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Roddey keeps high profile; achievements not so obvious
Sunday, December 24, 2000 By Jeffrey Cohan, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey will never be mistaken for the Invisible Man. Or the Inaudible Man, for that matter.
During his first year at the helm of the county's home-rule government, he never met a microphone he didn't like, delivering speeches to scores of groups and appearing frequently on the evening news.
But his main accomplishments have not been nearly so apparent.
Roddey has not changed the face of Allegheny County, concentrating instead on its internal organs.
Progress in economic development has been incremental, not radical. The county's parks and nursing homes have seen improvement, but not an overhaul.
His No. 1 feat, by his own ranking, has been restoring equilibrium to the county's finances, an accomplishment as important as it is unexciting.
By instilling fiscal discipline on county departments and securing $7.5 million in assistance from Harrisburg, Roddey plugged the fiscal leaks created by the 20 percent property-tax cut that then-commissioners Bob Cranmer, Larry Dunn and Mike Dawida approved in 1996.
Moody's Investors Service took notice of Roddey's handiwork, upgrading the county's bond rating from A3 to A2 last month.
While Roddey tidied up the books, he did not exactly clean house in the courthouse. He retained several high-ranking officials from the three-commissioner form of government, including Budget and Finance Director Carmen Torockio, Human Services Director Marc Cherna and Public Works Director Tom Donatelli.
And he tabbed a Democrat, Bob Webb, for the vitally important position of county manager. Webb is so highly regarded in the courthouse that County Council members had offered him their top staff positions before Roddey snatched him.
Roddey made at least a little progress toward diversifying the upper-management ranks, putting blacks Mildred Morrison and Earl Hord in charge of the Area Agency on Aging and Department of Economic Development, respectively.
The chief executive has inherited not only personnel from the old three-commissioner regime, but also a major headache. He has had to devote considerable energy to informing and calming an edgy public that is going through a court-ordered, countywide property reassessment.
Roddey succeeded in winning the council's votes for a restructuring of the county's property assessment department. No longer will the same board oversee the assessments and rule on appeals.
But Roddey would be the first to admit he isn't perfect -- and he proved it.
Like generations of politicians before him, he wound up in hot water after a spin mission went off course.
In July, Roddey fired his economic development director, Mulugetta Birru. But he did not contradict Birru when the ousted director told the media that he had resigned to devote his full attention to his other job as head of the city's Urban Redevelopment Agency.
The truth was discovered when Roddey gave Birru a $61,000 consulting contract. Not coincidentally, Birru had a clause in his contract guaranteeing him $60,000 in severance if he was fired.
Roddey exercised damage control by submitting the consulting contract to the county's Professional Services Review Committee, which approved it.
Roddey has enjoyed an extended honeymoon with the news media and public this year, engendering enough goodwill to break a campaign promise without repercussions.
He reneged on his pledge to cut property taxes by another 10 percent after coming to the obvious conclusion that the county could not afford to lose the revenue. And he received barely a hint of criticism for making a promise that he should have known he couldn't keep in the first place.
Still, the Democrat-controlled council has given Roddey a few troubles. He lacked leverage in negotiations with the council on the administrative code and 2001 budget, since the Democrats have the 10 seats needed to override any veto from the chief executive.
Roddey, in a major compromise, signed an administrative code that exempts the Democrat-dominated row offices from the county's uniform, merit-based hiring system. But the chief executive is now watching from the sidelines with great interest as a group of five plaintiffs, including Roddey supporter Daniel Booker, challenges the row officers' exemption in Common Pleas Court.
On the political front, Roddey has firmly established himself as the leader of the county's Republican Party, due to his position as chief executive and to his unmatched ability as a campaign fund-raiser. He set an unofficial county record earlier this month by raising $655,000 at a single campaign event more than three years before his term expires.
All in all, a busy first year, appearances aside.
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