against Olasz, I would support that person," Roddey said. "I don't think he has been a productive council person."
On the other hand, Republicans have to worry about keeping Districts 1 and 3 in their hands and smashing the Democrats' hopes for an 11th seat.
Roddey put himself in position to influence the outcome of selected council races by collecting $655,000 at a Nov. 30 campaign fund-raiser. He hasn't ruled out the possibility of transferring some of that money to Republican council candidates.
That prospect has alarmed council Democrats, who, less than a week after the fund-raiser, summarily rejected five Roddey nominees for various county boards in a display of resentment.
Still, too much will be happening in county government next year for the politicians to spend all their time on politics.
"I'm not going to let the election be a distraction," Wagner said.
For instance, there will be the matter of processing tens of thousands of appeals from property owners upset about the assessments they will receive next month upon completion of the countywide revaluation.
"The appeal process is bound to have some controversy attached to it," Roddey said.
On the economic-development front, Roddey will keep a close eye on the proposed airline merger, which could have a profound impact on Pittsburgh International Airport, a U.S. Airways hub.
"It will be a focus of mine, but hopefully, it will be behind us after the first quarter of the year and we'll be able to concentrate on other things," he said.
Among those other things, Roddey is particularly anxious to see groundbreaking ceremonies near the airport and in the Mon Valley in 2001.
He also is planning five summits, the first set for Feb. 15, that will bring together representatives of government, business, labor and education from throughout southwestern Pennsylvania for conferences on meeting the region's need for skilled workers.
Roddey would like to see a few skilled workers find jobs in the county's row offices in 2001.
Council Democrats sparked a partisan firestorm last summer when they exempted row offices from the county's uniform, merit-based hiring system, which limits the pool of eligible job applicants to the top 10 percent of scorers on civil-service-style examinations.
Row officers, all but one of whom are Democrats, have argued that the chief executive and council lack the authority to impose a hiring system on them.
This, the most heated political issue in county government, is likely to be decided in court next year.
Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht has sued Roddey over the issue. And lawyer Daniel Booker, a Roddey supporter, is leading a team of five plaintiffs who have sued the row officers, arguing that merit-hiring exemption violates the home-rule charter.
While Common Pleas Court is handling the merit-hiring lawsuits, the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh may end up deciding another county controversy -- the fate of the Ten Commandments plaque hanging on the Fifth Avenue side of the county courthouse.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that sometimes teams with the American Civil Liberties Union, is threatening to sue the county for refusing to remove the plaque. The group contends that the plaque, which also displays a passage from Deuteronomy, violates the Establishment clause of the First Amendment, the basis for the country's separation of church and state.
A more pressing matter than the fate of a plaque is the impending closure of the outbound lanes of the Fort Pitt Bridge and Tunnel. County leaders will work with state transportation officials in 2001 to prepare for the construction-related closure in 2002. A traffic nightmare is in the offing.
"People are very concerned about that," Wagner said.
Because Allegheny County has one of the oldest populations in the country, it is only appropriate that issues affecting seniors will heat up on the front burner in 2001.
One of Roddey's transition committees created a little excitement this year by recommending that the county close half of its 80 senior centers. Roddey, trying to keep angry seniors at bay, formed another committee to study that one recommendation.
This special committee will issue its own recommendation in 2001 and the first senior-center closures could follow months later.
"We are not going to see wholesale mergers and closures of senior centers," Roddey assured.
What seniors might see are significant changes at the county-run Kane nursing homes.
Another of Roddey's transition committees recommended putting the Kanes under the control of an independent authority, much like the county has done with Pittsburgh International Airport.
Democrats on the County Council have balked at that idea. So, in 2001, Roddey plans to propose a compromise -- the creation of an advisory committee to oversee the Kanes.
The senior-center and Kane recommendations are just two of about 500 that Roddey's transition committees gave him this year. Roddey wants most of them implemented in 2001. He'll be getting still more recommendations in the spring when a consulting firm delivers a master plan for the nine county parks.
Budgetary constraints will continue to hamper the county's ability to implement any recommendation that costs money.
The Roddey administration is projecting a $9.6 million shortfall for 2002, but that budget gap could disappear with some help from Harrisburg.
"Balancing the budget will be a lot easier than last year," Roddey said.
He is still intending to keep his campaign promise of cutting property taxes by 10 percent. Roddey said he hoped to phase in the tax cut over two years, beginning with the 2002 budget.
After strengthening the county's relationship with legislators and the governor in Harrisburg, Roddey also has designs on federal money for 2001.
He and county commissioners from all over southwestern Pennsylvania have been discussing the idea of jointly hiring a lobbyist to represent them in Washington, D.C., where tens of millions of dollars are available for the region's sewer and transportation projects.
Roddey, looking to capitalize on his relationships with President-elect George W. Bush and other federal officials, expects to do some lobbying of his own in Washington, as he has done in Harrisburg.
After an exhausting 2000, spent setting precedents and getting a new government up on its feet, Roddey is looking forward to 2001.
"This year, we demonstrated that we can balance the budget. We re-established our relationship in Harrisburg. We've gotten through the first phase of the reassessment. We approved an administrative code. This year was very complicated.
"I think next year will be relatively simple."
There is just that little matter of the election to contend with.
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Wayne Fontana,